Abstract
Our paper is concerned with Joseph Carens’s methodological background: his contextual approach to political theory. Within the contextual approach theoretical principles and intuitions about existing practices can collide. To resolve such a conflict, Carens proposes a procedure of “moving back and forth” between the two. This formulation, however, can be interpreted in multiple ways and might even give rise to relativistic readings. The goal of our paper is to try to defend the contextual approach against such readings by developing a framework that can help to clarify the process of “moving back and forth” and thus solve conflicts. In our reconstruction, we mainly rely on Carens’s theoretical explanation of his contextual approach and its application in his practical case studies.
We gain as political theorists by reflecting upon unfamiliar cases
– Joseph Carens (CCC, 200)
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Notes
- 1.
Further details concerning the contextual approach are set forth in the paper by Yvonne Elger and Anja Zurwehme in this edition (111–125).
- 2.
Another problem discussed by Hahn (2000, 41) is the question of who is entitled to produce the reflective equilibrium. Does it only happen in the mind of one single theorist or is it a matter of rational discourse, and if the latter, who is included? We cannot pursue these follow-up questions in this essay.
References
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Hahn, Susanne. 2000. Überlegungsgleichgewicht(e). Prüfung einer Rechtfertigungsmetapher. Freiburg/München: Karl Alber.
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Pöld, J., Ünlü, C., Zemke, S. (2020). Changing Theory or Practice? The Logical Structure of the Contextual Approach. In: Hoesch, M., Mooren, N. (eds) Joseph Carens: Between Aliens and Citizens. Münster Lectures in Philosophy, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44476-1_8
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