Articles by Matthew Smith

Greetings Public Reasoners, Nicole’s post has gotten me thinking (okay, it’s gotten me to post; I’ve been thinking about this for a while) about the significance of data to political theory. In particular, it’s gotten me thinking about people charging that some political theory is too utopian.

For example, suppose I propose that we eliminate the system of nation-states and replace it with some other system (take your pick). One might reject that proposal out of hand simply because it is too utopian. But to what does this claim amount? Is it a sort of “Can’t get there from here” sort of claim? I.e., does it amount to saying something like, “That would be great, but we could never achieve that state of affairs given present, although contingently existing, constraints”? Or, is it something more - a claim about nomological necessity? But, what laws of nature would the realization of such a proposal (whatever it is) violate?

I ask this question partially because it seems to me that the question of empirical research in political philosophy is largely used in order to make arguments that, while they do not have the form of the utopia-charge above, nonetheless suggest one of the readings of the utopia-charge. The arguments run as follows:

1. Political theory P runs afoul of empirical evidence X and Y.

2. Political theories must not run afoul of empirical evidence of Type A, of which X and Y are tokens.

3. So, P should be rejected.

The major premise is (2), but why accept ANY premise like (2)? I presume any answer would appeal to something about the *aims* of political theory and then claim that anything with aims of that sort (i.e., the sort of aims that political theory has) must be regulated by certain norms, N1, N2, etc. And, among these norms is N*, which is Premise (2) above.

Now, that is not a simple argument to flesh out. It certainly isn’t something at which we can merely wave our hands. A lot more needs to be said, and a lot of it will be thickly normative in character.

Anyway, I am working on a paper on this, but I would really enjoy reading people’s comments about this. I know that what I have written is pretty jumbled and inchoate, but hey, such is my life. In general. Like, I live a jumbled, inchoate life.

Too early for bourbon, Matt

Hi Folks.

This is my first post here and I hope I am playing it right.

I noticed recently that people are not writing much on the right or obligation to revolution anymore. At first this seemed to be because those who advocate revolution seem to suffer from a kind of half-hilarious Sartrean bad faith (I am thinking here of the members of the various Trotskyite and other sectarian organizations selling Socialist This and Workers’ That papers) and so not many really wanted to associate themselves with talk about revolution. This seemed to be a shame.

But, then I started looking more closely at the literature of philosophical anarchists and noticed that there has been some ink spilled on arguments against revolution.

So, I decided to write a paper suggesting that we re-think this rejection of revolution, and start to look for new grounds for a right to revolution. I hereby submit for comment and discussion to the readers of Public Reason a little paper about this.

One thing I leave out is empirical data - I don’t know much beyond what I’ve learned from my own college days of living with some of those bad faith Trotskyites (well, a lot of them had bad faith — I know one who is the real deal) and a quick glance at Wikipedia. So, I welcome contributions of empirical data!

Here’s the paper: Rethinking Revolution.

-Matt