Reimagining Political Realism

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Given the recent revival of political realism in political theory, as well as this year’s conference theme’s call to “reimagine” our political possibilities, our panel proposal seeks to reimagine political realism in two ways. First, we assess the realist potential of thinkers in the history of political thought, reimagining the role of realism in their thought against dominant readings. Paper 1, for instance, re-reads Aristotle as a kind of realist given his prioritization of stability in his analysis of real regimes, while Paper 2 re-reads Augustine as a realist not for his purported pessimism but instead for his emphasis on contingency and love as its proper response. Second, we reassess and reimagine what political realism could or should mean conceptually. While Papers 1 and 2 do this by way of textual analysis of canonical thinkers, Papers 3 and 4 do so more explicitly. Paper 3 casts contemporary realism as a post-Kantian, post-metaphysical endeavor, and therefore argues that historical as well as contemporary realisms must be understood in this light. Paper 4, by way of analyzing the thought of Adorno, reassesses the radical realist claim to theorize on the basis of ideology critique without morality, reimagining realism as attuned to morality and particularly the reality of suffering. Together, these papers endeavor to reimagine realist possibilities historically and analytically and thereby push the realism debates forward.

Sub Unit

• Division 1: Political Thought and Philosophy

Individual Presentations

• Aristotle's Realism: Remedying Civic Fracture in Politics Books 3 and 5 - Evelyn M. Behling, University of Notre Dame

• Realism in Love: Reading Augustine with Raymond Geuss - Elly Long, Princeton University

• On Realism’s Realities - Shasta Kaul, University of Notre Dame

• Ideology and Suffering: On the Realism of the Frankfurt School - Amadeus Ulrich, Goethe University Frankfurt

Chair

• Alison McQueen Stanford University

Discussants

• Joseph Clarkson University of Notre Dame

• Loren Reinoso Yale University