NASP is glad to announce the workshop
Political Normativity:
Realism Meets Critics
10 October 2019
SPS Seminar Room
(Room 215, 2nd floor, Dept. of Social and Political Sciences)
Via Passione, 13 - Milan
Political normativity does not equate with moral normativity, or so political realists claim. The former, they continue, is better suited to regulate politics than the latter. To maintain this claim, however, realists need to address two related questions. First, they have to identify the distinctive source - if any - of specifically political norms (e.g., actual consent, enlightened self-interest, etc.). Let us call it the grounding question. Second, they need to specify which are the distinctive political values that are included in their normative account (e.g. legitimacy, order, etc.). Let us call this the normative question. Elaborating a consistent normative approach that is able to answer these two questions in a convincing way is the main challenge realists face.
At stake is the viability of the realist notion of political normativity with respect to other rival accounts. By failing to address either one of such challenges, critics claim, realism would collapse respectively on moralism or descriptivism, thereby ceasing to be a defensible normative position.
In this workshop, eminent advocates and critics of contemporary political realism will discuss whether such a thing as political normativity exists and, if it does, what it looks like. This question also brings in substantive issues concerning the nature of politics, what ought to be required from political agents and the role of political theorists.
Program
10.00 Opening Address
Antonella Besussi (University of Milan)
10.15
CHAIR Carlo Burelli (University of Eastern Piedmont)
SPEAKER Eva Erman (Stockholm University)
Distinctively Political Normativity: Unattractive or Redundant
11.30 COFFEE BREAK
11.45
CHAIR Ilaria Cozzaglio (Goethe University Frankfurt)
SPEAKER Jonathan Leader Maynard (University of Oxford)
Political Realism: Method not Metaethics
13.00 LUNCH BREAK
14.30
CHAIR Chiara Destri (Sciences Po - Paris)
SPEAKER Enzo Rossi (University of Amsterdam)
Normativity Without Moralism
15.45 COFFEE BREAK
16.00
CHAIR Greta Favara (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University)
SPEAKER Manon Westphal (University of Münster)
Context and Critique in Realist Political Theory
