Arguing about arguing…

There is, rather awkwardly, too much loose talk of ‘methods’ and ‘methodology’ in analytical political philosophy, and indeed in academia in general. As a result, I suggest we think of the former as general forms of reasoning and the latter as the study of those forms, rather than talking vaguely about our ‘methodology’ the way some people talk of their ‘philosophy’.

I also suggest, at least in political philosophy, that we further organise things in roughly the following way….

First, we define our subject with a question: How should we live? This can be usefully contrasted with the moral philosopher’s question - how should I live? - and the social-scientist’s question - how do we live?

Second, we divide that question into a particular set of tasks: Analysis (figuring out the ideas at our disposal); critique (testing those ideas under pressure); ordering (shaping those ideas into principles capable of shaping a political order); and finally translating (developing those principles into politics via public political philosophy).

Third, we reflect on how to do those tasks by thinking through the available methods of argument. For example, we might critique a particular political idea because it it is inconsistent, or because it carries dangerous implications, or even because it has suspicious roots (capitalism, religion, faulty evolution).

This general framework for organising our subject I call questions-tasks-methods or QTM for short, and for a first version of it see the 2019 book above/adjacent (or go here). In turn, for the latest iteration, as well as a more lengthy reflection on ‘public political philosophy’, and how our subject is arriving at a ‘methodological moment’, see the article next to the book (or go here). If, however, neither of these suffices, then hopefully the book I’ll be publishing in 2025, with Oxford University Press, will make all the difference. This is intended to be political philosophy’s first ‘monograph’ on ‘methods’ and ‘methodology’, and I sorely hope that, even if it still doesn’t satisfy, it will at least make for a useful starting point for others to work from.

In the meanwhile though, and in order to learn from those (much wiser) others, please consider joining the ‘Standing Group’ on ‘Methods of Normative Political Theory’ I chair within the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR), or even the course I now run within the same organisation (featuring a wide range of the latest methodological literature): How to do Political Philosophy: Methods and Methodology.