Political Philosophy or Ideology?




Truth is, I didn’t know much about education or healthcare policy. The semantic stop sign—“Markets!”—shut down my own investigations into these matters. I was frustrated that I couldn’t convince conservatives, social democrats, and socialists to come round to my view. To myself, I blamed their intransigence. In terms of Barnett’s analogy, I had the “right answer”, but I couldn’t explain why it was right, and so I didn’t truly understand the subject being tested.

I’m slowly maturing. I’ve learned more about education & healthcare policy. What I’ve learned has moderated my beliefs a little, but I still claim that our schools and healthcare would benefit from a policy that lets markets do more of the heavy lifting than they’re currently able. I’m just better able to argue it now.

I still don’t argue it well—I still don’t know enough. But I’ve run the stop sign, and I’m no longer stalled. On this issue.

While perhaps the “Markets! markets! markets!” pitfall is more characteristic of libertarians, I think a similar thing could be said about political philosophy more generally. We’ve all had conversations with committed partisans in which the other person’s position could basically be summarized as ‘I’ve made up my mind, don’t bother me with the facts.’

Reality is complex and multi-faceted. Political philosophy is a rough heuristic; a story we carve out from a universe of data and experiences to use as a general guide. But this story is necessarily a simplification. It may be a valuable simplification; it may be more accurate than other people’s simplifications, but it’s a simplification nonetheless. And when we lose sight of the inadequacy of any political philosophy as a Grand Theory Explaining Everything, then we have an ideology rather than a political philosophy.

3 Responses to Political Philosophy or Ideology?

  1. Mark DeFrancisis says:

    What did T.S. Eliot say about Henry James? Something to the effect that the latter had a mind simply incapable of being violated by any idea.

    A think the complexity/difficulty of reality shows why such a mindfulness is a rare but much needed virtue, especially these days.

    Nice post.

  2. John Henry says:

    “Henry James has a mind – a sensibility -so fine that no mere idea could ever penetrate it.” T.S. Eliot


  3. j. christian says:

    Amen, John Henry.

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