The Moral Constraint on Political Principles in Bernard Williams’s Political Realism

Abstract: This essay argues that Bernard Williams’s political realism presupposes a moral constraint on the political principle of legitimacy, and that Williams’s realism does not articulate a distinctive political normativity. To critically engage with the ethical idea of a moral constraint on political principles, Williams’s ethics is contrasted with Rosalind Hursthouse’s neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. Williams’s critique of objectivity in Aristotelian virtue ethics says that we have no reason to believe that an individual can harmonise personal needs with capacities to achieve an objectively virtuous character. This is an idea which has not received much attention from neither the political realists themselves nor their critics, and it can be called Williams’s empirical premise. The thesis first criticises the empirical premise from Hursthouse’s neo-Aristotelian perspective which defends the idea that it is not irrational to believe in the harmony of needs and capacities and avoid the empirical premise. The thesis also defends a broader critique of the premise. The broad critique focuses on that even if the empirical premise cannot be refuted, it should be questioned for pragmatic reasons, since specific negative consequences follow from embracing it. Both counterarguments provide good reasons to question Williams’s ethics, and in extension, his political realism.