The importance of metaethics for normative political theory: Defending metaethical plausibility and metaethical-methodological continuity as desiderata on normative political claims and theories

Political philosophy often makes normative claims such as that resources should be distributed equally, borders should be open, and so on. Why should political actors such as voters or decision makers take such claims seriously? This talk argues that a good answer to this question will involve satisfying a metaethical and a metaethical-methodological desideratum. Metaethical plausibility requires that a normative claim or theory is coherent with a plausible metaethical theory. Metaethical-methodological continuity requires that the normative claim or theory can be derived with a method suitable for investigating the normative as described by the plausible metaethical theory. The importance of these desiderata follows from the general desirability of basing one’s claims on a sound method and a sound view of one’s object of study, the need any normative theory has for good responses to reasonable skepticism, and the very significant difference metaethical commitments make for what normative first-order claims result. The talk then argues that what I call the ‘standard method in contemporary political theory’, i.e. reflective equilibrium reasoning combined with either quietism about metaethics or more or less explicit moral realism does not score well on these desiderata. Moreover, there is no easy way to avoid facing these desiderata, such as appealing to an ‘overlapping consensus’. This criticism is made in the context of the recent ‘methodological turn’ in political philosophy, and I argue that recent alternative views such as ‘normative behaviourism’ and ‘political realism’ carry implicit metaethical commitments and that the two desiderata also expose serious flaws in these alternative views.