on the contestability of social concepts

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On the Contestability of Social and Political Concepts Author(s): John N. Gray Source: Political Theory, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Aug., 1977), pp. 331-348Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/190645Accessed: 11-01-2016 09:51 UTC

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ON THE CONTESTABILITY OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONCEPTS

JOHN N. GRAY Jesus College, Oxford

tHE AIM OF THIS PAPER is to explore some of the philosophical problems generated by recent attempts to develop systematically the thesis that certain of the centrally important concepts of social and political thought have an essentially contested character. My investigation has two phases. First, after making some brief, exploratory remarks about the origin and sense of the notion of an essentially contested concept, I try to display some of the initial plausibility and explanatory power of the thesis that some, if not all, of the chief concepts of social and political theory are essentially contested concepts, to identify some of the variants in which an essential contestability thesis may be advanced, and to specify some of the difficulties, ambiguities, and weaknesses inherent in each of these variants. Second, I try to sketch an understanding of essential contestability which avoids the difficulties of previous conceptions while preserving their explanatory power and philosophical interest. I conclude by indicating how the philosophical research program generated by this revised account shows that recent attempts to deny the autonomy of political philosophy are misconceived, and

A UTHOR'S NOTE: The original version of this paper was presented at Pierre Birn- baum's workshop on Ideology and Consensus at the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research in London in April 1975. I wish to thank M. Birnbaum for inviting me to deliver the paper, and Steven Lukes for attending what proved to be a very stimulating session. I wish to thank Alan Ryan, Brian Barry, Kenneth Macdonald, Alan Monteflore, A lasdair Maclnlyre and Bill Weinsteinfor their comments on various versions of the paper. I wish particularly to express my gratitude to Mr. Weinstein for allowing me to read an unpublishedpaper of his to which lam indebtedforseveralimpor- tant points in my argument, and to Dr. Lukes for the many valuable discussions we have had on the subject of this paper.

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 5 No. 3, August 1977 i 1977 Sage Publications, Inc.



[332] POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1977

I try to show that this research program helps to rehabilitate a traditional conception of the character of a political philosopher's intellectual activity.

THE CONCEPT OF AN ESSENTIALLY CONTESTED CONCEPT

The concept of an essentially contested concept owes its original formulation to Professor W. B. Gallie, who developed it in a lecture given to the Aristotelian Society in 1956.'

According to Gallie's account, essentially contested concepts are such that their criteria of correct application are multiple, evaluative, and in no settled relation of priority with one another. In other words, the criteria for the correct application of an essentially contested concept embody standards of excellence as well as norms of cate- gorial demarcation, they are diverse, and their relative importance is as much a matter of dispute as each of them is itself. It may be said of any essentially contested concept that its denotation is non- contingently indeterminate, and, further, that this feature is acknowledged by its users. Accordingly, they employ it both defen- sively and aggressively in an attempt to fix once for all the criteria of its correct application. It is one of the chief contentions of this paper that, taking Gallie's characterization as a departure point, an essentially contested concept is a concept such that any use of it in a social or political context presupposes a specific understanding of a whole range of other, contextually related concepts whose proper uses are no less disputed and which lock together so as to compose a single, identifiable conceptual framework. Further, it will be the upshot of my argument that essentially contested concepts find their characteristic uses within conceptual frameworks which have endorsement functions in respect of definite forms of social life.

At the same time, such concepts are articulated in patterns of reasoning which have a distinctively philosophical character. Any use of an essentially contested concept, then, involves assent to definite uses of a whole range of contextually related concepts of a no less contestable character. Since these uses typically cohere to form a single recognizable world-view that is intelligibly connected



Gray / CONTESTABILITY OF CONCEPTS [333]

with specific forms of social life, I conjecture that essentially contested concepts occur characteristically in social contexts which are recognizably those of an ideological dispute. I hope that the argument below will both elucidate the nature of this latter conjecture and support it by showing its application in particular cases.

AN ILL USTRA TION: STEVEN LUKES ON POWER

In order to identify some of the variants in which an essential contestability thesis may be developed in respect of social and political concepts, to specify some of the characteristic problems of each of these variants, and to elucidate the implications for social and political thought of the generic notion of essential contestability, I propose to consider briefly Steven Lukes' account of the concept of power.2 One of the objects of Lukes' book is to develop a "three-dimensional" or "radical" view of power, according to which power is exercised in social contexts whenever human agents, who could have a_ted differently and who accordingly bear responsibility for their action or omission, significantly affect other human agents in a fashion contrary to their real interests. Acknowledging the "ineradicably evaluative and essentially contested" character of this view of power, he asserts that the moral and political nonneutrality of his account is no defect, and, specifically, that its contestability in no way detracts from its empirical usefulness, since testable hypotheses can be framed in its terms. Despite this strong affirmation of the essentially contested character of his own "three-dimensional" conception of power, it is unclear to me how far Lukes is ultimately committed to the view that the concept of power is essentially contested.

I concur with Barry3 that there is a central tension in his account. On the one hand, it is claimed that power is "one of those concepts which is ineradicably value-dependent," that each of the three views of power "arises out of and operates within a particular moral and political perspective" so that "the concept of power is, in consequence, what has been called an 'essentially contested concept'."4 This is the claim that rival views of power are associated with inescapably conflicting value-commitments. On the other hand, it is claimed that the three-dimensional view of power is rationally preferable to the



[3341 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1977

other two views, and not merely more consonant with a given scheme of values. In Chapter 7, for example, where the three views are com- pared, the claim is made that the three-dimensional view accommodates features of social reality which the other two neglect; it is generally more comprehensive, has more explanatory and predictive power, and so on. Yet, surely, if there are rational arguments (such as Lukes') which can show the inadequacy of the first two views, then it cannot be the case that power is an essentially contested concept; at least not in the sense that rival uses of it express conflicting moral and political commitments between which reason cannot arbitrate. Nor is this tension significantly diminished if we treat talk about three views of power as alluding to three dimensions of power rather than to three different conceptions of it. True, there is no formal or logical contradiction generated by statements derivable from the three "views" or "dimensions" of power, yet, even if the relation between the three dimensions is characterized as cumulative rather than as a relation between alternatives, it is still the case that the three-dimensional view of power is rationally preferable to the other two; for it can accom- modate both of them while providing a more perspicuous account of social reality than either.

And this, like any privileging of one use of an essentially contested concept over other uses, is incompatible with the view that power is an essentially contested concept (as long as essential contestability is conceived in terms of ineradicable value-conflict).

This tension at the heart of Lukes' account is paralleled by an ambivalence in the moral and political perspective which informs the book -an ambivalence that allows me to display certain general features of the claim that a given concept has an essentially contested character. As the title of Lukes' book (Power: A Radical View) suggests, the three-dimensional view of power is a radical view: it expresses a moral and political perspective that originates in nineteenth-century anarchist and socialist traditions and reemerges in the writings of the New Left. This perspective is sensitive to the ways in which men are controlled by manipulation rather than by more overt modes of power, and it rejects as hypocrisy the position of those liberals who deny the reality of power wherever there is no evidence of coercion or force. It is a moral and political perspective, also, inspired by a vision of a frater- nal community of autonomous equals, cooperating in a trade of




consensual authority which might render power relations redundant.5 I suspect (though I cannot here show) that this moral and political perspective, if it is to be rationally supportable and its projects at all plausible, requires its adherents to abandon any kind of moral relativism and to adopt some variant of ethical naturalism. To do this, however, would preclude arguing that any concept is essentially contested in the sense claimed by Lukes for power (where the contestability of a concept derives primarily from the rational unsettlability of disputes about the values which any specific use of it endorses).

The claim that power is an essentially contested concept itself emerges within a moral and political perspective very different from (and incompatible with) that which inspires the radical view of power. For to acknowledge that most of our concepts have an essentially contested character is to abandon absolutist claims in respect of all of them and to suggest the appropriateness of that epistemological and moral pluralism which some recent commentators (such as P. K. Feyerabend) have claimed to discern in J. S. Mill's On Liberty.6 For if none of the rival uses of our basic concepts can be logically privileged over any other, are we not all but committed to tolerance of diversity, and to the project of promoting a mutual and interminable conceptual enrichment through maintaining permanent dialogue? That a recognition of the chronic character of normative and epistemic dissensus, and so of conceptual diversity, can provide the departure point for an endorsement of the basic values of a liberal civilization is felicitously illustrated by W. B. Gallie's encomium of the hoped-for consequences which might flow from general recognition that our concepts have a contested character. "Recognition of a given concept as essentially contested," he says,

implies recognition of rival uses of it (such as oneself repudiates) as not only logically possible and humanly likely, but as of permanent critical value to one's own use or interpretation of the concept in question; whereas to regard any rival as anathema, perverse, bestial or lunatic means, in many cases, to submit oneself to the chronic human peril of underestimating or of completely ignoring, the value of one's opponent's positions. One desirable consequence of the required recognition in any proper instance of essential contestedness might therefore be a marked raising in the quality of arguments in the disputes of the contestant parties. And this would mean prima facie, a justification of the continued competition for support and acknowledgement between the various competing parties.'




It is within the moral and political perspective from which the notion of an essentially contested concept itself emerges that it is most readily acknowledged that concepts having this character will tend to interlock so as to form a diversity of Mannheimian total ideologies. This moral and political perspective is that of pluralist liberalism.

These remarks about the moral political perspective within which the concept of an essentially contested concept emerges allow me to proceed to some general observations about three features of Lukes' conceptual analysis of power suggesting that, like any conceptual analysis which yields an identification of a concept as essentially contested, it may itself have an essentially contested character. In the first place, to impute to any concept an essentially contested character is to repudiate a wide range of restrictive or exclusivist, descriptivist or essentialist claims which are characteristically made for it by each of its rival users. To characterize as essentially contested the concept of goodness, for example, means to reject all the diverse definist claims made for it by Utilitarians, Idealists, and others. Second, it follows from the first point that to characterize a concept as having an essentially contested character is to announce the result of a conceptual analysis which is not neutral about the logical status of the concept under investigation. While one who identifies a concept as having a contested character may well be indifferent to the merits of the rival uses of the concept, he will always be philosophically partisan; for his imputation to the concept of a contested character excludes as illegitimate all arguments seeking to show the virtual equivalence of the term's meaning and the criteria of its correct application. In the third place, to identify a concept as essentially contested does not seem possible except on the basis of an accurate knowledge of the sociological and historical contexts, and the recurrent situations and systems of practices, in which the concept is used.

Now, plainly, it is a fact of the first importance that not all societies possess essentially contested concepts: we are acquainted with many primitive, closed, or traditional social orders in which definist and descriptivist claims might legitimately be made for a wide variety of concepts. In other words, we know of societies in which it is indeed the case that the conditions under which a term acquires its meaning and the conditions under which it is used correctly are all but identical.8 Similarly, just as we can identify social orders in which essentially contested concepts are rare or unknown, so also it is evident that any



Gray / CONTESTABILITY OF CONCEPTS [3371

given concept acquires a contested character along with (I do not say "because of') the occurrence of certain definite changes in social struc- ture. Unfortunately, it is far from clear what are the distinguishing marks of the kind of social and conceptual change which confers on a concept an essentially contested character. Indeed, as Ernest Gellner has observed in an illuminating paper,9 it is not at all evident how we are to distinguish concepts which have an essentially contested character from concepts which are simply radically confused, or general words whose uses conceal a diversity of distinguishable concepts from general words which really denote an essentially contested concept. What is clear is that the study of essentially contested concepts is inseparable from the study of the various dimensions (linguistic and conceptual, for example) of social change itself.

To identify a concept as essentially contested is to say a great deal abaut the kind of society in which its users live. If it is the case, for example, that most of the concepts of our social and political thought -power, freedom, justice, coercion, and responsibility, for example- have an essentially contested character, then this can only be so in virtue of the fact that our social and political thought occurs in a social environment marked by profound diversity and moral individualism. Any characterization of the central concepts of social and political thought as essentially contested, then, reflects (so far as it is accept- able) the pluralist, morally and politically polyarchic character of contemporary Western liberal society. Indeed, the fact that essential contestability is claimed for most of our moral and political concepts is itself prima facie evidence in support of the claim. Paradoxically, then, the imputation to the concept of power (for example) of an essentially contested character is most readily intelligible in the context of an open society; and it has the consequence of suggesting the inerad- icability of power relations in any society that is sufficiently diverse and complex for the notion of an essentially contested concept to be widely and correctly applied.

FORMS AND LIMITS OF ESSENTIAL CONTESTA BILITY

First and foremost among the many difficulties encountered in any attempt to develop an essential contestability thesis is the diffi-



(338] POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1977

culty of specifying just what it means to claim that a concept is essentially contested. For, clearly, to characterize a concept as "essentially contested" may be (and in all relevant contexts must be) to do more than to report its cultural and historical variability and to record the fact that its correct application has long been a matter of dispute -at least if such a characterization is to be nontruistic and if it is to succeed at once in capturing and in going some distance toward explaining the intractability of disputes about its use. That is, it cannot be the criterion of a concept's essential contestability that its users are culturally and historically variant if the fact of its variability (often cited as evidence of its contestability) is to be accounted for at all satisfactorily. All interesting and important contestability theses go far beyond this weak version in which the fact of a concept's contestability can be established by empirical means alone, and in which a concept's contestability is, indeed, constituted by its "contestedness." It is necessary to distinguish clearly between this weak, empirical version and the stronger version that a given application of a concept is "contestable." For advancing the latter version-a stronger contestability thesis-commits one to showing by argument the inconclu- siveness of debates about the criteria of correct application of a concept: it obliges one to support the claim that, since there are no logically coercive reasons for privileging one set of candidate criteria over all others, there is good reason to regard its proper use as disputable. Necessarily, but importantly, whenever a concept is recognized as having a contestable character in this second and stronger version of the variability thesis, its identification involves making some philosophical judgments.'0 In its third, strongest, and most interesting variant, to claim that a concept is variable-to advance an essential contestability thesis in its full or proper sense, one might say-is to claim that its subject matter is in its nature such that there are always good reasons for disputing the propriety of any of its uses.

I have already noted that advancing a strong variability or contestability claim characteristically generates philosophical disputes. It can further be shown that the claim that there is no definitive way of resolving disputes about a concept's proper application endorses a definite philosophical perspective with regard to the nature and limits of rational discussion, at least with respect to the concept under consideration. In other words, to say of a concept that it is essentially contested in this third and very strong sense is not to make a deduc-




tion from a standpoint that somehow transcends all definitional disputes about the concept, but rather is to proffer a philosophically partisan understanding of the character of the dispute itself. Indeed, it may be that any characterization of a concept as essentially contested is so deeply and radically nonneutral that it must itself be seen as essentially contested. Importantly, however, it must be recognized that insofar as any contestability claim may itself be infected with essential contestability, a two-tiered essential contestability thesis has philosophical presuppositions of its own. Specifically, a two-tiered essential contestability thesis presupposes the reality of a degree of discretion in our ultimate philosophical judgments and metaphysical commitments which would be denied by all who subscribe to a less latitudinarian conception of philosophical activity.

To recall at this point the distinction between three varieties of a variability thesis-between "contestedness," "contestability," and "essential contestability proper": I have contended that to identify a concept as essentially contested in the third and strongest variant is to endorse a definite philosophical position with respect to that concept and with respect to the proper conduct of disputes about its correct application. It is to reject all claims that the criteria of correct application of a concept like freedom or power (say) are deducible from a finite set of uniquely apt descriptions of human actions and the world. Such claims were the stock in trade of philosophers before the analytical revolution extended radically what might be called the range of ontological discretion or categorical latitude permitted to language users in their effort to' elaborate a coherent picture of the world.

I want now to try to be more specific about the features of a concept which might be thought vulnerable to disputes about proper application-disputes which are rationally unsettlable. When Lukes, for example, says that power is "one of those concepts which is ineradicably value-dependent,"" it is implied that the major part of what makes a concept essentially contested is that criteria for its correct application embody normative standards, and that disputes about the propriety of these standards cannot be settled by rational argument alone. Now, if the essential contestability of a concept derives primarily from the norm-dependency of its uses (where the norms are "open to choice" in the sense that rational argument cannot show any set of norms to be uniquely appropriate), then the validity of essential con-




testability theses rests largely on the acceptability of theories of ethical nonnaturalism; theories according to which evaluative judgments are not to be derived deductively from empirical statements, rules of moral discourse, or definitions of moral terms. Accordingly, if conclusive arguments were found in support of some version of ethical naturalism, then an essential contestability thesis would be fore- doomed; for, once rational debate had specified the appropriate norms (as in principle it might always do, supposing ethical naturalism to have been established), there would be little further room for dispute about the concept's correct criteria. In presupposing the validity of some kind of ethical nonnaturalism, then, essential contestability theses may be seen to originate not from some (impossibly) tran- scendent philosophical perspective, but from within a specific tradition of philosophical argument; namely, that in which Aristotelian, Thom- ist, and Hegelian accounts of the relation between facts and values (for example) are characterized as logically fallacious. Nor is this dependency at all surprising when it is recalled that the notion of essential contestability first emerged (in the writings of W. B. Gallie) within the analytical tradition of contemporary philosophy as part of a program of imminent criticism. This program attempted to intro- duce into the discussions of meta-ethicists a sensitivity to the diversity and internal complexity of moral notions; the lack of this sensitivity, although widely deplored, was due largely to the continued preva- lence of various kinds of ethical naturalism and descriptivism.

At this point in my argument it may be contended that, in laying so much emphasis on the source of a concept's essential contestability in its value-dependence, I have impoverished the notion of an essentially contested concept and unduly restricted the scope of its use. For why should we accept the assumption that, if a statement is not somehow straightforwardly factual, then it must be implicitly evaluative? As. W. G. Runciman12 has argued, the intractability of disputes about a concept's proper application may be better explained by its open texture than by its norm-dependency. The open-textured character of concepts such as "freedom" or "power" means that they cannot be completely immunized to doubt or error through the exhaustive stipulation of verification criteria. It is worth remarking, however, since most of our empirical concepts are recognizably open-textured,'3 that exhaustive statements of verification criteria are no more available in the natural sciences than in ethics and the social sciences. But, if




open-textured concepts occur in the discourse of both the natural and the social sciences, how are we to account for their intractably disputed character in the social studies in contrast to their consensual use in (normal) natural science?

Plainly, the use of open-textured concepts in social-scientific theories may have a practical relevance and moral force they lack in the natural sciences, since such theories are constructed to explain the behaviour of human beings-about which we can hardly avoid making evaluative judgments. By itself, however, this does not answer the question. It has been argued, controversially, that explanation in the social sciences needs to be distinguished from explanation in the natural sciences in terms of the intentions and reasons used to explain action by agents in the social sciences. Yet, manifestly, the indeterminacy and open texture of concepts denoting human actions and social situations will generate potentially unsettlable disputes about their proper application only if it is true, not merely that the explanation (and, arguably, the description) of human acts must be in terms of the agent's own intentions or reasons for action, but also that the latter cannot be characterized adequately in the language of the observer. By the same token, definitional disputes unsettlable by rational argument will be created only if problems of radical trans- lation and loss of meaning effectively prevent any among the disputants from plausibly contending that his description and explanation of the actions of the observed agent must be privileged over those of his rivals. To claim that this is ever the case, however, is to claim that there are conceptual frameworks (scientific theories, world-views, moral outlooks, and so on) which are rationally incommensurable. It is to advance an incommensurability thesis in respect of the conceptual frameworks within which uses of an open-textured (or essentially contested) concept occur, and to subscribe to an ambitious thesis of conceptual relativism.

Further, incommensurability theses which endorse such a strong form of conceptual relativism face well-known problems of self- referential paradox: they must either account for their own theory- neutrality, or else subject themselves to an analogous relativization. Crucially, and most devastatingly, incommensurability theses cannot ultimately function as variants of or supports for essential contestability theses. If there are really any cases where an incommensurability thesis holds good, then it follows that any dispute which exists cannot




be a definitional dispute about the proper criteria for a concept which the disputants hold in common, but rather a conflict between adherents of mutually unintelligible world-views. For, unless divergent theories or world-views have something in common, their constituent concepts cannot be 'contested," even though their proponents are in conflict. References to definitional "contests" have a point only if there is something which is not treated as "contestable." A strong interpretation of essential contestability in terms of incommensurability, then, is self-defeating in that it dissolves the generic identifying criteria of the concept and prevents us from characterizing the conflict as a definitional dispute.

One of the implications of my discussion of strong interpretations of essential contestability in terms of conceptions of open texture or incommensurability is that, quite apart from any inherent difficulties such conceptions may face, they each presuppose the validity of a philosophical perspective (in this case some variant of conceptual relativism) which can be criticized and, perhaps, is even essentially contestable. We have seen that the elucidation of essential contestability in terms of the norm-dependency of any of a concept's uses presupposes the validity of (highly controversial) accounts of the so- called fact-value relation, in terms of which it makes sense to regard a concept's criteria as being "open to choice" to a degree precluded by other meta-ethical theories. In the same fashion, understanding a concept's essential contestability as deriving from its open texture or its place in an incommensurable conceptual framework presupposes a strong variant of conceptual relativism which may be self-defeating and which is certainly contentious. Clearly, then, no account of a concept's essential contestability has been found which does not presuppose assent to disputed philosophical conjectures: is it also true that the concept of an essentially contested concept is itself essentially contested? What is the relation between the two levels of essential contestability-between the first order essential contestability of a given concept, and the second order, critically reflexive essential contestability of any identification of the concept as being of this kind? Manifestly, if there are any concepts which we can know to be essentially contested, then it follows that the concept of an essentially contested concept cannot itself be essentially contestable: this is, indeed, a necessary truth (but far from a trivial one). It is equally a necessary truth that, if we can know that there are some concepts




which are not essentially contested, then (since we must possess criteria for deciding whether or not a concept is essentially contested) it follows that the notion of essential contestability cannot itself be contestable in a second order sense. If, on the other hand, we know that disputes about whether or not a given concept is essentially contested are themselves rationally unsettlable, then it follows that we have applied the concept of essential contestability correctly and so can determine its criteria. In short, a two-tiered essential contestability thesis is self-defeating. (Recall Russell's argument against naive realism: "Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true,is false; therefore it is false.")14 For if any essential contestability thesis can be known to be true, a two-tiered essential contestability thesis must be false. The upshot of this argument, however, is that two-tiered contestability theses make sense only as prolegomena to a radical Pyrrhonian skepticism according to which we have no way of deciding when a dispute about a concept's proper use is rationally settlable and when it is not, and so, trivially, no way of deciding when we have used a concept correctly. For the nub of such a radically skeptical (or meta-skeptical) view is the claim that we lack criteria of rationality by reference to which we might determine whether any (moral, definitional, or philosophical) dispute can be settled by an appeal to reason.

I have claimed that assent to the validity of two-tiered essential contestability theses sets in motion a vertiginous slide into radical skepticism. In fact, I suspect also (though I cannot support this claim here) that a first order essential contestability thesis, if true, entails a strong variant of conceptual relativism whose radically skeptical consequences are not much weaker than those of a thesis of the two- tiered variety. Importantly, such an implication will hold even if (first order) essential contestability is conceived in terms of norm-dependency or value-impregnation, since there are good reasons to think that the position of those who seek to combine moral relativism with cognitive absolutism is ultimately untenable.

If my suspicions are at all well founded, it follows that any strong variant of an essential contestability thesis must precipitate its proponents into a radical (and probably self-defeating) skeptical nihilism.




THE UTILITY OF ESSENTIAL CONTESTABILITY

In that none of my investigations has yielded an account of essential contestability which is without serious internal difficulties or damaging skeptical implications, the outcome of my argument is disappointingly negative. Are we then to abandon the notion of essential contestability as altogether useless in social and political philosophy? As incapable of illuminating the nature of disputes about such concepts as freedom and power? In my view, such a response would be highly unfortu- nate, for it would fail to exploit the central insight contained in the notion of essential contestability and, consequently, would impoverish the study of the central ideas of social and political thought. I want, finally, then, to propose an understanding of essential contestability which is free of the defects of those I have examined so far, and to suggest that the investigation of contested concepts (so understood) forms part of a traditional conception of the intellectual activity of a political philosopher.

What is the central insight contained in the notion of essential contestability? It is three-sided: first, that there are concepts, identifiable by their users by appeal to a common core of meaning, whose history is marked by persistent and apparently intractable dispute as to the criteria of their correct application. Second, that contenders in any such definitional dispute will typically be found to disagree about the correct criteria of a whole range of contextually related concepts, where these disagreements are not haphazard or random, but will tend to be mutually supportive or interlocking. Each use of a contested concept of this kind typically rests upon, presupposes, or endorses a definite use of a whole constellation of satellite concepts, so that definitional disputes in relation to such concepts are indicative of conflicts between divergent patterns of thought-which are often, if not typically, partly constitutive of rival ways of life. Third, essential contestability suggests that conflicts between rival world-views, revealed or suggested by definitional disputes over contested concepts, are disputes which in their nature cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone. They are disputes which, if they are resolvable rationally, must be conducted by a species of argument which has a distinctively philosophical- that is to say, metaphysical-character. Such disputes hinge upon the validity of metaphysical theses which, though by their nature




neither demonstrable nor refutable, are not self-evidently immune to criticism; that is, it is not inconceivable that conclusive (but not logically coercive) arguments may be adduced in their support. These three features-the presence of intractable defintional disputes, conflict hinging not on isolated concepts but on patterns of thought associated with rival forms of social life, and contestant patterns of thought that incorporate philosophical theses and reasonings in terms of which their resolution must proceed-constitute the three faces of essential contestability. They comprise its central insight when it is used to characterize disputes about the major concepts of social and political thought.

Such an understanding of essential contestability suggests a philosophical research program and, thus, tends to support a conception of political philosophy itself. This research program is oriented towards delineating the relations of mutual dependency existing between rival uses of the central concepts of social and political thought. It seeks to uncover and bring to light the skeletons of rival patterns of thought whose existence is intimated by protracted definitional disputes over single concepts. In addition to this taxonomic exercise, the notion of essential contestability advanced here suggests the utility of exploring conceptual (and empirical) connections between patterns of thought and the ways of life of specific social groups. Above all, it suggests the necessity of returning to an examination of substantive philosophical problems. For differing solutions to these problems are partially definitive of the divergent patterns of thought whose existence is suggested by intractable definitional disputes over particular concepts.

This last aspect of the philosophical research program suggested by a revised account of essential contestability has several important implications for the character of political philosophy itself. To begin with, it implies that progress in political philosophy must wait on advances in other domains of philosophical inquiry-in particular, in the philosophies of mind and action, the theories of rationality and knowledge; for divergent answers to the central questions in these areas of inquiry have a formative influence on controversy in social and political science. Acknowledging the dependency of political philosophy on the results of inquiry in other areas of philosophy leads us to broaden our conception of the discipline beyond mere logical analysis of the moral notions used in political contexts (the mode dominant in much English-speaking postwar work). Moreover,




to raise once again substantive problems in other areas of philosophy on which political thought has a special dependence presupposes some clarification of philosophical method itself; in particular, it requires an elucidation of the kinds of reasoning which we employ when criticizing substantive philosophical theories. For, as Popper has noted, the irrefutability of philosophical theories does not entail their immunity to criticism; but it does suggest the need for formu- lating, more explicitly than has been done hitherto, the distinguishing features of philosophical reasoning. Popper's own suggestion'5- that criticism in philosophy consists of identifying a problem situation, uncovering hidden assumptions in the philosopher's conception of it, and advancing rival conjectures regarding the problems he faces -is worth developing in its applications to political philosophy. There, as elsewhere, it involves formidable methodological difficulties. For both the philosopher's own conception of the problem- situation and his successors' rational reconstruction of it will be theory- laden and conjectural. Thus rendered doubly conjectural, the "data" of criticism in philosophy will themselves (it is reasonable to suppose) be endlessly open to criticism. My claim that rival positions in political philosophy can be shown to hinge on differing answers to substantive questions in other areas of philosophy leaves open, however, the possibility that these questions (and so the problems of political philosophy) are susceptible of a conclusive rational resolution. This implication discloses an important weakening of the notion of essential contestability in my revised account, which makes no claim that definitional disputes about essential contested concepts are inherently unsettlable by reason.

In leaving open the possibility that there is a conclusive solution to the perennial problems of political philosophy, the revised essential contestability thesis endorses a classical conception of political philosophy as an intellectual activity capable of yielding determinate results and, so, of assisting reflective agents in their search for a good society. It involves breaking with the skeptical, relativist, historicist, and conventionalist traditions which have dominated political thought during the modern period and which, in tending to assimilate or col- lapse political philosophy into other disciplines (e.g., the sociology of knowledge or the history of ideas), have deprived political philosophy of its status as an autonomous intellectual activity. Reclaiming this status for political philosophy suggests the necessity of distinguishing between philosophical reflection on the nature of political life




and the elaboration of any particular ideological view of its character; in so doing, it preserves the traditional notion of political philosophy as a critique of ideologies as well as an exploration of their internal coherence. Although it emphasizes the dependency of political philosophy on the results of philosophical reflection in other domains, the conception of political philosophy suggested by this revised account of essential contestability nevertheless preserves the discipline's autonomy by attributing to it a distinctive species of reasoning as well as characteristic problems. Obviously, there is no assurance that there will be sufficient progress in other areas of philosophy to permit the central problem of political philosophy to be resolved conclusively. It is an implication of the argument of this paper, however, that, when a political philosopher proposes a solution to a problem, he has at least the assurance that he could be right.

NO TES

1. W. B. Gallie, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1956), reprinted as Chapter 8 of W. B. Gallie, ed., Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (New York: Schocken, 1964). 2. Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1975). 3. B. M. Barry, "The Obscurity of Power Review of Lukes' Power: A Radical View,"

Government and Opposition 10, 2 (Spring 1975), 250-254. 4. All three quotations are from Lukes, Power, p. 26; the italics in the last quote are

mine. 5. This aspiration is implicitly endorsed on p. 32 of Lukes, Power. 6. See P. K. Feyerabend's 'against Method," Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of

Science, Vol. 4, Analyses of Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology, p. 112, footnote 52. 7. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, p. 188. 8. 1 owe my understanding of this point to A. C. MacIntyre's Short History of Ethics

(New York: Macmillan, 1966), where it is advanced with regard to moral predicates in Chapters 1 and 8. 9. Ernest Gellner, Ratio, (1967), reprinted as "The Concept of a Story" in Ernest Gell-

ner, ed., Contemporary Thought and Politics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 96. 10. I am indebted for my grasp of this point to Mr. W. L. Weinstein, who developed it in an important (and as yet unpublished) paper on "The Variability of the Concept of Freedom," delivered to the Political Thought Conference, Oxford, January 1975. 11. Lukes, Power, p. 260.



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12. W. G. Runciman, 'Relativism: Cognitive and Moral," Proceedings of the Aristote- lian Society (January, 1974). 13. For an elucidation of the claim that most of our empirical concepts are open-textured, see F. Waismann's classic discussion in Chapters 2 and 4 of R. Harre, ed., How I See Philosophy (New York: St. Martin's, 1968). 14. Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1940), p. 14. 15. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 193-200.

John N. Gray is Official Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Jesus College, Oxford Continuing work begun under the supervision of the late John Plamenatz, he is currently working on Understanding 'On Liberty", an interpretation of Mill's book in the context of recent discussions of the nature and justification of liberalism.



on the contestability of social concepts

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