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This new volume presents an argument for a new understanding of political ethics. To do so, it relates political philosophy to the realities of political life, developing a notion of tragic realism. Drawing on many resources, from Thycydides and Rawls to Ricoeur and Geuss, it not only reconceptualizes utopia, but also presents tragedy as experienced from the weak and disempowered. A unique contribution to realism, the book argues that tragic realism requires the utopian, which brings up the question of normativity and legitimacy that realists have acknowledged as important, but not fully developed. The political efforts of the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011, and Sergio Vieira de Mello the United Nations Ambassador killed in Iraq in 2003 help show how the conceptual and the concrete dimensions of tragic, utopian realism form a unique understanding of political philosophy today. This significant contribution to contemporary debates in political theory bridges conceptual work with the concrete understanding that political theory and philosophy are a way of life rather than just discourse about politics.
It is a work that will be essential to anyone studying key issues in political theory, ethics, and philosophy.
List of contents
Part I. Concerns of Contemporary Realist Political Philosophy1. The "Morality-First" View: Political Philosophy in the Wrong Direction2. What Makes a Realist Political Philosophy Real? Part II. Retaining Realism3. From Thucydides to Geuss: A Genealogy of Tragic Realism4. Tragic Realism: The First Word in Realist Political Philosophy Part III. Demanding Things be Better: Realist Utopian Thought5. Uncovering Hidden Utopian Impulses: Productive and Imaginative Excellence6. Tragically Real Utopian Thought: From Sergio Vieira de Mello to the Arab Spring7. The Utopian and Political Realities: Tragic Realism and the Philosophy of War Conclusion
About the author
Greg Johnson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. He is the author of Elements of the Utopian (2011), co-editor of Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy (2012) and founding co-editor of the Series on the Thought of Paul Ricoeur (Lexington Books).
