Why Practices?

Political philosophy seeks to justify principles of social justice. How should it go about that task? One answer, what may be called the practice-based method of justification, is that we are to justify principles, by moral reasoning, both for and from a social practice, which we identify by way of social interpretation. The approach contrasts, on the one hand, with what might be called pure social interpretivism, which takes certain moral ideas to be part of, if perhaps implicit in, a practice purely as a matter of social interpretation (e.g. as codified in legal documents or as routinely avowed in politics). While pure social interpretivism is wellsuited for empirical domains such as sociology, “constructivism” in international relations theory, and in some political or legal theory, it cannot justify principles as moral demands of justice. Seeking such a justification, the practice-based method instead offers moral arguments. Yet it does so in a way that contrasts, on the other hand, with pure moral theory, which sees moral principles as fully justified in the abstract, without reference to any social practice, and as merely applied to the various ways we are or might be socially organized. The practice-based method justifies principles for a social practice in the first instance, as basic or fundamental for any practice of its kind. The moral argument is tailored or sensitive to its characteristic aims and organization, with no assumption that the proposed principles can be justified otherwise, in a different area of social life or in abstracting away from the presumed practice.