We examine a hitherto unstudied debate, turning on the epistemology of value judgements, between Ashʿarīs and Baṣran Muʿtazilīs late eleventh twelfth centuries. Al-Ghazālī al-Rāzī countered Muʿtazilī ethical realism, here defended by al-Malāḥimī, developing an emotive subjectivism underpinned increasingly sophisticated psychological accounts motivation. Value they maintained, arise not from kno...

What is the relationship between ethics and political theory? In particular, study of interpersonal social morality continuous with inquiry into how we should lead our lives? This article evaluates call for firmer boundaries moral thought that central to recent realist critiques analytical theory. I identify, reject, three versions this position, which term “discontinuity realism.” My critique ...

Abstract This paper makes the case for a revision of contemporary forms political realism in theory. I argue that realists have gone awry increasingly centring their approach around metaethical claim: theory should be rooted form normativity is distinct from moral normativity. Several critics argued this claim unconvincing. But suggest it also counterintuitive starting point realism, and one un...

This article argues that Oscar Wilde's work employs location to blur the Victorian sense of morality. After surveying mapping practices as they relate Wilde and ideas moral topography, defining interest in flaunting realism, shows how more specifically placed texts boundaries, while morally explicit provide only a vague place.

Debunking skeptics claim that our moral beliefs are formed by processes unsuited to identifying objective facts, such as emotions inculcated by our genes and culture; therefore, they say, even if there are objective moral facts, we probably don’t know them. I argue that the debunking skeptics cannot explain the pervasive trend toward liberalization of values over human history, and that the bes...

In the last two decades, Anglophone political theory witnessed a renewed interest in social-scientific empirical findings – partly as reaction against normative theorising centred on formulation of abstract, intuition-driven moral principles. This brief article begins by showing how this turn has taken distinct forms: (1) nonideal theoretical orientation, which seeks to balance emphasis princip...

Abstract In this essay, I reply to an influential objection evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism. According objection, our capacity for autonomous rational reflection allows us grasp truths independently of distorting influences, so those influences do not prevent from having knowledge. argue that is not, in fact, since it depends on evolved, pre-reflective properties. then co...

Abstract This article seeks to historicize both the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and debate on realism occasioned by aggression since 2014. Using research Gerard Toal Russia’s construction its security interests post-Soviet spaces that include Ukraine, argues neorealist geopolitical explanations fail do justice roles contingency culture setting so-called ‘red lines.’ It also identifies a...