This essay seeks to defend the claim that political philosophy ought to be appropriately guided by the phenomenon of politics that it seeks to both offer a theory of and, especially in its normative guise, offer a theory for. It does this primarily through the question of political values. It begins by arguing that for any value to qualify as a value for the political domain, it must be intelligible in relation to the constitutive features of politics as a human activity. It then examines the extent to which the preconditions for the realization of values in practice ought to figure in our considerations as to whether they are values that fit or belong to our social world. We can understand these parts of the essay as responding to two related questions, respectively: (i) Is this a political value at all? — which is to ask, is it a value that is appropriate for the political realm?; and then (ii) Is this a political value for us? The final section responds to the often-made complaint that political philosophy ought not to make any concessions to the actual world of politics as it really is, arguing that attending to the realities of politics, and in particular the constitutive conditions of political activity, gives meaning to the enterprise as the theorization of politics (and not something else). Furthermore those same conditions provide the limits of intelligibility beyond which ideals and values can no longer be, in any meaningful sense, ideals and values for the political sphere.ud
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机译:本文试图捍卫这样的主张,即政治哲学应受到政治现象的适当指导,政治现象既要提供理论,又要特别是以规范的名义提供理论。它主要通过政治价值问题来做到这一点。首先要论证,要使任何价值都具有政治领域的价值,就政治作为人类活动的构成特征而言,它必须是可理解的。然后,它考察了在实践中实现价值的前提条件应在多大程度上在我们的考虑中得以考虑,即它们是适合还是属于我们的社会世界的价值观念。我们可以将本文的这些部分理解为分别回答了两个相关问题:(i)这是否完全具有政治价值? —要问的是,它是否适合于政治领域?然后(ii)这对我们来说具有政治价值吗?最后一部分回应了人们经常抱怨的问题,即政治哲学不应该对现实的政治世界作出任何让步,认为参加政治的现实,尤其是政治活动的构成条件对企业的意义是政治理论(不是其他)。此外,这些相同的条件提供了可理解性的限制,在任何意义上,理想和价值在任何意义上都不再是政治领域的理想和价值。 ud
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