AAP 2025 CONFERENCE

What role should empirical methods play in political philosophy? What might be the merits of employing social science methods to address the fundamental questions political philosophers explore, such as what makes the state politically legitimate or what is the nature of a good society? A useful point of comparison here is political science. Although political science and political philosophy are closely adjacent disciplines, political scientists typically make far greater use of empirical methods. Moreover, many political scientists are highly critical of what they see as the unacceptable aprioristic methods employed by great deal of contemporary political philosophy. Such criticisms are, however, highly contentious and contested. Many political philosophers are opposed, on primarily normative political grounds, to such moves that they regard as embodying the methodological vice of “scientism”. What should we think? Might there be specifically political reasons for rejecting some methodological practices? Might there also be straightforward philosophical grounds for objecting to strong empiricist programs of reform? In this talk, I shall begin by considering the disagreement between the Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School on whether philosophy should model itself on the natural sciences before providing a defence of the thought that when investigating the normative questions that lie at the heart of political philosophy, non-empirical philosophical speculation has a significant role to play. In the final section, I shall briefly outline some reasons why this methodological stance matters politically.