Constructivism in Times of Political Crisis
Constructivism in Times of Political Crisis

Author(s): Michael Buckley
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Philosophy, Social Sciences
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Summary/Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how deeply engrained in the functionality of societies human-induced risks have become. Political philosophers can no longer treat these hazards as improbable threats too far removed from everyday life to properly count as basic questions of justice and stability. Reimagining the liberal tradition to account for these risks will require a concept of social resilience to fortify existing conceptions of social stability. This paper argues that a leading account of stability – an overlapping consensus – is not resilient under stress. It explains how human-induced hazards contribute to a process of pernicious polarization, and how pernicious polarization illuminates a process by which consensus breaks down and begins to reverse itself. A complete account of what must transpire for a society to absorb, withstand, anticipate, or recover from this destabilizing process outstrips the conceptual resources contained with an overlapping consensus, rendering it vulnerable to the human-induced threats we can expect to encounter for years to come.

• Details
• Contents