Political realism via pragmatic genealogy or social contracting?

Albert Weale raises two related points about my book Global Discord. One is whether deploying David Hume reduces everything to a narrow conception of mutual advantage. The other is to suggest that a suitably empirical social contractarianism can deliver more than my synthesis of Hume and Bernard Williams. I respond to both points, on the way explaining why Hume and Williams need each other to generate a political realism that, without ejecting ethics, has things to say about institutions. Being able to represent a community’s legitimation norms in contractual terms does not mean their force is rooted in contracting (hypothetical or actual). Pragmatic genealogy offers an alternative way of theorising about politics realistically. READ MORE