The Nature of Political Theory

320 The Nature of Political Theory

nature, and the like, there was an attempt to resurrect aspects of a more immanent
foundationalist discussion. Although the older comprehensive foundational meta-
physical ideas were still decisively rejected, nonetheless, there was a strong sense that
a thinned down, bleached, self-denying, and more minimalist foundationalism was
still profoundly relevant. Those influenced by neo-Kantian, contractarian, rational
choice, or utilitarian preconceptions, therefore tended to focus on foundational ideas,
such as universal human interests, wants, preferences, universal reason, instrumental
rationality, or contractualism, as immanent foundational starting points for theor-
izing. This immanent foundationalism fuelled, for example, much of the Rawlsian
(and various anti-Rawlsian) and contractualist industries of the 1970s and 1980s.
The fourth phase, which developed initially in the 1980s, was a negative reac-
tion to the ‘rational universalism’, implicitly or explicitly affirmed in the immanent
foundationalism or minimalist metaphysics of the Rawlsians, utilitarians, libertarian,
and contractarian writers. The basic critical theme which developed here was not a
wholesale denunciation of foundationalism,per se, far from it, but rather a rejection
of its universalist aspirations. The central argument, of this phase, was premised on
the idea of a far more realistic, rooted foundation to be found in theconventionsof
communities, nations, cultures, patria, ethnos, republics, and the like. Nonetheless,
most conventionalist theories still try to link their ideas with some form of universal-
ist understanding. This conventionalist standpoint has formed a dominant motif of
much political theory debate until the present day.
However, the original conventionalist position has one central difficulty. There is no
agreementastowhatisthe significant foundational convention—and there have been
a number of contenders. The debates, which developed between these various conven-
tionalist factions during the 1990s and early 2000s, have, though, all been premised
upon an internally destructive logic. Not only is there anexternaldebate as to what is
a viable conventional foundation between, for example, republican, communitarian,
or nationalist contenders, but, there is also aninternaldebate within communities,
nations, and republics themselves, manifest in arguments about secession, multicul-
turalism and cultural difference. This is usually embedded in the term ‘pluralism’. This
also has large implications for issues of immigration and citizenship. Consequently,
if the realistic, immanent foundation is identified with the conventional structures of
‘internally-divergent cultures’, then the debate moves inexorably away from nations or
republics into the spheres of fragmented micro-conventions and micro-foundations.
This forms the groundwork for multicultural and difference-based debates.
In the 1980s, and particularly the 1990s, a fifth phase developed, which over-
lapped with the previous two phases of minimal universalism and the diverse forms
of conventionalist foundationalism. This postmodernist phase evinces a deep scepti-
cism concerning the whole foundationalist enterprise. It can also be reconceptualized
as anextremely radicaluse of conventionalist argument, taking conventionalism to
its abstracted final denouement in perspectivism. It is though, at the same time,
avowedly and self-consciously anti-foundationalist and anti-metaphysical. It dis-
misses the whole foundational enterprise. The roots of this movement can be traced to
the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The background figures,