Conclusion 323also recognizes that certain questions might well be unanswerable, or imply multiple
answers. This draws our attention to the point that our reasonable moral, political,
religious, and aesthetic judgements (which constitute all that is of value in our lives),
are all finite, contingent, and fallible. There are no timeless truths, but rather timed
and particular historically situated truths. This is not a collapse into relativism, but,
conversely, is a philosophical acknowledgement of our finiteness, the crucial role
of language in constituting our lives, the important character of the rhetoric of the
ordinary, the often local character of our knowing, that our roots are always embodied
in contingent traditions and that we are all fallible. To think of political theory in this
manner isnotto move from a universal, ordered and objectively rational world to a
particular, anarchic and irrational world. Conversely, it is simply to be fully aware of
the local, timed, contingent, and concrete nature of our existence. When we reflect
and speak, we circle back continuously to our foundational prejudices. In this sense,
our norms arenotdetermined by social conventions, but, at the same time, they are
seen to be the essential componentofordinary conventions.
What the above outline gives rise to is a different conception of political theory,
understood as a more rhetorically based discipline, more attuned to practice, his-
tory, and ordinariness. This alone would enable a more sympathetic judgement to
be made of ideology as a mode of thought more directly adjusted to human prac-
tice, that is, human ‘thought behaviour’ embodied in ordinary spoken and written
language and used to navigate the political world. Overall, this approach implies a
distinction between a political theory which embodies an awareness of the hermen-
eutic circle, which is self-critical, ecumenical, sceptical, fallibilistic, and orientated
to the rhetoric of ordinariness, as against a conception of political theory which is
unreflexive, rationalistic, abstract, obsessed with its own universality, orientated to
impose its order upon others, is combative, scornful of the local and concrete, and
favours rigorous exact logic over rhetoric. In the latter doctrine of theory, the founda-
tional metaphysics are usually self-consciously obscured, whereas in the former the
foundational metaphysics becomes, through the hermeneutic circle, a dynamic aspect
of theory itself, productive of a particular disposition to the world.
In the unreflexive rationalistic conception of theory there is a casuistical certainty
and dogmatic quality to the foundational metaphysics.^2 Consequently, in the final
analysis, a veiled conversion is usually required from the listener within the hyper-
rationalist view. The speaker is frequently engaged in monologic preaching—usually
hidden under the guise of ‘seeking adequate or reasonable justifications’. Theory
becomes a form of subtle argumentative coercion. Discussion is focused on winning
or losing arguments,notunderstanding. The aim of such theory is always to narrow
the debate down to the pre-chosen assumption (in fact prejudice). In the fallibil-
istic conception, the style of theory is more open, inquisitive, and investigative. The
debates are not foreclosed. The hermeneutic circle necessarily undermines the poten-
tial hubris of universalism. In sum, the rationalistic and universalist conception of
theory embodies an implicit demand for a theoreticalGleichshaltung.^3 Such rational-
ist theories usually automatically assume their own epistemological correctness—in
fact they also assume that epistemology exists. They will therefore insist that it is