5 Shoring Up Foundations
The conclusion to Part Two was that political theory, despite arguments about its
demise, had in fact maintained a strong presence and concern with foundationalism.
The foundations were temporarily shaken, but nothing very significant stirred. The
only area to be discomforted was the perception of what an older normative (partly
fictional) conception of theory was focused on. We are though still speaking here in
incomplete terms. All the domains of theory, outlined in Part One, were still active
during this period of the 1970s and 1980s. Further, in normative theory, there were still
continuing significant contributions from a number of theorists outside the analytic
tradition, some of which will be touched upon in this and later chapters. However,
within the domain of ordinary language and essential contestability theory, there
remained a strong universalist synchronic commitment to a conceptually-orientated
philosophical method. Essential contestability, in effect, refocused attention on the
normative and interpretative dimension of language.
Ordinary language thought wobbled though on the issue as to what could be done
with such normative concepts. The more sceptical response argued that nothing much
could be done, in the final analysis, except engage in a form of descriptive linguistic
phenomenology. Recommendations or improvements were initially ruled out. Others
advocated a form of mental hygiene—a tidying and sharpening process. Yet another
response was to modify and remodulate the appeal of such political concepts. Analysis
was therefore retained as a necessary preliminary, but this was viewed as a prolegom-
ena to a future justificatory political theory. The future theory became focused on the
hyper concept of justice. Once the core component of justice, as the key political vir-
tue, had been identified and shown to be a reflection of foundational intuitions about
morality and reason, then a full blown justificatory theory could be constructed. This
became one of the main preoccupations of many political theorists during the late
1970s and 1980s.^1 The major issue that arises in all justice-focused arguments is the
identification of the immanent universal grounds of justice, which apply regardless
of any particular time or place. This was, as discussed, a thin or bleached founda-
tionalism, as opposed to a metaphysically rich or substantive one. However, the main
pressure point on this thin universalism arose from another dimension of the essential
contestability argument that concentrates on an epistemological anxiety and incom-
mensurability of language games or forms of life. This epistemology led in turn to a
stress on more contingent, conventional and particularist factors.
To briefly rehearse the late Wittgensteinian case again in order to show the precise
conceptual links to the present chapter: the basic argument is that language does