Political philosophy versus history? : contextualism and real politics in contemporary political thought / edited by Jonathan Floyd and Marc Stears.

Introduction / Jonathan Floyd and Marc Stears -- Part I. The Challenge of Contextualism: 1. Rescuing political theory from the tyranny of history / Paul Kelly; 2. From historical contextualism, to mentalism, to behaviourism / Jonathan Floyd; 3. Contingency and judgement in history of political philosophy: a phenomenological approach / Bruce Haddock; 4. Political philosophy and the dead hand of its history / Gordon Graham -- Part II. The Challenge of Realism: 5. Politics, political theory, and its history / Iain Hampsher-Monk; 6. Constraint, freedom, and exemplar: history and theory without teleology / Melissa Lane; 7. History and reality: idealist pathologies and 'Harvard School' remedies / Andrew Sabl; 8. The new realism: from modus vivendi to justice / Bonnie Honig and Marc Stears -- Relative value and assorted historical lessons: an afterword / Jonathan Floyd.

"Is the way in which political philosophy is conducted today too ahistorical? Does such ahistoricism render political philosophy too abstract? Is political philosophy thus incapable of dealing with the realities of political life? This volume brings together some of the world's leading political philosophers to address these crucial questions. The contributors focus especially on political philosophy's pretensions to universality and on its strained relationship with the world of real politics. Some chapters argue that political philosophers should not be cowed by the accusations levied against them from outside of their own field. Others insist that these accusations require a dramatic reshaping of normative political thought. The volume will spark controversy across political philosophy and beyond."

"In this volume we carve out a new approach to the identity of political philosophy by exploring a problem that is central to such disciplinary soul-searching: the problem of political philosophy's relationship with history. We do this in part because, according to whether they describe their approach to political philosophy as analytic, continental, Rawlsian, post-Rawlsian, pluralist, realist, post-structural, or indeed, outright historical, political philosophers of different stripes tend, amongst other things, to hold very different positions on this relationship, and that is a very curious pattern. We also do it because, as evinced by the following chapters, reflecting upon the significance of history for political philosophy soon leads to a host of new insights about the nature of our subject".