The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Beyond Realism and Moralism: A Defense of Political Minimalism
Open accessAbstract
What is the relationship between morals and politics? What is the relationship between moral philosophy and political philosophy? Defenders of political moralism postulate moral aims or constraints for politics, and hence they see political philosophy as a chapter of moral philosophy. Contrastingly, advocates of political realism describe politics as an independent endeavor aiming at providing order and security, and conceive of political philosophy as an autonomous discipline. This article claims that political moralism and political realism share the mistake of assuming that politics has substantial, permanent goals or constraints. After criticizing political substantialism, the article explains the main ingredients of its alternative, political minimalism: (1) the idea that politics, understood as collective instrumental rationality, aims at providing adequate means for the accomplishment of people's goals, whatever these are; and (2) the conception of the relationship between morality and politics as one of “reciprocal containment.” Finally, it addresses some foreseeable criticisms of political minimalism.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“As new events recurrently emerge and require distinctive responses, politics is the main mechanism through which we coordinate how to react – which is a crucial social need (Rodríguez-Alcázar, 2017).”
From No Virtue Like Resilience: Machiavelli’s Realistic Justification of Democracy (2024) · cites this paper as Rodríguez-Alcázar, 2017
Citations
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 22
- Berlin I., 1969, Four Essays on Liberty
- 10.4159/9780674029651 · DOI
- 10.1177/1474885110374001 · DOI
- 10.1177/002234336900600301 · DOI · Paper page
- Gert B., 2010, Hobbes: Prince of Peace
- 10.1515/9781400835515 · DOI
- Goethe J., 1960, Gesamtausgabe
- 10.7551/mitpress/1564.001.0001 · DOI
- Kant I., 1970, Kant: Political Writings
- Kant I., 1996, Critique of Pure Reason
- Kant I., 2002, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
- Kant I., 2003, The Metaphysics of Morals
- Kant I., 2006, Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History
- 10.1163/174552412X628896 · DOI
- 10.7312/quin92204 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.4159/9780674042605 · DOI · Paper page
- Rodríguez‐Alcázar J., 2017, Por la reflexión moral, contra los códigos de ética en el Trabajo Social, Cuadernos de Trabajo Social, 30, 97, 10.5209/CUTS.52435 · DOI
- 10.1007/s11673-017-9790-0 · DOI
- Simon H., 1983, Models of Bounded Rationality
- 10.1017/CBO9780511817878 · DOI
- Weber M., 1921, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie
- Williams B., 2005, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument
Cited by
Sorted by citations
A realistic conception of politics: conflict, order and political realism
Burelli, C. (2021) · Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy · doi:10.1080/13698230.2019.1604045 · Cited by 24
No Virtue Like Resilience: Machiavelli’s Realistic Justification of Democracy
Burelli, C. (2024) · Political Studies · doi:10.1177/00323217231191396 · Cited by 5
Metadata
- Authors
- Rodríguez‐Alcázar, J.
- Affiliations
- Departamento de Filosofía I Edificio de Psicología Campus de Cartuja 18071 Granada Spain
- Venue
- Metaphilosophy
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-10
- Volume
- 48
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 727-744
- ISSN
- 0026-1068 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9973
- OpenAlex
- W2761826077
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 9.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- Metaphilosophy (publishedVersion)
- Institutional Repository of the University of Granada (University of Granada) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Philosophy and Ethics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophical Ethics and Theory
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Keywords
- political realism, political moralism, moral politics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Beyond Realism and Moralism: A Defense of Political Minimalism. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/meta.12259
- The paper
- Rodríguez‐Alcázar, J. (2017). Beyond Realism and Moralism: A Defense of Political Minimalism. Metaphilosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12259
