Jason Blakely | Pepperdine University (original) (raw)
Books by Jason Blakely
Agenda Publishing (Columbia Univ Press distributor), 2024
"Quite simply the best guide to today’s dominant ideologies." - William Cavanaugh, America Magazi... more "Quite simply the best guide to today’s dominant ideologies." - William Cavanaugh, America Magazine
"An intellectual feast ... Blakely joins the ranks of great theorists of ideology."
- Frank Pasquale
"A brilliant tour d'horizon ... perhaps our finest critic of misplaced appeals to scientific authority in political life."
- Matthew Sitman
Modern political life is a confusing and disorientating terrain of competing ideologies. Jason Blakely offers readers a lively, fresh and insightful guide through the labyrinth of conflicting and competing ideas in order to better understand why ideology in the modern era can be so divisive.
Lost in Ideology sets out from the conviction that the current disorientation engulfing the world's liberal democracies is in no small part ideological in origin. People feel confused because there are multiple ideological maps, so to speak, each marked by dramatically different points of interest, rivers, summits, roads, and total topographies. Ideology in the modern era has the paradoxical effect of orienting millions even as it disorients millions. This leads us to the present-day predicament in which individuals of every imaginable political stripe confidently declare: "I have a theory – but you? You have an ideology!"
Pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Ideology-Interpreting-Modern-Political/dp/1788216636/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Oxford University Press, 2020
"An essential contribution … absolutely must be read widely." — Charles Taylor
Oxford University Press, 2018
"Will surely become a classic of graduate-school reading lists in social science." - Cornel Ban
University of Notre Dame Press, 2016
"Jason Blakely's account might well prove definitive." — Kelvin Knight
Academic Papers by Jason Blakely
After Virtue at 40 (Cambridge University Press), 2023
Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue has become one of the most influential sources for the new, ill... more Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue has become one of the most influential sources for the new, illiberal right in the last ten years – inspiring popular political tracts such as Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed and Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option. After briefly summarising the problems with these reactionary readings of MacIntyre’s philosophy, I argue, instead, that MacIntyre’s work might be read as a form of radical democracy and utopian thought in line with his earlier efforts as part of the British New Left. This means reading MacIntyre’s philosophy against reactionary, illiberal visions of pre-modernity seen in the writings of Deneen, Dreher and other postliberals. Although MacIntyre’s virtue ethics is frequently seen as a negation of liberalism, it should instead be read as radicalising and fulfilling certain themes and conceptions of liberal democracy. On this reading, After Virtue is not orientated so much to the past as to imagining a future, more profoundly participatory democratic polity. Concepts introduced by MacIntyre into Aristotelian philosophy such as practices, traditions and narrative quests are the basis for a radically new and yet unrealised form of democratic community. Likewise, his critique of technocracy is part of a turn towards bottom-up politics. MacIntyre’s After Virtue is not a call for religious or ethnic homogeneity or reaction, but for democratic inclusion and utopian striving.
Updating the Interpretive Turn (ed. Michiel Meijer), 2023
The interpretive turn allows for a paradigm shift in how readers approach the word-object relatio... more The interpretive turn allows for a paradigm shift in how readers approach the word-object relationship in the human sciences. Theories in the human sciences are often conceptualized as descriptive and explanatory in such a way that the word (or theoretical account) exists largely outside the object of inquiry (or the social-political process). By contrast, interpretivism makes it possible to read social science theories inside the stream of culture and politics—not straightforwardly descriptive but instead generative of social realities. This paper explores the worldmaking capacities of theories in the human sciences, proposing various breaches of the word-object split. These include not only narrative causal forms, like top-down technocratic imposition and techno-populist upsurges, but also non-causal forms, like ideological resonances and hypothetical, as-if scenarios. Grasping the radically different relationship between word-object in the human sciences opens up new empirical topics for investigation as well as a form of social theory that has normative and critical dimensions.
Interpretation, 2022
Thomas More’s Utopia is often portrayed either as a work of bold political radicalism or as subtl... more Thomas More’s Utopia is often portrayed either as a work of bold political radicalism or as subtle, cautionary conservatism. While the scholars who have contributed to these opposing accounts of More’s dialogue offer a number of profound insights, they have also inadvertently obscured crucial philosophical features of his political thought. This essay argues that More’s Utopia should be read as advancing a hermeneutic politics—that is, a politics emphasizing the contingency of the historical and cultural meanings that constitute social life while nonetheless retaining an anthropology of human limits. Reading Utopia as a fusion of hermeneutic insight and anthropological limits clarifies More’s deeply original notions of social ontology, normative critique, and humanistic authority.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2021
This article aims is to clarify two opposing interpretations of Charles Taylor’s philosophy again... more This article aims is to clarify two opposing interpretations of Charles Taylor’s philosophy against the backdrop of the current crisis of liberal capitalism. The first, de-radicalizing reading, insists that liberal modernity is reformable and radical transformation to a post-capitalist society untenable. The second, radicalizing reading, underscores the possibility of transcending liberal-capitalism but paradoxically through the fulfillment of liberalism’s own values. Where de-radicalizers see in Taylor’s philosophy an attempt to stabilize the existing order, radicalizers perceive it as offering resources for a new kind of democracy. The goal is not to determine which—if either—of these readings matches Taylor’s self-understanding but to bring into focus the dynamic tensions available to readers of his astonishingly rich political theory.
Review of Metaphysics, 2020
This paper critically analyzes the normative theory of Alasdair MacIntyre, who is arguably one of... more This paper critically analyzes the normative theory of Alasdair MacIntyre, who is arguably one of the most influential political philosophers of the last fifty years. Specifically, the paper rejects the standard view that MacIntyre’s later theory represents a single, coherent system. Instead, his mature thought is marked by two conflicting periods. Indeed, MacIntyre’s earlier synthesis of Aristotle and interpretive philosophy is seen as in tension with his later turn to biological metaphysics. Interpretive philosophy clarifies how cultural meanings are constitutive of human agency. The legacy of MacIntyre for ethical and political theory is thus mixed—offering both resources and pitfalls.
Agency and Causal Explanation in Economics, 2020
Rational choice theory is often presented as essential to the truly scientific study of economics... more Rational choice theory is often presented as essential to the truly scientific study of economics. To the contrary, in this paper I argue that when rational choice is treated as the key to a science of human agency, it ensnares economics in certain intractable dilemmas. Drawing on hermeneutic philosophy, I argue that economists need to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate uses of rational choice theory. Failure to do so not only leads to self-defeating research goals, but also mires the discipline in an extreme form of free-market ideology. Economists thus have not only empirical but also ethical and political reasons for rejecting the mainstream deployment of rational choice. The paper concludes by briefly sketching a philosophically defensible use of rational choice in economics-one that is more sensitive to the expressive dimensions of human agency and the limits of mechanistic causality.
Critical Review, 2019
The interpretive turn in the social sciences, although much discussed, has effectively stalled an... more The interpretive turn in the social sciences, although much discussed, has effectively stalled and even begun to backslide. With the publication of Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach, we provide a systematic defense of interpretive inquiry intended to help reinvigorate this mode of study across the human sciences. This defense, unfortunately, needs to be deployed not only against social scientists who unwittingly adopt naturalistic philosophical assumptions, but against interpretivist fellow travelers such as Michel Foucault, who occasionally do the same thing; and even against interpretivists who assume that their philosophical position is secured by using only qualitative methods, and that quantitative methods are inherently unsuitable to interpretivist purposes.
Critical Review, 2019
Contemporary American policing practices are marked by increasingly top-down, racialized, militar... more Contemporary American policing practices are marked by increasingly top-down, racialized, militarized, and pseudo-scientific features. Social scientists have played a central role in creating this political situation: social-scientific advocates of "law and order," far from providing a value-neutral description of social reality, appear instead to have contributed to the creation of a peculiarly modern form of power.
Theory & Event, 2019
This paper advances a critical historical and philosophical analysis of the discourse of " nihili... more This paper advances a critical historical and philosophical analysis of the discourse of " nihilism " found in neoconservative and rightwing movements in the United States. The proliferation of this discourse is tied to attempts to exclude and rollback gains in civil rights, feminism, and multiculturalism. In addition, the rhetoric of nihilism is part of a particular project in political theology that is in historical and philosophical discontinuity with the classical thinkers most often evoked as its sources. Applying a hermeneutic approach to rightwing claims of nihilism reveals a defective philosophical anthropology and sociology of modernity. The paper concludes by arguing that the neoconservative rhetoric of nihilism has helped intellectually buttress the recent surge of reactionary politics in America, which seeks to restore lost national greatness.
Political Studies , 2018
Many advocates of interpretive approaches to the study of politics emphasize that what is at stak... more Many advocates of interpretive approaches to the study of politics emphasize that what is at stake is a conflict between "quantitative" versus "qualitative" methods. By contrast, we begin by suggesting that political scientists are free to use whichever method they find most useful for their research purposes. Instead of methodological reasons for making the interpretive turn, political scientists have ethical reasons for adopting this paradigm. In particular, interpretive approaches give political scientists: a better account of the nature and role of values in human life; a sense for how the historical past is ethically relevant; the ability to advance politically engaged sociologies; and a deliberative critique of technocracy. Political scientists should be free to critically engage, scrutinize, and even normatively evaluate human ethical positions.
Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2018
I argue that Leo Strauss's critique of political science has been deeply misunderstood. Moreover,... more I argue that Leo Strauss's critique of political science has been deeply misunderstood. Moreover, once the true nature of Strauss's critique is clarified, I argue that he does not provide a viable alternative to contemporary political science. Instead, his philosophy has mostly justified a " great books " approach to the study of politics, which has contributed to the self-isolation of political theory from the rest of political science. Political theorists should seek new ways forward that more substantively engage the concerns of the mainstream of the discipline.
Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 2017
Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world’s most influential Aristotelian political theorists. Yet s... more Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world’s most influential Aristotelian political theorists. Yet some scholars also identify him as a philosophical source of radically reactionary politics and anti-liberalism. In this paper I argue that MacIntyre’s claim that the adoption of Aristotle’s virtue ethics requires a radical rejection of the major institutions of liberalism is overstated. In the first part I argue against MacIntyre’s assumption that liberal orders are by their very nature unable to foster Aristotelian virtues because they are hopelessly tied to an “emotivist” notion of self. There is no necessary link between liberalism and emotivism. Next I trace MacIntyre’s revolutionary negation of liberalism to non-Aristotelian sources in the British New Left and its strain of Marxism. Finally, MacIntyre’s own epistemic arguments commit him to an ethical pluralism that poses a practical problem for his anti-liberalism. I believe MacIntyre has philosophically overstated the conflict between Aristotle and liberal modernity.
Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science, 2016
This chapter introduces non-expert readers, who are interested in the study of politics, to the b... more This chapter introduces non-expert readers, who are interested in the study of politics, to the basic philosophical debate over naturalism versus anti-naturalism. Specifically, it champions an interpretive approach to political science and contrasts this critically with the naturalist forms of reasoning and concept formation that currently dominate the discipline. By the end of the chapter, readers will have a clear idea of the concepts and forms of reasoning appropriate to anti-naturalist, interpretive political science, along with a sense of how to avoid naturalist pitfalls. This chapter also illustrates a number of its points with notable research from the political science literature.
Journal of the Philosophy of History 7 (2013) 231-243
Charles Taylor’s latest collection of essays, Dilemmas and Connections, is the most recent instal... more Charles Taylor’s latest collection of essays, Dilemmas and Connections, is the most recent installment in his development of a grand history of the rise of a modern, secular age. In this review, I show how the historical narrative that defines Taylor’s late work is in continuity with his earlier hermeneutic commitments, while also allowing him to advance new inquiries into areas as diverse as secularism, religion, nationalism, and human rights discourse. I do this by not only providing a succinct summary of Taylor’s master narrative, but also by arguing that it resolves a number of philosophical dilemmas.
The Review of Politics 75:3 (2013): 383-406.
In skirmishes over the interpretive turn, the work of Charles Taylor is frequently cited as repre... more In skirmishes over the interpretive turn, the work of Charles Taylor is frequently cited as representing the state of the art. Yet a systematic assessment of Taylor’s interpretivism in light of the most salient criticisms made against it has not been conducted. This paper argues that Taylor’s interpretivism withstands the strongest criticisms made of it so far, and therefore is an essential resource for revitalizing the interpretive turn. Although it is widely acknowledged in the secondary literature that Taylor’s interpretivism rests on ontological claims about human agency, this paper presents a novel justification for this thesis as derived from a Heideggerian phenomenology of moods. It also presents two novel ways in which a defense of Taylor’s interpretivism helps to bridge the gap between empirical social science research and normative political and ideological critique. In the latter discussion, it draws on Taylor’s most recently published work.
Polity 45:3 (2013): 445–463
Alasdair MacIntyre is often cited for his contributions to moral philosophy. However, in this pap... more Alasdair MacIntyre is often cited for his contributions to moral philosophy. However, in this paper I argue that his reputation should be rehabilitated as a theorist who has realized an essentially critical conception of social science that moves beyond the old dogma of value neutrality. The paper argues this in two parts. In the first, historical part, I narrate how MacIntyre’s unique conception of a critical social science arose out of debates with Peter Winch. Winch was a key figure in the interpretive turn, but MacIntyre found his defense of value neutrality untenable. MacIntyre thus responded by developing a social science every bit as interpretive as Winch’s, but also inherently critical and normative. In the second, contemporary part, I suggest how MacIntyre’s social science generates criticism of major approaches to political inquiry today, including mainstream political science, Quentin Skinner’s Cambridge School, and Michel Foucault’s post-structuralism.
Agenda Publishing (Columbia Univ Press distributor), 2024
"Quite simply the best guide to today’s dominant ideologies." - William Cavanaugh, America Magazi... more "Quite simply the best guide to today’s dominant ideologies." - William Cavanaugh, America Magazine
"An intellectual feast ... Blakely joins the ranks of great theorists of ideology."
- Frank Pasquale
"A brilliant tour d'horizon ... perhaps our finest critic of misplaced appeals to scientific authority in political life."
- Matthew Sitman
Modern political life is a confusing and disorientating terrain of competing ideologies. Jason Blakely offers readers a lively, fresh and insightful guide through the labyrinth of conflicting and competing ideas in order to better understand why ideology in the modern era can be so divisive.
Lost in Ideology sets out from the conviction that the current disorientation engulfing the world's liberal democracies is in no small part ideological in origin. People feel confused because there are multiple ideological maps, so to speak, each marked by dramatically different points of interest, rivers, summits, roads, and total topographies. Ideology in the modern era has the paradoxical effect of orienting millions even as it disorients millions. This leads us to the present-day predicament in which individuals of every imaginable political stripe confidently declare: "I have a theory – but you? You have an ideology!"
Pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Ideology-Interpreting-Modern-Political/dp/1788216636/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Oxford University Press, 2020
"An essential contribution … absolutely must be read widely." — Charles Taylor
Oxford University Press, 2018
"Will surely become a classic of graduate-school reading lists in social science." - Cornel Ban
University of Notre Dame Press, 2016
"Jason Blakely's account might well prove definitive." — Kelvin Knight
After Virtue at 40 (Cambridge University Press), 2023
Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue has become one of the most influential sources for the new, ill... more Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue has become one of the most influential sources for the new, illiberal right in the last ten years – inspiring popular political tracts such as Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed and Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option. After briefly summarising the problems with these reactionary readings of MacIntyre’s philosophy, I argue, instead, that MacIntyre’s work might be read as a form of radical democracy and utopian thought in line with his earlier efforts as part of the British New Left. This means reading MacIntyre’s philosophy against reactionary, illiberal visions of pre-modernity seen in the writings of Deneen, Dreher and other postliberals. Although MacIntyre’s virtue ethics is frequently seen as a negation of liberalism, it should instead be read as radicalising and fulfilling certain themes and conceptions of liberal democracy. On this reading, After Virtue is not orientated so much to the past as to imagining a future, more profoundly participatory democratic polity. Concepts introduced by MacIntyre into Aristotelian philosophy such as practices, traditions and narrative quests are the basis for a radically new and yet unrealised form of democratic community. Likewise, his critique of technocracy is part of a turn towards bottom-up politics. MacIntyre’s After Virtue is not a call for religious or ethnic homogeneity or reaction, but for democratic inclusion and utopian striving.
Updating the Interpretive Turn (ed. Michiel Meijer), 2023
The interpretive turn allows for a paradigm shift in how readers approach the word-object relatio... more The interpretive turn allows for a paradigm shift in how readers approach the word-object relationship in the human sciences. Theories in the human sciences are often conceptualized as descriptive and explanatory in such a way that the word (or theoretical account) exists largely outside the object of inquiry (or the social-political process). By contrast, interpretivism makes it possible to read social science theories inside the stream of culture and politics—not straightforwardly descriptive but instead generative of social realities. This paper explores the worldmaking capacities of theories in the human sciences, proposing various breaches of the word-object split. These include not only narrative causal forms, like top-down technocratic imposition and techno-populist upsurges, but also non-causal forms, like ideological resonances and hypothetical, as-if scenarios. Grasping the radically different relationship between word-object in the human sciences opens up new empirical topics for investigation as well as a form of social theory that has normative and critical dimensions.
Interpretation, 2022
Thomas More’s Utopia is often portrayed either as a work of bold political radicalism or as subtl... more Thomas More’s Utopia is often portrayed either as a work of bold political radicalism or as subtle, cautionary conservatism. While the scholars who have contributed to these opposing accounts of More’s dialogue offer a number of profound insights, they have also inadvertently obscured crucial philosophical features of his political thought. This essay argues that More’s Utopia should be read as advancing a hermeneutic politics—that is, a politics emphasizing the contingency of the historical and cultural meanings that constitute social life while nonetheless retaining an anthropology of human limits. Reading Utopia as a fusion of hermeneutic insight and anthropological limits clarifies More’s deeply original notions of social ontology, normative critique, and humanistic authority.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2021
This article aims is to clarify two opposing interpretations of Charles Taylor’s philosophy again... more This article aims is to clarify two opposing interpretations of Charles Taylor’s philosophy against the backdrop of the current crisis of liberal capitalism. The first, de-radicalizing reading, insists that liberal modernity is reformable and radical transformation to a post-capitalist society untenable. The second, radicalizing reading, underscores the possibility of transcending liberal-capitalism but paradoxically through the fulfillment of liberalism’s own values. Where de-radicalizers see in Taylor’s philosophy an attempt to stabilize the existing order, radicalizers perceive it as offering resources for a new kind of democracy. The goal is not to determine which—if either—of these readings matches Taylor’s self-understanding but to bring into focus the dynamic tensions available to readers of his astonishingly rich political theory.
Review of Metaphysics, 2020
This paper critically analyzes the normative theory of Alasdair MacIntyre, who is arguably one of... more This paper critically analyzes the normative theory of Alasdair MacIntyre, who is arguably one of the most influential political philosophers of the last fifty years. Specifically, the paper rejects the standard view that MacIntyre’s later theory represents a single, coherent system. Instead, his mature thought is marked by two conflicting periods. Indeed, MacIntyre’s earlier synthesis of Aristotle and interpretive philosophy is seen as in tension with his later turn to biological metaphysics. Interpretive philosophy clarifies how cultural meanings are constitutive of human agency. The legacy of MacIntyre for ethical and political theory is thus mixed—offering both resources and pitfalls.
Agency and Causal Explanation in Economics, 2020
Rational choice theory is often presented as essential to the truly scientific study of economics... more Rational choice theory is often presented as essential to the truly scientific study of economics. To the contrary, in this paper I argue that when rational choice is treated as the key to a science of human agency, it ensnares economics in certain intractable dilemmas. Drawing on hermeneutic philosophy, I argue that economists need to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate uses of rational choice theory. Failure to do so not only leads to self-defeating research goals, but also mires the discipline in an extreme form of free-market ideology. Economists thus have not only empirical but also ethical and political reasons for rejecting the mainstream deployment of rational choice. The paper concludes by briefly sketching a philosophically defensible use of rational choice in economics-one that is more sensitive to the expressive dimensions of human agency and the limits of mechanistic causality.
Critical Review, 2019
The interpretive turn in the social sciences, although much discussed, has effectively stalled an... more The interpretive turn in the social sciences, although much discussed, has effectively stalled and even begun to backslide. With the publication of Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach, we provide a systematic defense of interpretive inquiry intended to help reinvigorate this mode of study across the human sciences. This defense, unfortunately, needs to be deployed not only against social scientists who unwittingly adopt naturalistic philosophical assumptions, but against interpretivist fellow travelers such as Michel Foucault, who occasionally do the same thing; and even against interpretivists who assume that their philosophical position is secured by using only qualitative methods, and that quantitative methods are inherently unsuitable to interpretivist purposes.
Critical Review, 2019
Contemporary American policing practices are marked by increasingly top-down, racialized, militar... more Contemporary American policing practices are marked by increasingly top-down, racialized, militarized, and pseudo-scientific features. Social scientists have played a central role in creating this political situation: social-scientific advocates of "law and order," far from providing a value-neutral description of social reality, appear instead to have contributed to the creation of a peculiarly modern form of power.
Theory & Event, 2019
This paper advances a critical historical and philosophical analysis of the discourse of " nihili... more This paper advances a critical historical and philosophical analysis of the discourse of " nihilism " found in neoconservative and rightwing movements in the United States. The proliferation of this discourse is tied to attempts to exclude and rollback gains in civil rights, feminism, and multiculturalism. In addition, the rhetoric of nihilism is part of a particular project in political theology that is in historical and philosophical discontinuity with the classical thinkers most often evoked as its sources. Applying a hermeneutic approach to rightwing claims of nihilism reveals a defective philosophical anthropology and sociology of modernity. The paper concludes by arguing that the neoconservative rhetoric of nihilism has helped intellectually buttress the recent surge of reactionary politics in America, which seeks to restore lost national greatness.
Political Studies , 2018
Many advocates of interpretive approaches to the study of politics emphasize that what is at stak... more Many advocates of interpretive approaches to the study of politics emphasize that what is at stake is a conflict between "quantitative" versus "qualitative" methods. By contrast, we begin by suggesting that political scientists are free to use whichever method they find most useful for their research purposes. Instead of methodological reasons for making the interpretive turn, political scientists have ethical reasons for adopting this paradigm. In particular, interpretive approaches give political scientists: a better account of the nature and role of values in human life; a sense for how the historical past is ethically relevant; the ability to advance politically engaged sociologies; and a deliberative critique of technocracy. Political scientists should be free to critically engage, scrutinize, and even normatively evaluate human ethical positions.
Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2018
I argue that Leo Strauss's critique of political science has been deeply misunderstood. Moreover,... more I argue that Leo Strauss's critique of political science has been deeply misunderstood. Moreover, once the true nature of Strauss's critique is clarified, I argue that he does not provide a viable alternative to contemporary political science. Instead, his philosophy has mostly justified a " great books " approach to the study of politics, which has contributed to the self-isolation of political theory from the rest of political science. Political theorists should seek new ways forward that more substantively engage the concerns of the mainstream of the discipline.
Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 2017
Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world’s most influential Aristotelian political theorists. Yet s... more Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world’s most influential Aristotelian political theorists. Yet some scholars also identify him as a philosophical source of radically reactionary politics and anti-liberalism. In this paper I argue that MacIntyre’s claim that the adoption of Aristotle’s virtue ethics requires a radical rejection of the major institutions of liberalism is overstated. In the first part I argue against MacIntyre’s assumption that liberal orders are by their very nature unable to foster Aristotelian virtues because they are hopelessly tied to an “emotivist” notion of self. There is no necessary link between liberalism and emotivism. Next I trace MacIntyre’s revolutionary negation of liberalism to non-Aristotelian sources in the British New Left and its strain of Marxism. Finally, MacIntyre’s own epistemic arguments commit him to an ethical pluralism that poses a practical problem for his anti-liberalism. I believe MacIntyre has philosophically overstated the conflict between Aristotle and liberal modernity.
Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science, 2016
This chapter introduces non-expert readers, who are interested in the study of politics, to the b... more This chapter introduces non-expert readers, who are interested in the study of politics, to the basic philosophical debate over naturalism versus anti-naturalism. Specifically, it champions an interpretive approach to political science and contrasts this critically with the naturalist forms of reasoning and concept formation that currently dominate the discipline. By the end of the chapter, readers will have a clear idea of the concepts and forms of reasoning appropriate to anti-naturalist, interpretive political science, along with a sense of how to avoid naturalist pitfalls. This chapter also illustrates a number of its points with notable research from the political science literature.
Journal of the Philosophy of History 7 (2013) 231-243
Charles Taylor’s latest collection of essays, Dilemmas and Connections, is the most recent instal... more Charles Taylor’s latest collection of essays, Dilemmas and Connections, is the most recent installment in his development of a grand history of the rise of a modern, secular age. In this review, I show how the historical narrative that defines Taylor’s late work is in continuity with his earlier hermeneutic commitments, while also allowing him to advance new inquiries into areas as diverse as secularism, religion, nationalism, and human rights discourse. I do this by not only providing a succinct summary of Taylor’s master narrative, but also by arguing that it resolves a number of philosophical dilemmas.
The Review of Politics 75:3 (2013): 383-406.
In skirmishes over the interpretive turn, the work of Charles Taylor is frequently cited as repre... more In skirmishes over the interpretive turn, the work of Charles Taylor is frequently cited as representing the state of the art. Yet a systematic assessment of Taylor’s interpretivism in light of the most salient criticisms made against it has not been conducted. This paper argues that Taylor’s interpretivism withstands the strongest criticisms made of it so far, and therefore is an essential resource for revitalizing the interpretive turn. Although it is widely acknowledged in the secondary literature that Taylor’s interpretivism rests on ontological claims about human agency, this paper presents a novel justification for this thesis as derived from a Heideggerian phenomenology of moods. It also presents two novel ways in which a defense of Taylor’s interpretivism helps to bridge the gap between empirical social science research and normative political and ideological critique. In the latter discussion, it draws on Taylor’s most recently published work.
Polity 45:3 (2013): 445–463
Alasdair MacIntyre is often cited for his contributions to moral philosophy. However, in this pap... more Alasdair MacIntyre is often cited for his contributions to moral philosophy. However, in this paper I argue that his reputation should be rehabilitated as a theorist who has realized an essentially critical conception of social science that moves beyond the old dogma of value neutrality. The paper argues this in two parts. In the first, historical part, I narrate how MacIntyre’s unique conception of a critical social science arose out of debates with Peter Winch. Winch was a key figure in the interpretive turn, but MacIntyre found his defense of value neutrality untenable. MacIntyre thus responded by developing a social science every bit as interpretive as Winch’s, but also inherently critical and normative. In the second, contemporary part, I suggest how MacIntyre’s social science generates criticism of major approaches to political inquiry today, including mainstream political science, Quentin Skinner’s Cambridge School, and Michel Foucault’s post-structuralism.
Perspectives on Political Science Volume 41, Issue 3, 2012
Much of the scholarly debate over the Heidegger controversy has endeavored to either connect or f... more Much of the scholarly debate over the Heidegger controversy has endeavored to either connect or free his philosophy from fascism. Against both these tendencies, I argue that the central concepts of Heidegger’s philosophy are politically underdetermined. Throughout both his late and early periods, Heidegger’s primary ambition remained the illumination of the question of being, a project that I argue made his ontological framework inherently relativistic.
History of European Ideas, 2011
Analytic ethics in the central period – extending from the beginning of the twentieth century to ... more Analytic ethics in the central period – extending from the beginning of the twentieth century to post-World War II linguistic analysis – is too often construed by historians and philosophers alike in monolithic terms as the emotivism of A. J. Ayer. In contrast, we argue that a multiplicity of ethical doctrines were developed by analytic philosophers at this time of which Ayer’s emotivism was just one. Moreover, we maintain that this multiplicity of ethical doctrines was itself the result of a multiplicity of conceptions of analysis and that connecting these two sets of beliefs makes for the best understanding of analytic ethics.
Chronicle of Higher Education
This is a critique of Yascha Mounk's history of identity politics that appeared in the Chronicle ... more This is a critique of Yascha Mounk's history of identity politics that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Mounk claims postmodernism is the source of identity politics. By contrast, I argue that nationalism, not postmodernism, is the fount of today’s politics of recognition.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 2023
Harper's Magazine, 2023
https://harpers.org/archive/2023/08/doctors-orders-jason-blakely/
Commonweal, 2021
What religion can teach the Left.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2021
At first glance there is perhaps no odder couple in American higher education today than the Harv... more At first glance there is perhaps no odder couple in American higher education today than the Harvard law professors Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, whose intellectual partnership straddles the country's widest political gulf.
Hedgehog Review, 2020
How did we arrive at this crisis of scientific authority? And is there a way to repair the damage... more How did we arrive at this crisis of scientific authority? And is there a way to repair the damaged relationship between democratic deliberation and science?
Oxford University Press Blog, 2020
Both the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the resurgence of antiliberal thought on the Right have mad... more Both the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the resurgence of antiliberal thought on the Right have made evident that technocracy is by no means limited to a single side of the political spectrum. To the contrary, the American Right also nurtures unique strains of technocratic politics that have played an enormous role in contemporary life.
Genealogies of Modernity Project
Commonweal, 2019
A letter against the new Christian nationalism. Signatories include: Cornel West, Anthea Butler, ... more A letter against the new Christian nationalism. Signatories include: Cornel West, Anthea Butler, Stanley Hauerwas, Eddie Glaude, David Bentley Hart, Fr. Greg Boyle and other top pastors and theologians.
The Atlantic, 2017
The Republican-controlled Congress is now poised to pass one of the most dramatic changes to the ... more The Republican-controlled Congress is now poised to pass one of the most dramatic changes to the tax code in more than a generation-one with significant benefits for the wealthiest sector of society. Yet an aspect of this legislation receiving little attention is how it marks the culmination of a decades-long renouncement of higher education by portions of the American conservative movement.
The Atlantic, 2017
Schools are a public good that extreme market proliferation would eventually destroy.
The Atlantic, 2017
Uniformly labeling higher education as a community of hypersensitive, radical leftists is not onl... more Uniformly labeling higher education as a community of hypersensitive, radical leftists is not only a false portrayal, but also undermines intellectualism.
The Atlantic, 2016
Election forecasting is part of a wider trend in higher education to present the study of politic... more Election forecasting is part of a wider trend in higher education to present the study of politics as a “science.” But on November 8, 2016, the science of politics was almost uniformly and spectacularly wrong.
American Philosophical Association Blog, 2024
California. His writing often straddles the divides of academic and popular. He has contributed t... more California. His writing often straddles the divides of academic and popular. He has contributed to leading public venues like Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic, and written on how to salvage politics and the human sciences from the abuses of scientific authority in his books We Built Reality and Interpretive Social Science (with Mark Bevir). His most recent book, Lost in Ideology, offers a critical account of ideology as a form of meaning-making. In this Recently Published Book Spotlight, Blakely discusses his philosophical influences, what distinguishes his theory from previous accounts of ideology, and what he hopes this offers readers.
Books in Psychotherapy Blog, 2020
A. A. J. Deville interviews Jason Blakely on his book We Built Reality with a particular focus on... more A. A. J. Deville interviews Jason Blakely on his book We Built Reality with a particular focus on psychological themes.
Athwart Magazine
Interview by William Lombardo
America Magazine, 2019
This is a dialogue among thinkers who have signed two different open letters, one embracing a "ne... more This is a dialogue among thinkers who have signed two different open letters, one embracing a "new nationalism" and the other, in response, warning of its dangers. One pair of authors, David Albertson and Jason Blakely, later published a piece in America further explaining their concerns about the new nationalism.
This article aims is to clarify two opposing interpretations of Charles Taylor's philosophy again... more This article aims is to clarify two opposing interpretations of Charles Taylor's philosophy against the backdrop of the current crisis of liberal capitalism. The rst, de-radicalizing reading, insists that liberal modernity is reformable and radical transformation to a post-capitalist society untenable. The second, radicalizing reading, underscores the possibility of transcending liberal-capitalism but paradoxically through the ful llment of liberalism's own values. Where deradicalizers see in Taylor's philosophy an attempt to stabilize the existing order, radicalizers perceive it as o ering resources for a new kind of democracy. The goal is not to determine which-if either-of these readings matches Taylor's self-understanding but to bring into focus the dynamic tensions available to readers of his astonishingly rich political theory.