Deep contextualism and radical criticism: The argument for a division of labour in contemporary political theory

The general theme of this book turns around the question of how economics as an academic discipline should engage with ethical values. How ethical values should be engaged, quite generally, is a concern shared by many, if not all, social sciences today. This is, of course, not to say that this concern is in any sense new: positivism in its various forms has been contested ever since the emergence of social sciences as independent disciplines in modern universities. To a certain extent, these articulations and contestations of positivism thus continue to inform and inflect current debates. The basic problem underlying these discussions can be neatly summarized in Hilary Putnam’s intention to weaken the grip that a certain picture has on our thinking; the picture of a dualism, a dichotomous division of our thought into two realms, a realm of ‘facts’ which can be established beyond controversy, and a realm of ‘values’ where we are always in hopeless disagreement.