¹ Waldron, Jeremy, Law and Disagreement (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Waldron, Jeremy, The Dignity of Legislation (2000)Google Scholar.

³ Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (1971)Google Scholar.

⁴ The “reasons” invoked here are of the psychological or motivational kind, of course: the kind people casually refer to when explaining their behavior (to themselves or others). They are thus distinct from the sort of justificatory and abstract reasons normally invoked in political philosophy which bind all agents objectively, whether they acknowledge them or not. I thank David Heyd for drawing my attention to the need for this clarification.

⁵ Waldron, supra note 1, at 106.

⁶ See Harel, Alon, Notes on Waldron's Law and Disagreement.: Defending Judicial Review, 39(3) Isr. L. Rev. 13, 16 (2006)Google Scholar.

⁷ Waldron, supra note 1, at 228.

⁸ Dale Smith seemed to me to be alluding in this direction when writing:

Waldron's assumption of consensus goes much deeper than this. He also states that, for political decision-making to be possible, we must link our shared belief about the need for a common solution to our support for mechanisms of collective decision-making that allow us to settle on a single course of action accepted as binding on all, despite our disagreement.

Smith, Dale, Disagreeing with Waldron: Waldron on Law and Disagreement, 7(1) Res Publica 57, 72 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yet, he then made of it something so different, that I suspect his initial intention was different, too. Still, his formulation may be helpful in elucidating the point made above by clarifying the complexity of Waldron's assumptions here: not only does he assume a shared belief about the need for a common solution, but also support for specific mechanisms that would make such solutions possible, and binding. By any account, these must be perceived as pretty distinct matters.

⁹ See, e.g., Waldron, supra note 1, at 113-114, 159-161.

¹⁰ This Paper was first written, and presented, in the period preceding Israel's unilateral pullout from the Gaza strip, and the question of how this will proceed, if at all, was very much on everyone's mind then. As is well known, the pullout has since come and gone—indeed, gone better than most of us expected. Which helps me reassert the point above: What we say to those who no longer have, are able, or will find reasons for obedience and cooperation with others is, simply, that they must—that is, that they must do as they're told now, if they want or hope to have any discussion later. Yet, this moment of determination, far from being the moment at which politics ceases to exist or collapses is, precisely, the moment at which it is brought to the fore and [re]asserted. It is the moment at which the point and purpose of the political is itself recalled, and asserted as determination and de-finition: the setting off of limits and the giving of shape to that which is only thereby constituted as an identity: this entity, not any other.

¹¹ Waldron, supra note 1, at 229.

¹² Nagel, Thomas, Equality and Partiality (1991)Google Scholar see especially the dedication.

¹³ In Section IV, below, I go one step backwards, so to speak, suggesting that during this same time, too, it has become impossible to think of political philosophy as anything other than political theory.

¹⁴ Waldron, supra note 1, at 3.

¹⁵ Of course, it is impossible to refer to all instances in which this comes to the fore—but the opening of Part II, where Waldron presents the question he will be discussing subsequently with reference to Rawls's “recent work” provides, I think, an especially clear and helpful example. The question he will be asking in the sections to follow is, he explains there, “What is the relation between differences of these kinds [i.e. ‘what we might call comprehensive philosophical disagreements’] and the disagreements we have in politics (and in political philosophy) concerning the fundamental principles of justice and right?” (id. at 149).

Thus, what Waldron challenges in Rawls's approach to politics is not such his conception of politics as “concerning fundamental principles of justice and right” as his belief/hope that politics, so conceived, could be clearly distinguished from morality.

¹⁶ See, e.g., Waldron, supra note 1, at 198, 247.

¹⁷ “Goods,” in this context, includes “rights” as well. “Rights,” in other words, are a particular sort of good or attribute, property that people are ascribed and which societies then help to balance, regulate, and, more generally manage.

¹⁸ Waldron, supra note 1, at 152-153.

¹⁹ Rawls, supra note 3, at 3.

²⁰ Hampshire, Stuart, Justice is Conflict (1999)Google Scholar; but see also: Hampshire, Stuart, Innocence and Experience (1989)Google Scholar.

²¹ Id. at 189.

²² Following my presentation at the workshop, Prof. Waldron has kindly referred me to his, What Plato Would Allow? in Nomos, XXXVII 138–178 (Shapiro, Ian & Wagner, Judith eds., 1995)Google Scholar; in which the suspicions voiced above are indeed confirmed. I am very grateful to Prof. Waldron for this very helpful reference and can only hope that, rather than sound entirely irrelevant to him on that account, the reflections aired above may now help prompt him to pursue this interest in the issue even farther.

²³ See also, id. at 143, 147ff. Also see Waldron, supra note 1, at 1-4.

²⁴ Waldron puts this quite differently: We should think of political theory, he writes, “literally as political philosophy—a deepening of our insight into the realm of the political and of our understanding of what is involved in making judgments and decisions in that realm” (Id. at 143). Yet, it seems odd to suggest that the whole difference between what is done and what should be done in political [reflection] depends on the receiving party—surely, there is something very different in thinking of political theory as political philosophy and reflecting on politics, or the political, philosophically.

²⁵ I thank David Enoch for suggesting this way for summarizing my complaint. Still, I believe that there is more to the difference between political theory and political philosophy than the mere normative/descriptive distinction—even if I am admittedly not yet sufficiently clear as to what precisely gets lost through such reduction.