Diagnostic practice never proceeds under ideal conditions. It is challenged to succeed at each of its steps. One has to ask: What phenomena were accessible to the diagnostician? Did he or she attend to the really significant ones? Did he or she describe and analyze them in an adequate language? Did he or she construct a compelling genealogy? Is his or her prognosis trustworthy? Is his or her diagnostic prescription realistic? Uncertainty inhabits political diagnosis and defines its natural limits and, indeed, that of all political philosophy since there is no viable political philosophy beyond diagnosis. Diagnosis also models, in a more conscious fashion, the everyday practice of forming political judgments. The uncertainties evident in diagnostic work thus carry over into all political judgment and thus into all politics.

There are epistemological and ontological reasons for this uncertainty and we need to examine both, even though (or rather, because) our political philosophers, including our diagnosticians, largely bypass this kind of inquiry. We need to speak of politics as a domain of uncertainty, in addition, because the raucous voices of certainty usually dominate actual political debate.

The ontology of uncertainty

Our political uncertainties stem from layers far below the surface of political life. (No wonder then that our political philosophers do not want to consider them.)