In the individual chapters, we have tried to demonstrate how practice-based theorists in the debates analysed have drawn erroneous or overly strong conclusions about how social and political practices in different ways constrain normative political principles. In our view, this has led to all five debates reaching an impasse with regard to answering the overall research question of this book, namely what role social and political practices should play in the justification of normative political principles. In this chapter, we begin by addressing three general misunderstandings revealed by our analysis, which have contributed to this deadlock. Our overall conclusion is that the main fault of the practice-based view is that it understands the relationship between practices and principles in terms that are too one-directional and static. Thereafter, we argue that as soon as we clear up these three misunderstandings, a much more flexible view of the relationship between practices and principles comes to the fore. More specifically, we defend two constraints on normative political principles: what we call the ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’. The fitness constraint is a requirement on the relationship among the commitments made in an account, whereas the functional constraint is an explicitly context-dependent requirement due to the role the account is intended to play in normative political theory.

THREE GENERAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS

The theorists treated in this book constitute a heterogeneous group, working within different subdomains of political theory. A substantial aim of the book has been to show that despite their differences, they not only address the same fundamental question of how social and political practices relate to normative political principles, but also share the assumption that practices in different ways constrain principles. Our analysis so far has demonstrated, in some detail, particular overextensions and faulty claims that these practice-based theorists have taken to be motivated by their concern for not losing sight of the actual practice to which a principle is to be applied. In this section, we will suggest three overarching misunderstandings that our analysis of the practice-based view discloses, which have to do with justificatory direction, ontological and epistemological aspects, and feasibility constraints in normative theorising. We address each under separate headings below.