Raymond Geuss - Theory Quotes

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Intellectual honesty requires that one reflect on the contribution one's theory makes to the class struggle, and acknowledge it openly. One does not have to accept the specific claim that there are two, and only two, mutually exclusive worldviews, to one of which any theory must commit itself, to accept the general claim that entertaining, developing and propounding a theory are actions, and as such they represent ways of taking a position in the world. This means that any kind of comprehensive understanding of politics will also have to treat the politics of theorization, including the politics of whatever theory is itself at the given time being presented for scrutiny, as a candidate for acceptance.

Raymond Geuss
If the basic assumption of the theory of ideology is at all tenable, namely, that the general power relations embodied in our social structures can exert a distorting influence on the formation of our beliefs and preferences without our being aware of it, then we are definitely not going to put that kind of influence out of action by asking the agents in the society to imagine that they didn't know their position. To think otherwise is to believe in magic: imagine you are impartial and you will be. In fact, doing that will be more likely to reinforce the power of these entrenched prejudices because it will explicitly present them as universal, warranted by reason, etc.

Raymond Geuss
Monotheistic religions in the West have tended to conflate having a general orientation in life, having a specific theory of the world, having a sense of the positive meaningfulness of one's existence, and having a fixed set of rules for behavior, but these elements are in principle separable. … The metaphysical need, … both Marx and Nietzsche held, is a historical phenomenon that arises under determinate circumstances, and could be expected to disappear under other circumstances that we could relatively easily envisage.

Raymond Geuss
The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.

Raymond Geuss