Abstract

The dissertation Incommensurability as a Political Concept analyzes how the epistemological concept of incommensurability was turned into a key category in political theory and then evaluates the cogency of category as it is used in contemporary critiques of liberalism. After recounting the debate between Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend over the implications of incommensurability for the understanding of progress in science, the thesis examines in detail three political theories in which the concept of incommensurability plays an important role: that of Paul Feyerabend, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty. ;The thesis argues that incommensurability-based anti-liberal critiques pose a serious problem for a certain type of liberal theory, but not for others. Feyerabend and MacIntyre, each in his own way, demonstrate that liberal neutrality and universalism are not really neutral and universal, but derived from a certain tradition. However, even if we accept their insights, it does not follow that the essentially liberal culture of consensus-building political dialogues is undesirable, or impossible. ;The dissertation demonstrates that the political concept of incommensurability has a variety of implications. As a term used in philosophical attacks on liberal theory, its value is clear but limited. Liberal political theorists like Richard Rorty can not be accused of false neutrality, or a naive universalism. ;At the same time, when the concept of incommensurability is used to defend a multicultural relativism, it tends to subvert one of the foundations of contemporary liberal societies---the will to live together. In some contexts, the concept of incommensurability supports a right to remain different that paradoxically reinforces the most powerfully illiberal ideology of our time---nationalism