“We” Should Be An Invitation: Hanna Fenichel Pitkin’s Wittgenstein and Justice

Abstract

Polity’s “Classics Revisited” provides a forum to reflect on whether books revered in the discipline raise questions and advance interventions that still resonate with current concerns. Sidestepping the “canon wars,” the aim has been to forge a space for a more generative reconsideration of a priori assumptions about the scope and content of what political science is, what it has and could do. Most of the “classics” featured to date required no justification or much of an introduction. Their impact within the discipline, on public discourse, and even popular culture is self-evident—their titles are instantly recognizable, and their authors have become synonymous with these texts, regardless of howmany others they have written. This “Classics Revisited” is different. Hanna Pitkin’s Wittgenstein and Justice (hereafter W&J), like the other books Polity has selected, was certainly path-breaking. In this volume Pitkin took account of the work of political science and the unique role political theory has within and beyond it. “Political theory [speaks] to a polity in crisis,” she explained. The crisis she confronted was how to address the “modern condition” characterized by alienation