Mutually Contested Concepts and Their Standard General Use

Abstract

In this essay I claim to find within W.B. Gallie’s deservedly well-known discussion of ‘essentially contested concepts’ at least two other closely related concepts, which Gallie himself called ‘mutually contested concepts’ and their widely agreed upon ‘standard general use’. I argue that these two concepts together provide us with the ‘space’ to develop a rival argument to Gallie’s idea of essentially contested concepts. The essence of this rival view is that agreement on the proper use of most concepts within the social sciences is not that difficult to come by once we situate different mutually contested concepts within their agreed-upon standard general use. Viewed in this way, I argue, most concepts within the social sciences are not essentially contested. In order to understand this argument, I argue that it is helpful to view the standard general use of mutually contested concepts as complex multi-dimensional objects.