![]() | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand.(August 2024) |
In a paper delivered to the Aristotelian Society on 12 March 1956,[1] Walter Bryce Gallie (1912–1998) introduced the term essentially contested concept to facilitate an understanding of the different applications or interpretations of the sorts of abstract, qualitative, and evaluative notions[2]—such as "art", "philanthropy",[3] "power",[4] and "social justice"—used in the domains of aesthetics, sustainable development, political philosophy, philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion.
Garver (1978) describes their use as follows:
Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., "fairness"), but not on the best realization thereof.[6] They are "concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users",[7] and these disputes "cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone".[8]
Power is often described as an essentially contested concept. That term was first introduced into political theory in 1958 by [...] Gallie, who applies it to various subject-terms including power.
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