13 - Here and Now, There and Then, Always and Everywhere: Reflections Concerning Political Theory and the Study/Writing of Political Thought

Summary

‘… as it were between the games’

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Both political theorizing and the study/writing of the history of political thought have many and varied exemplifications. Accordingly, it is difficult to generalize confidently concerning the relationship(s) between them. Briefly, political theorizing has commonly been, and ought to be, characterized by some combination of, on the one hand, critical assessments of prevalent political and related concepts, ideas, institutions and practices and, on the other, attempts to imagine and articulate political ideals that serve both as criteria for critical assessment of extant ideas and arrangements and as proposals for a politics that is improved by normative standards. In its historical manifestations it is of course also an attempt to understand the concepts, issues and ideas to which it is addressed. This chapter then juxtaposes this conception with some leading views – which also may be regarded as idealizations – of the aims and methods appropriate to the study/writing of the history of political thought.

I take these to be importantly distinct activities or modes of thinking. Insofar as I advance a general view of the relationship(s) between them, it is that political theorizing provides historians of political thought with important parts (but not all) of their subject matter, while historians of political thought may provide, have sometimes provided, political theorists with an improved grasp of some of the concepts, ideas and ideals with, in and about which to think.