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Positivism, Historicism, and Political Inquiry*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Eugene F. Miller
Eugene F. Miller*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Abstract

The present controversy between “behavioral” and “postbehavioral” views of political inquiry reflects a larger dispute between two opposing theories of knowledge. Whereas the behavioral movement has its epistemological roots in positivism and, ultimately, in classical British empiricism, the most recent protest against behavioralism draws upon the theory of knowledge that has been the principal foe of empiricism over the past century. This theory of knowledge, which received the name “historicism” shortly after its emergence, had become the dominant epistemological position by the mid-twentieth century. This essay considers the general nature of historicism and its influence on the recent revolt against positivism in the philosophy of science. Finally, it examines the use that political scientists have made of historicist principles in opposing positivistic models of political inquiry. It argues that an epistemological relativism becomes unavoidable once certain premises of historicism are embraced.

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Articles
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American Political Science Review , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , September 1972 , pp. 796 - 817
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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Footnotes

*

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1970 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

References

1 Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. Kecskemeti, Paul (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), p. 84Google Scholar. The lengthy essay from which this quotation is taken is entitled “Historicism.”

2 “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, 63 (12, 1969), 1051–1061CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This address is reprinted in Easton, David, The Political System, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971), pp. 323–348Google Scholar.

3 For recent discussions of the development of American pragmatism from Peirce to Mead, see Thayer, H. S., Meaning and Action (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968)Google Scholar and Morris, Charles, The Pragmatic Movement in American Philosophy (New York: Braziller, 1970)Google Scholar. For Dewey, see especially his Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: New American Library, 1950)Google Scholar, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt, 1938)Google Scholar, and The Quest for Certainty (New York: Capricorn Books, 1960)Google Scholar. For discussions of Dewey's theory of knowledge which bring out its relativistic aspects, see particularly the essays by Randall, John Herman, Russell, Bertrand, and Murphy, Arthur E. in The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. Schilpp, Paul Arthur (Evanston: Northwestern University, 1939)Google Scholar. This volume also contains an interesting rejoinder by Dewey. A valuable collection of Mead's writings is contained in Strauss, Anselm M., ed., The Social Psychology of George Herbert Mead (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956)Google Scholar. See also Petras, John W., ed., George Herbert Mead: Essays in his Social Philosophy (New York: Teachers' College Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

4 Schiller's position is discussed in Thayer, , Meaning and Action, pp. 273–303Google Scholar. For Collingwood, see especially An Autobiography (London: Oxford University Press, 1939)Google Scholar and The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951)Google Scholar. Collingwood's historicism is treated by Strauss, Leo, “On Collingwood's Philosophy of History,” Review of Metaphysics, 5 (06, 1952), 559–586Google Scholar. I discuss Wittgenstein later in this essay.

5 Of importance here are Bergson's views on intelligence and intuition as approaches to knowledge of reality. See Bergson's, Creative Evolution, trans. Mitchell, Arthur (New York: Henry Holt, 1913), pp. 98–185Google Scholar. Bergson's theory of knowledge is treated by Maritain, Jacques, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, trans. Andison, Mabelle L. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955)Google Scholar and by James, William, “Bergson and his Critique of Intellectualism,” in A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, 1909), pp. 225–273Google Scholar. For Bergson's relation to James and American Pragmatism, see Perry, Ralph Barton, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Little, Brown, 1936), II, 599–636Google Scholar. For Sartre, see especially Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes, Hazel E. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956)Google Scholar. For Merleau-Ponty's theory of knowledge, see especially The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Smith, Colin (New York: Humanities Press, 1962)Google Scholar and Signs, trans. McCleary, Richard C. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964)Google Scholar. See also Langan, Thomas, Merleau-Ponty's Critique of Reason (New Haven: Yale Press, 1966)Google Scholar and Rabil, Albert Jr., Merleau-Ponty: Existentialist of the Social World (New York: Columbia Press, 1967)Google Scholar. Lengthy discussions of both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, along with bibliographies, are contained in Spiegelberg, Herbert, The Phenomenological Movement, 2 vols.; 2nd. ed. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969)Google Scholar.

6 See “The Decline of Modern Political Theory,” Journal of Politics, 13 (02, 1951), 36–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953)Google Scholar.

7 For a concise discussion of the history of this term, along with a useful bibliography, see Mandelbaum, Maurice, “Historicism,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan and The Free Press, 1967), IV, 22–25Google Scholar. See also Mandelbaum's, The Problem of Historical Knowledge (New York: Harper and Row, 1967)Google Scholar and Landgrebe, Ludwig, Major Problems in Contemporary European Philosophy, trans. Reinhardt, Kurt F. (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966)Google Scholar.

8 An examination of the epistemological foundations of positivism and its conception of science should begin with classical British empiricism, especially with Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. I discuss Hume's importance for positivistic approaches to the study of man and society in “Hume's Contribution to Behavioral Science,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 7 (04, 1971), 154–1683.0.CO;2-3>CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The development of logical positivism out of the logical atomism of Russell and Wittgenstein is discussed by Urmson, J. O., Philosophical Analysis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956)Google Scholar. A primary source for the epistemological foundations of logical positivism is Schlick's, MoritzAllgemeine Erkenntnislehre (Berlin: J. Springer, 1918)Google Scholar. This work and subsequent epistemological developments in the positivist movement are discussed by Ayer, A. J. in his “Introduction” to Logical Positivism (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959)Google Scholar and by Feigl, Herbert, “The Origin and Spirit of Logical Positivism,” in Achinstein, Peter and Barker, Stephen F., eds., The Legacy of Logical Positivism (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969), pp. 3–24Google Scholar. For Rudolf Carnap's development from the time of his early work, Der logische Aufbau der Welt (Berlin: Weltkreis Verlag, 1928)Google Scholar, see the various essays in Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed., The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1963)Google Scholar. There are selections from Carnap in Ayer's Logical Positivism. Ayer, a student of Schlick and Carnap, deals with epistemological issues in Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover, 1952)Google Scholar, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1940)Google Scholar, and The Problem of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1956)Google Scholar. For general accounts, see Kraft, Victor, The Vienna Circle, trans. Pap, Arthur (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953)Google Scholar and Joergensen, Joergen, The Development of Logical Empiricism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951)Google Scholar. Recent works in the philosophy of science that stand in the positivist tradition include Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961)Google Scholar, and Hempel, Carl, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

9 For the position of Dilthey and his school in German philosophy in the early decades of this century, see Brock, Werner, An Introduction to Contemporary German Philosophy (Cambridge, University Press, 1935)Google Scholar. Only a few of Dilthey's writings, collected in twelve volumes as Gesammelte Schriften (Stuttgart and Göttengen: Teubner, 1957–1960)Google Scholar, have been translated into English. For useful accounts of Dilthey's thought, see, in addition to the aforementioned works by Mandelbaum, and Brock, H. P. Rickman, ed., Pattern and Meaning in History (New York: Harper, 1962)Google Scholar; Hodges, H. A., Wilhelm Dilthey: An Introduction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1944)Google Scholar; and Hodges, H. A., The Philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952)Google Scholar. Karl Löwith treats Dilthey's relationship to the Hegelian tradition and his differences from Hegel, in From Hegel to Nietzsche, trans. Green, David E. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 60–65, 120–127Google Scholar.

The writings of Oswald Spengler may be considered in this context. Though not of Dilthey's school, Spengler depicts culture and thought as manifestations of “life” and gives to one of his own works, Der Mensch und die Technik (München: Beck, 1931)Google Scholar, the subtitle: “Beitrag zu einer Philosophie des Lebens.” This work is translated by Atkinson, Charles Francis as Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life (New York: Knopf, 1932)Google Scholar. We learn from Spengler's correspondence that his work was admired by such members of Dilthey's school as George Misch and Ortega y Gasset. See Letters of Oswald Spengler: 1913–1936, trans, and ed. by Helps, Arthur (New York: Knopf, 1966), pp. 67–68, 72–74, 102, 194–195, 198–199, 317Google Scholar. Spengler popularized important ideas of Nietzsche, such as the will to power and the relativity of truth. He held that there are no eternal truths, even in mathematics. Every philosophy is an expression of the spirit of its age. See especially the Introduction to The Decline of the West, trans. Atkinson, Charles Francis, 2 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1926–1928)Google Scholar. The first volume of this work, whose German title is Der Untergang des Abendlandes, appeared in 1918. It was awarded a prize by the Nietzsche Archive in 1919. In 1924, Spengler delivered an address at the Nietzsche Archive commemorating Nietzsche's eightieth birthday. This address, entitled “Nietzsche and his Century,” is contained in Spengler, Oswald, Selected Essays, trans. White, Donald O. (Chicago: Regnery, 1967), pp. 179–197Google Scholar. Useful appraisals of Spengler's work are presented by Hughes, H. Stuart, Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate (New York: Scribner's, 1952)Google Scholar and Koktanek, Anton M., Oswald Spengler in Seiner Zeit (München: Beck, 1968)Google Scholar.

10 For Cassirer's theory of knowledge, see The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, trans. Manheim, Ralph, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale Press, 1953–1957)Google Scholar and The Problem of Knowledge, trans. Woglom, William H. and Hendel, Charles W. (New Haven: Yale Press, 1950)Google Scholar. Useful essays on Cassirer, along with a full bibliography of his voluminous writings up to 1946, are contained in Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed., The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (Evanston: The Library of Living Philosophers, 1949)Google Scholar. Of particular interest in connection with our present problem are the essays by Helmut Kuhn, Fritz Kaufmann, and David Bidney.

11 Husserl's critique of Dilthey's historicism is contained in his work entitled “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science,” which is reprinted in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, ed. Lauer, Quentin (New York: Harper and Row, 1965)Google Scholar. For the historicist tendencies in Husserl's own work, see, in addition to the works cited in Rosen's, StanleyNihilism (New Haven: Yale Press, 1969), pp. 103–104Google Scholar, the following sources: Klein, Jacob, “Phenomenology and the History of Science,” in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Farber, Marvin (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), pp. 143–163Google Scholar; and Jordan, Robert Welsh, “Husserl's Phenomenology as an ‘Historical’ Science,” Social Research, 35 (Summer, 1968), 245–259Google Scholar. The first volume of Spiegelberg's The Phenomenological Movement contains a detailed discussion of Husserl and Heidegger along with extensive bibliographies. For Heidegger, see especially Being and Time, trans. MacQuarrie, John and Robinson, Edward (New York: Harper, 1962)Google Scholar. The issue of The Southern Journal of Philosophy for Winter, 1970 (Vol. 8, No. 4)Google Scholar is devoted entirely to analyses of Heidegger's thought by leading scholars. Heidegger's historicism is treated as such by Kuhn, Helmut, Encounter with Nothingness (Hinsdale, Ill.: Henry Regnery, 1949)Google Scholar and Stanley Rosen, Nihilism. See also Smith, P. Christopher, “Heidegger's Critique of Absolute Knowledge,” The New Scholasticism, 45 (Winter, 1971), 56–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See Mannheim's, essay entitled “On the Interpretation of ‘Weltanschauung,’” in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, pp. 33–83Google Scholar; and Hodges, , Wilhelm Dilthey, pp. 11–36, 68–87Google Scholar. For a valuable collection of Mannheim's writings that contains a lengthy and penetrating introduction to his thought, see Wolff, Kurt H., ed., From Karl Mannheim (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

13 “Meaning and Scientific Change,” in Colodny, Robert G., ed., Mind and Cosmos (Pittsburgh; University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966), pp. 41–42Google Scholar.

14 For Wittgenstein's early position, see his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. Ogden, C. K. (London: Kegan Paul, 1922)Google Scholar. His later views are developed principally in two posthumous works, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (New York: Macmillan, 1953)Google Scholar and Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations”: Generally Known as the Blue and Brown Books (New York: Harper, 1958)Google Scholar. For studies of Wittgenstein's thought, see, in addition to Urmson's Philosophical Analysis, Pole, David, The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein (London: Athlone Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Specht, Ernst K., The Foundations of Wittgenstein's Late Philosophy, trans. Walford, D. E. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969)Google Scholar; and Klemke, E. D., ed., Essays on Wittgenstein (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971)Google Scholar. It should be noted that the constructivist theory of language is by no means exclusive to Wittgenstein. Similar views were developed at about the same time by Cassirer and by the Polish logician Kasimir Ajdukiewicz, whom I discuss later. Among social scientists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf developed the influential hypothesis that all views of reality are determined in a largely unconscious manner by the linguistic systems of groups or cultures. See Black, Max, “Linguistic Relativity: The Views of Benjamin Lee Whorf,” Philosophical Review, 6n8 (04, 1959), 228–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Wittgenstein, , Philosophical Investigations, p. 226Google Scholar.

16 Rosen, , Nihilism, p. 9Google Scholar.

17 See Ajdukiewicz, , “The Scientific World-Perspective,” in Feigl, Herbert and Sellars, Wilfrid, eds., Readings in Philosophical Analysis (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), pp. 182–188Google Scholar.

18 Ajdukiewicz, p. 188.

19 Kuhn, , The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970)Google Scholar. Dudley Shapere has examined this work and called attention to its relativistic implications in Philosophical Review, 73 (07, 1964), 383–394CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kuhn replies to Shapere and other critics in a “Postscript” to the second edition of his work. He reaffirms that a theory cannot be true in the sense of accounting for nature or reality as it is (p. 206).

20 Kuhn, , The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 4Google Scholar.

21 Kuhn, p. 171.

22 Kuhn, p. 158.

23 Shapere, , “Meaning and Scientific Change,” pp. 41–85Google Scholar. In this essay, Shapere focuses particularly on the writings of Paul Feyerabend, which are cited extensively, along with pertinent writings by other anti-positivists, in the footnotes. For other accounts of this cleavage, along with useful bibliographical information, see Scheffler, Israel, Science and Subjectivity (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967)Google Scholar; Achinstein and Barker, eds., The Legacy of Logical Positivism; Achinstein, Peter, Concepts of Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Edward MacKinnon, S. J., “Epistemological Problems in the Philosophy of Science, I, II,” Review of Metaphysics, 22 (09 and 12, 1968), 113–137, 329–358Google Scholar; and Kordig, Carl R., “The Theory-Ladenness of Observation,” Review of Metaphysics, 24 (03, 1971), 448–484Google Scholar. There are several excellent series in which one may survey recent debate over the nature of science, including Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh Series in the Philosophy of Science, and Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. The most recent volume of the Minnesota Studies, Analyses of Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology, ed. Radner, Michael and Winokur, Stephen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970)Google Scholar, contains several articles on theory that take note of recent controversy.

24 For example, Ernest Nagel has conceded that “the principle of causality” (his term for what others have called the principle of the uniformity of nature) must be regarded as an indispensable or logically necessary maxim by anyone who chooses to adopt the goals of explanation and control as conceived by modern science. Yet he admits that the choice between modern theoretical science and other views of knowledge is itself historically contingent and logically arbitrary. In other words, there seems to be no basis in reason, nature, or history for regarding the underlying assumptions of modern science as more true or valid than those that underlie any other type of explanation that might be chosen by men of another epoch. See The Structure of Science, pp. 316–324.

25 Gunnell, , “Deduction, Explanation, and Social Scientific Inquiry,” American Political Science Review, 63 (12, 1969), 1233–1246Google Scholar. The same issue contains replies to Gunnell by Arthur S. Goldberg and A. James Gregor, along with a rejoinder by Gunnell, pp. 1247–1262. Gunnell draws upon antipositivist accounts of theory and observation to oppose the prevailing epistemological assumptions of political scientists in “The Idea of the Conceptual Framework: A Philosophical Critique,” Journal of Comparative Administration, 1 (08, 1969), 140–176CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thorson's, Thomas LandonBiopolitics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970)Google Scholar is another work by a political scientist that discusses sympathetically the antipositivist revolt in the philosophy of science.

26 Gunnell, , “Social Science and Political Reality: The Problem of Explanation,” Social Research, 35 (Spring, 1968), 159–201Google Scholar.

27 Gunnell, , in Social Research, p. 180Google Scholar.

28 Gunnell, , “Deduction, Explanation, and Social Science Inquiry,” p. 1244Google Scholar.

29 Gunnell, , “Deduction, Explanation…,” pp. 1245–46Google Scholar.

30 Gunnell's position may be contrasted with the more cautious position of Berger and Luckmann, to which I refer later. He does not restrict himself to the methodological assertion that the social scientist must grasp a society's understanding of social reality in order to explain action within that society. He seems to embrace the philosophical or epistemological view that all definitions of social reality are relative to some community and, furthermore, that one can never move beyond these various definitions to a true understanding of the nature of society as such. See particularly Gunnell's, “Social Science and Political Reality,” pp. 184–186Google Scholar. Neither reason nor experience offers a standpoint on which an objective understanding of social reality can be based. The attempt to construct an independent definition of social reality by reasoning must employ arbitrary or contingent assumptions (pp. 160–68). Moreover, an objective account of social reality cannot be built on experience because there are no independent or autonomous observations, (pp. 178–80).

31 In Politics and Experience: Essays Presented to Michael Oakeshott, ed. King, Preston and Parekh, B. C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 125–152Google Scholar.

32 Wolin, , in Politics and Experience, pp. 139–140Google Scholar.

33 Wolin, , “Political Theory as a Vocation,” American Political Science Review, 63 (12, 1969), 1062–1082CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Wolin, , “Political Theory as a Vocation,” p. 1063Google Scholar.

35 Wolin, , “Political Theory” p. 1075Google Scholar.

36 Wolin, , “Political Theory,” pp. 1073–1074Google Scholar. Wolin refers us to Michael Polanyi, but Polanyi's stand regarding the problem of historicism is not altogether clear. Grene, Marjorie, in The Knower and the Known (London: Faber and Faber, 1966)Google Scholar, emphasizes the similarity of Polanyi's approach to the Lebensphilosophie of Dilthey and the existential phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. On the other hand, Helmut Kuhn argues that Polanyi does nothing less than overcome the “crisis of the philosophical tradition generally known under the title of “historicism.”” According to Kuhn, Polanyi regards genuine knowledge not as a creation of the mind but as the mind's discovery of the character of reality through contact with it. See Kuhn's, “Personal Knowledge and the Crisis of the Philosophical Tradition,” in Intellect and Hope: Essays in the Thought of Michael Polanyi, ed. Langford, Thomas A. and Poteat, William H. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1968), pp. 111–135Google Scholar. Wolin does not indicate which of these interpretations he would prefer.

Other writings of Wolin seem also to take a position that is implicitly relativistic. In Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), pp. 17–21Google Scholar, he distinguishes between two meanings of vision, i.e., “objective” vision, which seeks to describe an object or event dispassionately, and “imaginative” vision, which constructs models that reflect the theorist's own fundamental values. Imaginative vision, it would seem, is always from a “perspective” and cannot claim to grasp reality as it is. The perspectival character of theory is emphasized also in “Political Theory: Trends and Goals,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Sills, David L. (New York: Macmillan and The Free Press, 1968), XII, 318–331Google Scholar, where Wolin asks: “Does each theory present us with a different political world? Is political theory a bedlam of subjectivity and relativism? How does one decide whether one theory is truer than another? Is the history of political theory merely a succession of different theories, instead of successive additions to our knowledge and understandine of politics?” Having raised the crucial issues, he replies that “[t]hese questions cannot be answered here, even assuming that they can be answered satisfactorily at all” (pp. 322–323). His statements about the nature of facts and concents seem, however, to rule out the very possibility of a definitive understanding of nature or reality.

37 Ideology and Utopia, trans. Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949), pp. 55–108Google Scholar. Mannheim's position is related to broader currents of modern thought in Maurice Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge and Hughes, H. Stuart, Consciousness and Society (New York: Knopf, 1958)Google Scholar. For Mannheim's influence on contemporary sociology, see Salomon, Albert, “Karl Mannheim, 1893–1947,” Social Research, 14 (09, 1947), 350–364Google Scholar; Wolff, Kurt, “The Sociology of Knowledge and Sociological Theory,” in Gross, Llewellyn, ed., Symposium on Sociological Theory (Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson and Co., 1959), 567–602Google Scholar; Kurt Wolff, From Karl Mannheim; and Horowitz, Irving Louis, Philosophy, Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, 1961)Google Scholar.

38 Connolly, , Political Science and Ideology (New York, Atherton Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

39 See Berger, and Luckmann, , The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 1–17Google Scholar. Berger and Luckmann concede that the philosopher, as opposed to the sociologist, is obligated “to obtain maximal clarity as to the ultimate status of what the man in the street believes to be ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge.’ Put differently, the philosopher is driven to decide where the quotation marks are in order and where they may safely be omitted, that is, to differentiate between valid and invalid assertions about the world” (p. 2). One must wonder, however, why social scientists should not attempt to understand opinions about social reality in light of what is really true of society.

40 See Surkin's, “Sense and Non-sense in Politics,” in An End to Political Science, ed. Surkin, Marvin and Wolfe, Alan (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 13–33Google Scholar. This essay is a slight modification of one that appeared earlier in PS, 2 (Fall, 1969), 573–581. Surkin here outlines a methodology for political science based on existential phenomenology and indicts the behavioral approach on grounds similar to those of Wolin. Despite its claim to objectivity and value neutrality, behavioralism is said to reflect the prevailing ideology and to serve the dominant institutions of American society. Surkin does not claim that his alternative methodology is any less evaluative, ideological, or contingent than behavioral methodology, for in his view, all claims to truth and all modes of philosophical and social inquiry are contingent and socially determined. His methodology is fundamentally different from behavioralism in this respect: recognizing its own contingent and ideological character, it dedicates itself to criticizing and changing the existing society rather than to preserving it.

41 See especially Jung, Hwa Yol, “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” Review of Politics, 33 (10, 1971), 538–563CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A revised version of this essay appears as the Introduction to Existence, Sociality and Political Reality: A Reader in Existential Phenomenology (Chicago: Regnery, 1972)Google Scholar. My analysis of Jung's thought would have been impossible were it not for his generosity in providing me with a copy of the manuscript of “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” which appeared in print only after the completion of my essay. I have also made use of a revised version of Jung's “A Phenomenological Critique of the Behavioral Persuasion in Politics: A Philosophical View,” which was delivered at the 1971 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. Other writines by Jung on existential phenomenology and politics include: “The Radical Humanization of Politics: Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Politics,” Archiv Für Rechtsund Sozialphilosophie, 53 (1967), 233–256Google Scholar; “Leo Strauss's Conception of Political Philosophy: A Critique,” Review of Politics, 29 (10, 1967), 492–517CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Confucianism and Existentialism: Intersubjectivity as the Way of Man,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 30 (12, 1969), 186–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a general account of the influence of phenomenology on social science, see Fred R. Dallmayr, “Existential Phenomenology and Social Science: An Overview and Appraisal,” which will appear in 1972 in a collection of essays on phenomenology to be edited bv Edward Casey and David Carr and to be published by the Quadrangle Press.

42 Jung, , “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” pp. 540–543Google Scholar.

43 Jung, , “Political Relevance,” p. 562Google Scholar.

44 Jung, , “Political Relevance,” pp. 547–553Google Scholar.

45 See Jung, , “Leo Strauss's Conception of Political Philosophy,” pp. 509–514Google Scholar.

46 Jung, , “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” p. 541Google Scholar.

47 Jung, , “Political Relevance,” p. 543Google Scholar.

48 Jung, , “Political Relevance,” p. 542Google Scholar.

49 This quotation appears in the revised manuscript of “The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” p. 13, but not in the version of the essay that appeared in Review of Politics.

50 See especially Kariel, , “Nietzsche's Preface to Constitutionalism,” Journal of Politics, 25 (05, 1963), 211–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar; In Search of Authority (New York: Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar; The Promise of Politics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966)Google Scholar; “The Political Relevance of Behavioral and Existential Psychology,” American Political Science Review, 61 (06, 1967), 334–342CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Open Systems (Itasca, Ill.: Peacock, 1969)Google Scholar: “Expanding the Political Present,” American Political Science Review, 63 (09, 1969), 768–776CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Creating Political Reality,” American Political Science Review, 64 (12, 1970), 1088–1098CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kariel's position is developed comprehensively in his forthcoming book, Saving Appearances, which I have had the privilege to examine in manuscript form. Kariel here argues forcefully against the possibility of a final or objective insight into “nature” or “reality”: “Our knowledge is inescapably fiction, illusion, myth, ideology, and rationalization.” He calls attention once more to Nietzsche's influence on this view of knowledge, but the contribution of other thinkers, such as Hobbes, Kant, and Schopenhauer are also examined. His discussion of American pragmatism brings out its relativistic tendencies with particular clarity. A critique of Kariel's thought is offered in Zetterbaum, Marvin, “Self and Political Order,” Interpretation, 2 (Winter, 1970), 233–246Google Scholar.

51 Kariel, , In Search of Authority, p. 5Google Scholar.

52 See Kariel, , “Nietzsche's Preface to Constitutionalism,” which appears in revised form in In Search of Authority, pp. 7–24Google Scholar.

53 Kariel, , Open Systems, p. 73Google Scholar. Italics in the original.

54 See especially Open Systems, p. 123, where Kariel states: “What we single out depends on us—or, more precisely, on the methodological conventions, conceptual frameworks, and boundaries we establish. And since frameworks, dimensions, and boundaries—reality-organizing principles—are man-made, the facts they expose are contingent on what we deem right and proper, on our norms. Our norms, in other words, structure reality. Expressing our dispositions, they dispose over facts—as well as of them. They give reality a significance it cannot otherwise have. Our inquiries, directed by our norms and our conventions, give meaning which reality does not previously possess.”

55 Kariel, , “Creating Political Reality,” p. 1091Google Scholar.

56 Kariel, , Open Systems, pp. 121–142Google Scholar; “Expanding the Political Present,” pp. 772–776; “Creating Political Reality,” pp. 1091–1098.

57 I have put this question to Professor Kariel and received the following reply in personal correspondence, which I quote with permission: “Is a thorough-going relativism a viable position? Perhaps we'll have to redefine—to define—‘position,’ specify what something vacuous and literally pointless consists of, inquiring into the constitution of nothing. My only ground for not despairing of the groundlessness of the present is ignorance, my present conviction (daily reconfirmed) that I don't know what is ahead, that the future is open and empty, that, while the past is a horror, there is still no evidence that the future must be the same. (If one is not caught in the conventional conception of time, one can of course think of the past as equally open, as not fully known, as not exhaustively horrible—and hence as allowing for hope.) So I am rather pleased by our lack of knowledge: my failure to know justifies these very words. To put it differently, I am in the position of expectancy (a feminine posture), anticipation, waiting. It arises out of my confidence in my ignorance—not my faith in the redeeming value of what may yet appear in the silences and spaces before us.” He later adds: “I should still like to maintain not that relativism is ‘viable’ but that nothing else is.”

58 Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin have been the most influential figures in the effort to restore political philosophy. For Strauss, see especially Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar, What is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959)Google Scholar, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964)Google Scholar, “Relativism” in Relativism and the Study of Man, ed. Schoeck, Helmut and Wiggins, James W. (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1961), pp. 135–157Google Scholar, and “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy,” Interpretation, 1 (Summer, 1971), 1–9Google Scholar. For Voegelin, see especially The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952)Google Scholar; Order and History, 3 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956–1957)Google Scholar; and Anamnesis (Munich: Piper, 1966)Google Scholar. A fourth and final volume of Order and History is in preparation. For useful accounts of Voegelin's thought, see Sebba, Gregor, “Order and Disorders of the Soul: Eric Voegelin's Philosophy of History,” Southern Review, 3, New Series (Spring, 1967), 282–310Google Scholar; Havard, William C., “The Changing Pattern of Voegelin's Conception of History and Consciousness,” Southern Review, 7, New Series (01, 1971), 49–67Google Scholar; Germino, Dante, “Eric Voegelin's Anamnesis,” Southern Review, 7 New Series (01, 1971), 68–88Google Scholar; and Sandoz, Ellis, “The Foundations of Voegelin's Political Theory,” Political Science Reviewer, 1 (Fall, 1971), 30–73Google Scholar.

Both Strauss and Voegelin have defended political philosophy against the positivist critique. Strauss has gone on to identify historicism, rather than positivism, as the dominant force in contemporary thought and the leading contemporary opponent of political philosophy. His own work in classical political philosophy may properly be seen as a rebuttal of both the theoretical historicism of Hegel, which claims that political philosophy as quest for knowledge has been superseded by complete knowledge of the historical whole, and the relativistic historicism of Heidegger, which holds that views of the good must always be relative to groundless choice or to a dispensation of fate. Voegelin's stand with respect to historicism has not been as clear-cut as Strauss's although, he, too, is sharply critical of the thought of Heidegger as well as that of Hegel. In formulating his own position, Voegelin has drawn in some measure from the historicist tradition. He has held, for example, that political science in its full grandeur is philosophy of history and that the conditions of a civilization set limits to the capacity of its members to discern the truth about reality. Stanley Rosen has drawn attention to these aspects of Voegelin's thought in his review of Order and History in Review of Metaphysics, 12 (12, 1958), 257–276Google Scholar. I would contend, however, that the thrust of Voegelin's thought is away from historicism, at least in the sense of epistemological relativism. Of decisive importance is his view that man may, by the analysis of the experience of existence, grasp the truth about the order of being and, in light of this knowledge, rank the symbolic representations of reality that various civilizations have produced. There are, of course, other important differences between Strauss and Voegelin, such as their disagreement as to whether Political philosophy can or should be guided by revelation. Political theory or philosophy as Voegelin conceives it would probably be looked upon by Strauss as a type of political theology.

59 Easton, , “The New Revolution in Political Science,” p. 1051Google Scholar.

60 Easton, , “The New Revolution,” pp. 1051, 1058Google Scholar.

61 I have examined the development of Easton's thought, including his somewhat ambiguous position with respect to historicism, in “David Easton's Political Theory,” Political Science Reviewer, 1 (Fall, 1971), 184–235Google Scholar. It is noteworthy that Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the leading figure in the establishment of general system theory, has developed a “perspectivistic” theory of knowledge, which adopts some of the central premises of historicism but seeks to preserve, in a limited sense, the possibility of absolute knowledge of reality. See Bertalanffy's, “An Essay on the Relativity of Categories,” General Systems, 7 (1962), 71–83Google Scholar.

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