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Philosophy and Political Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

John G. Gunnell
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Extract

THIS ESSAY CONSISTS OF A COLLECTION OF ARGUMENTS WHICH have been more fully developed elsewhere but are presented here in rather summary form in order to point towards a fundamental problem concerning the present status of political theory in the discipline of political science. This problem is not easily defined; but the difficulty recalls Alfred Cobban's complaint twenty-five years ago that political theory had become disen aged Lom ‘political facts’ and ‘political practice’ and transformed into an ‘academic discipline’. My concern is with the ‘philosophization’ of political theory. By this I do not mean simply that political theory is not relevant to politics or has become detached from actual political issues – although this is probably quite true – but that it has tended to become a residue of arguments in academic philosophy. The bios theoretikos and the bios philosophikos have become indistinguishable.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1979 , pp. 198 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1979

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References

1 Cobban, Alfred, ‘Ethics and the Decline of Political Theory’, Political Science Quarterly, 68, 09 1953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Easton, David, ‘The Decline of Modern Political Theory’, Journal of Politics, 13, 02 1951 .CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Easton, , The Political System: An Inquiry Into the State of Political Science, New York, Knopf, 1953 Google Scholar.

3 Dunning, William A., A History of Political Theories, New York, Macmillan, 1902, 1905, 1920. 3 VolsGoogle Scholar.

4 Willoughby, Westel Woodbury, The Political Theories of the Ancient World, New York, Longmans, Green, 1903;Google Scholar Merriam, Charles E. (ed.), A History of Political Theories, Recent Times, New York, Macmillan, 1924.Google Scholar

5 Catlin, George, The Story of the Political Philosophers, New York, McGraw‐Hill, 1939.Google Scholar

6 Sabine, George H., A History of Political Theory, New York, Holt, Rinehard, & Winston, 1938.Google Scholar

7 Wolin, Sheldon, ‘Political Theory as a Vocation’, American Political Science Review, 63, 12 1969.Google Scholar

8 Easton, David, ‘The New Revolution in Political Science’, American Political Science Review, 63, 12 1969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 See, for example, Gunnell, John G., Philosphy, Science, and Political Inquiry, Morristown, N. J., General Learning Press, 1975.Google Scholar

10 See, for example, the selections in Dallmayr, Fred R. and McCarthy, Thomas A. (eds.), Understanding and Social Inquiry, Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 1977.Google Scholar

11 Oakeshott, Michael, Rationalism in Politics, London, Methuen, 1962, pp. 137–67.Google Scholar

12 See, for example, Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, 8, 1969 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion and critical analysis of this position, see Gunnell, Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation, Ch. 4.

13 Wolin, , ‘Political Theory as a Vocation’, p. 1078.Google Scholar

14 For a critical analysis of the myth of the tradition and the works by individuals such as Strauss, Voegelin, Arendt, and Wolin, see Gunnell, , Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation, Cambridge, Mass., Winthrop, 1979, Chs. 2, 3.Google Scholar

15 For a discussion of the impact of the philosophy of science on the theory and practice of political science, see Gunnell, Philosophy, Science and Political Inquiry.

16 See ibid. Chs. 5, 6.

17 See, for example, Von Wright, George Henrik, Explanation and Understanding, Ithaca, N. Y., Cornell University Press, 1971.Google Scholar

18 For a more detailed discussion of this problem, see Gunnell, John G., ‘Political Science and the Theory of Action: Prolegomena’, Political Theory, 7, 02 1979 .Google Scholar

19 See ibid. for an elaboration of this issue.

20 See Gunnell, John G., ‘Social Scientific Knowledge and Policy Decisions: A Critique of the Intellectualist Model’, in Gregg, Phillip M. (ed.), Problems of Theory in Policy Analysis, Lexington, Mass., D. C. Heath, 1976.Google Scholar

21 See, for example, the series Philosophy, Politics and Society, Blackwell, 1936, 1962, 1967.

22 Cf. Bernstein, Richard J., The Restructuring of Political and Social Theory, New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976.Google Scholar