No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
On the Partisanship of Political Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 May 2020
Extract
Political scientists, whatever skeptical pretensions they have in theory, cannot help but believe that political knowledge is good for human beings. This belief is based on another: well-informed citizens are better citizens. Scientific enlightenment makes citizens better. Political scientists cannot help but be concerned with the education of citizens.
Consider the early survey research that seemed to show American citizens are mostly ignorant and apathetic. Its purpose was not to undermine responsible citizenship by showing that such citizenship is not possible. Instead, its purpose was to make it possible, perhaps for the first time. For some, it signaled the need for a project of citizen education to eliminate ignorance and apathy. For others, the proper conclusion was that democratic normative theory must be reformulated to make the idealism of citizens responsible and effective by locating it within the boundaries of the possible. Either way, it was clear that the significance of the research findings were not viewed as purely or even primarily theoretical. They could and were used to improve political practice, to improve the American regime in accordance with its citizens’ values.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1986
References
Notes
1 See Neumann, Harry, “Political Philosophy or Nihilist Science: Education's Only Serious Question,” Natural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. Jaffa, ed. Silver, T. B. and Schramm, P. W. (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984), pp. 365–74Google Scholar.
2 This preference, is useful to consider, is found in the two greatest examples of political science considering America: The Federalist and Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. A superb analysis of The Federal ist's “anthropocentric” or political partisanship is Epstein's, David F.The Political Theory of ‘The Federalist’ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984Google Scholar). On Tocqueville, see my “Tocqueville Democracy and Pantheism,“ presented to the Claremont Institute's 1984 Conference on Democracy in America and scheduled to be published in a book of essays on Tocqueville by the Claremont Institute.
3 See Strauss, Leo, The City and Man (New York: Rand-McNally, 1964), p. 1Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., p. 21.
5 Dahl, Robert, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), p. 32Google Scholar.
6 lbid. For thoughtful critiques of Dahl's sort of amoral pluralism see two articles by Canavan, Francis J.: “The Pluralist Game,” Law and Contemporary Problems 44 (Spring 1981), pp. 23–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Our Pluralistic Society,” Communio 9 (Winter 1982), pp. 355-67.
7 For a fuller account of the points made in this paragraph see my “Tocqueville on Democracy and Pantheism”.
8 See ibid. Also my “Tocqueville on Democratic Poetry, Democratic History, and the Limits of Democratic Thought,” Politics and Policy 4 (April 1984), pp. 16-29. The argument of this paragraph and the one above are used in these two essays in different contextsGoogle Scholar.
9 See Fredrich Nietzsche “The Problem of Socrates,’ paragraph 1, in Twilight of the Idols. Nietzsche asserts that “even Socrates“ made this judgment, which would make Socrates as dogmatic and as decadent as the partisans of modern science (see paragraph 2). Nietzsche, of course, is an opponent of Socrates. I contend the political scientist cannot be.
10 See my “The Scientific Destruction of Humanity and the Education Task of the Humanities,“ Journal of Thought 19 (Winter 1984), pp. 114-15Google Scholar.