Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:18:25.901Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Science and Political Philosophy: Ontological Not Normative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

David R. Mayhew
David R. Mayhew*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

What is the utility of classical political theory and modern writing about it for current-day positive (that is, explanatory) political science? By “classical,” I mean works from Plato through at least Weber.

In modern American political science, the conventional answer to this question has been that classical theory offers normative illumination. It helps out with certain “should” questions—that is, recommendations about how political systems should be constructed or how individuals acting as political beings should behave. Important as this line of thinking may be in its own terms, I believe that it has worked to marginalize or trivialize classical theory for many writers and teachers in the positive sectors. It has allowed the kind of dismissal that Ayer (1948), writing at the high tide of logical positivism, gave to normative concerns. Classical theory scholars made a tactical mistake a few generations back, if they had any choice in the matter, to let themselves become labeled “normative.”

It is much better to see classical theory as a source of ontological illumination—that is, as a window to the nature of political reality. What is the nature of the political reality that political scientists should be studying? If we members of the profession possessed a clear, singular answer to this question, we might not feel the need to keep classical theory alive. But we do not possess a clear, singular answer, or at least we do not agree on any.

Type
Political Science and Political Philosophy
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 2000 , pp. 192 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almond, Gabriel A., and Verba, Sidney. 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, an Analytic Study. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayer, A.J. 1946. Language, Truth, and Logic. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Gunnell, John. 1986. Between Philosophy and Politics: The Alienation of Political Theory. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Trans. Burger, Thomas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Kissinger, Henry A. 1957. A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. 1978. Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lasswell, Harold D. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr. 1989. Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modem Executive Power. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Mark Harrison. 1995. Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Neustadt, Richard E. 1960. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. 1982. Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. 1984. The Theory of Political Coalitions. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 1982. Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar