Political Theory: Truth and Consequences

Extract

Bertrand de Jouvenel is one of a very small group of writers in our own time who make a serious effort to develop political theory in the grand style. In the English-speaking world, where so many of the interesting political problems have been solved (at least superficially), political theory is dead. In the Communist countries it is imprisoned. Elsewhere it is moribund. In the West, this is the age of textual criticism and historical analysis, when the student of political theory makes his way by rediscovering some deservedly obscure text or reinterpreting a familiar one. Political theory (like literary criticism) is reduced to living off capital—other people's capital at that.