the ongoing revolution in american political science
Post on 03-Jan-2016
78 Views
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
THE ONGOING REVOLUTION IN AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE
by
Joshua R. Berkenpas
A Thesis Submitted to the
Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
Department of Political Science Advisor: Emily Hauptmann, Ph.D.
Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan
December 2009
THE ONGOING REVOLUTION IN AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE
Joshua R. Berkenpas, M.A.
Western Michigan University, 2009
This thesis explores a mid-twentieth century European-American literary
discourse on the death and prospects for revival of political theory or political
philosophy in the 1950s and early 1960s. This thesis is relevant for contemporary
American readers because we can still observe and feel the effects of the behavioral
revolution. I look at the literature on the death of political theory and discover that
there are two distinct strands of interpretation. In the US, the “behavioral revolt”
(Dahl 1961), was embraced and celebrated as a key to the advance of the scientific
study of politics. At the same time, disparate European political theorists began a
conversation that mourned the loss of the formerly open and eclectic ways and
practices of Western political theory. I argue for a new understanding of the
behavioral revolution in the US that takes into account the European perspective on
the death of political theory. I also discuss how the related themes of positivism and
the “scientific study of politics” (Storing 1962), became touchstones for a great deal
of writing and discussion in the 1950s and 1960s. This new reading on the death of
political theory shows, finally, that political theory can never die.
Copyright by Joshua R. Berkenpas
2009
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are a number of people who have contributed to the completion of this
work. I would like to recognize two groups in particular. First, on the professional
level, this essay would not have been possible without the efforts of the members of
my master’s thesis committee. The contributors on this level were three. Assisting
my efforts from the beginning was Emily Hauptmann. Without her appreciation of
liberality and her sage like advice, I could not have originated much less finished this
project. Susan Hoffmann also served on the committee and provided an incisive
critique of my basic assumptions and whose efforts are gratefully acknowledged.
Finally, Jacinda Swanson provided thorough commentary for several drafts of the
manuscript. Without her discerning eye, I could not have argued as well as I have
managed. Second, on an even more personal level, this essay would never have
reached this stage in development without the sacrifices of two more individuals. The
first is Nancy Berkenpas. Without her life’s labor I would not stand here today. The
second, and perhaps the most decisive to date; was the ultimate sacrifice of Nicholas
Sowinski, or “Ski” as we called him. I wish to honor his (and all the others’) ultimate
sacrifice in the name of our freedoms and democracy.
Joshua R. Berkenpas
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................... ii
PREFACE ............................................................................................................... vi
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION....................................................................................... 1
The Puzzle ........................................................................................... 1
Thesis Statement .................................................................................. 2
How to Read Against the Grain ........................................................... 4
The Behavioral Revolution.................................................................. 9
Contemporary Political Theory ........................................................... 13
Historicism .......................................................................................... 16
The Relevance of Kuhn Today ............................................................ 19
II. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND NORMAL SCIENCE ....................... 22
Kuhn’s Theory of Scientific Revolution ............................................. 21
The American Science of Politics ....................................................... 27
Gunnell’s Discipline: History as Genealogy ....................................... 28
Dahl’s Discipline: A Monumental Protest .......................................... 33
Dahl’s Empiricism ....................................................................... 34
Dahl’s Tribute to the Scientific Imagination ................................ 37
Dahl’s Legacy in American Political Theory ............................... 39
Table of Contents—continued
iv iv
CHAPTER
III. HISTORICAL INTERLUDE ...................................................................... 43
Time Travel or Imaginative Journeys .................................................. 43
The 1950s: Science and Culture in America ....................................... 44
Sputnik Mania ..................................................................................... 46
IV. THE DEATH OF POLITICAL THEORY .................................................. 50
The Death of Political Theory ............................................................. 50
The Decline of “Creative Value Theory” ............................................ 53
Decline from another Angle ................................................................ 60
Arendt’s Diagnosis (Part One) ............................................................ 66
Strauss’ Viewpoint .............................................................................. 70
Laslett’s Proclamation ......................................................................... 77
Dahl’s Skepticism ................................................................................ 87
Berlin’s Synthesis ................................................................................ 90
Discursus: The Philosophy of Science ......................................... 92
Berlin’s Relativism ...................................................................... 94
Berlin’s Humanism ...................................................................... 99
V. THE 1960S – BLOWBACK AND REVIVAL ........................................... 102
Kaplan’s Thesis ................................................................................... 102
“Blowback” and the 1960s .................................................................. 105
Table of Contents—continued
v v
CHAPTER
Before the Tradition Ended (Arendt Continued) ................................. 107
Germino Strikes Back.......................................................................... 111
Wolin’s Vision .................................................................................... 117
VI. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................... 125
The Ongoing Revolution in American Political Science .................... 125
The Disciplining of American Political Science ................................. 126
The European Perspective ................................................................... 129
Political Theory Can Never Die .......................................................... 130
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 132
vi
PREFACE
In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither
harbor for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting place nor appointed
destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel
Oakeshott (1956, 15).
As a graduate student the modern intellectual world is literally new to me. To
speak metaphorically, I stand on a point in the landscape where all the world’s
features appear the same. When I began this journey, my personal map of the
intellectual universe was like a blank page. The distinct features and distinguishing
landmarks were yet to be marked out on my personal map about the grown-up world
of human affairs. Now my eyes have been opened to the vast expanse and seemingly
endless horizon of the modern intellectual universe. I am often dazzled by the
complexity of human affairs. Switching to a psychological metaphor one can
compare my experience to that of a bad dream. In this dream I am in a hallway filled
with doorways. Each door leads on to further hallways with more doors. At every
turn there are new doorways, newly discovered paths that lead in divergent directions.
Every new door that I find opens up into an alternate universe that may or may not
correspond to the one that I have just left. Correspondence may obtain at certain
junctures, like the frames of the doorways themselves, but it is overwhelmingly the
case that these parallel universes of discourse are in fact worlds of ideas which lack
sufficient compatibility. Returning to a point of substance, I aim to stay within the
general limits of the American academic universe. But even here there are parallel
and incongruent dimensions of analysis and interpretation which do not correspond
vii
and cannot be reconciled. What’s more is that I am a newcomer to both political
theory and to the academic study of politics more generally. Accordingly my
perspective (both prospective and retrospective) is fresh and malleable. At times this
mental condition is beneficial in that it allows me to move in and out of areas without
becoming committed to any one of their internal dictates. I continue to move with
relative ease. Conversely, this state of affairs can leave one with feelings of
bewilderment and loss. At times, it is hard not to feel lost, encumbered and weighed
down. To utilize a modern British metaphor, I can say that occasionally I feel like I
have become “lost in a great wood.” This emotionally-felt loss of direction is a
recurrent happening at this point in my intellectual journey. The wood or “the forest”
(as the Americans say), of modern science (both natural and social) is vast, filled with
intersecting pathways, multiple twists and turns, and numerous dead-ends. Without a
personal map, compass and or other reliable means to move about and navigate
through-out the intellectual expanse, one is liable to remain, as they say, “forever a
traveler without a destination.”1
1 Recall Dante's Inferno - "Midway along the journey of our life/ I woke to find myself in a dark wood/ for I had wandered off from the straight path," Canto 1, 1-3. One needs a guide like Virgil to help travel the intellectual expanse. Other sources of inspiration for the preface are as follows: Kafka (1946), Polanyi (1958b), Schumacher (1977), and Euben (2006).
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Knowledge is not made for understanding;
it is made for cutting
Foucault (1984).
Political Theory is a Critical Engagement
Wolin (1989).
The Puzzle
The aim of this essay is to develop a thesis on the death of political theory in
the 1950s. Political theory in the 1950s was thought to be dead (Laslett 1956), or at
least in a serious state of atrophy and decline (Strauss 19541). Commentators for the
most part agreed that something monumental had happened to the former practice of
political theory or philosophy.2
1Strauss’ article was originally part of the Judah L. Magnes Lectures delivered in 1954 and 1955 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. For organizational purposes I have retained 1954 as the date of publication, even as I have utilized (and cited) the 1957 Journal of Politics reprint.
Authors of the time did not agree on what this
something was. My aim is to present this historic discussion on the death of political
theory, and then to argue that there are three sources that combine to explain it. In
pursuing my thesis, I will also provide a rather unique and ongoing evaluation of the
different perspectives of the authors I address. There are three authors who I discuss
in the American group (David Easton, although born in Canada, Robert Dahl, and
2The terms political theory and political philosophy are surprisingly slippery concepts. As I use them political theory and political philosophy are synonymous in that they refer to the general practice of doing either political theory or political philosophy. In its contemporary connotation “classical
2
Dante Germino). All the other authors I discuss are of a European background
(Alfred Cobban, Leo Strauss, Peter Laslett, Hannah Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin). The
European authors were also responding to the death of theory discourse, but unlike
the American authors, they were not primarily concerned with the behavioral
movement in the US. The diagnosis of the European authors is very different than
that given by the American authors. It is clear that the Americans were responding to
the death of political theory in relation to the behavioral revolution in America. The
Europeans, however, are interested to expose a much larger source of political
theory’s decline. The way that I have formulated and worked through the problem,
finally, should be of assistance for those who wish to re-imagine how the behavioral
movement bequeathed to contemporary political science its current epistemological
and methodological state of affairs.
Thesis Statement
I contend that the behavioral revolution should be characterized as a moment
in time when the elevation of the scientific method of the physical sciences to its
current theoretical status in American political science was accompanied and
encouraged by a growing neglect of the older philosophy.3
political philosophy” refers to a subset of political theory or philosophy and concentrates on the classic cannon (roughly, from Plato to Marx).
This revolution in
3 The “older philosophy” is herein characterized as inherently “moral” and therefore “political.” There are similarities in subject matter and style of theorizing between the older philosophy and contemporary classical theory (but they are not the same). The moral = political equation is no longer valid today, and so I use the adjectives “older” or “traditional” to distinguish this practice from the diverse range of modern day ones. According to Hauptmann (2005), the word “traditional” was widely used in the 1950s and 1960s; but “people in the subfield of political theory today no longer use it of themselves” (230). In the 1950s and 1960s, however, “the adjective ‘traditional’ in the label ‘traditional political theorist’ indicates an approach to political theory that emphasizes a tradition of theorizing about
3
thinking brought about a sea change in epistemology and method. I argue that the
behavioral revolution was ultimately responsible for the American death discourse in
the US during the 1950s. At the same time, European authors were talking about the
death of political theory while not directly discussing the behavioral revolution in the
US. Given this puzzling difference between the American and European
perspectives, I present three theses.
When combined these arguments focus a spot light on the common theme of
the death of political theory in the 1950s. The three theses then amount to a
trifurcated root that make up the death of political theory. First, the American
practice of political science would become a discipline (in the sense of conforming to
a scientific paradigm) for the first time in the middle of the twentieth century. I argue
that this was possible because American political science embraced value-free science
and the scientific method. This finding, in turn, will allow us to see that the
revolution continues today. Second, I will argue that the European perspective on the
death of political theory, although certainly related to the conversation in the US, was
focused more on the big picture and what had been lost in the transition to the new
world order. Their discussion of loss and the death of political theory is what I have
characterized as the death or loss of the philosophic and historic sense. In its moral or
political guise, this sense includes the capacity to judge truth and consequence, and to
establish, evaluate, and regenerate lasting principles of the good and the right order in
society. The European authors insist on the moral character of politics and repeatedly
politics from ancient Greece up until the present” (Hauptmann 2005, 230). See also Wolin (1969) for a discussion of how the moral and the political came to be intertwined conceptually in the Western
4
champion the power of the human imagination. Finally, the third point I will make is
that political theory can never die. This knowledge is based on the first two
arguments. At first, we will see how political theory could have been thought dead or
dying by men and women working in the 1950s. Ultimately, from our present
position, and by use of our own philosophical and historic sense, we shall see that
political theory did not die, and that it will never perish, so long as people are capable
of imagining a better world.
How to Read Against the Grain
Another point I would like to make at the outset is that there is an alternative
way to think about politics. It is hard not to think “scientifically” in American
political science today. Yet an alternative vision is required to see the whole world-
contemporary picture or geopolitical state of affairs. Accordingly, this essay is also
an exercise in non-scientific thinking. This is not to say that political science in
America is an easy discipline to acquire or profession to practice. Rather it is to
forcefully imply that the modern way of empirical science is so predominant or
hegemonic that it is difficult to think in any other way. Given these considerations, I
have taken the trouble of highlighting an alternative way of thinking about politics.
This alternative vision of knowledge (scientia) represents a form of practice that is in
some ways more difficult to obtain than the methods of mainstream social science in
America, (in the first place, because the practice I speak of is contra-hegemonic).
tradition (85).
5
As a student trying to sort through the behavioral literature of the 1950s and
early 1960s, the debates of that era may even feel like they are still very salient to
most or even all political scientists today. Yet upon further reflection, I suspect there
is more agreement than debate concerning the nature of political inquiry today.
Empirical political science is the way to be successful in the discipline, and the way to
be successful “on the market” (Simien 2002). Although it may sound like I am
completely anti-behavioral and always critical of empirical research, this is merely an
artifact or inescapable side-effect of the material I am dealing with. No doubt a
counter-point is in order. Some readers will find it relevant that coming into this
project I still thought I would be making a contribution to modern empirical political
science. I had devised a novel theory of the social and political system (not unlike
Parsons 1951 or Easton 1953), and I thought I would be able to formulate surprising
hypotheses and to test them rigorously enough to demonstrate my own proficiency in
the everyday methods of political science. But this is not what happened. I decided
to pursue a thesis in terms of political theory, and I made a personal discovery of
some importance.4
As it turns out, I now appreciate an alternative way of doing political science
that has very little to do with the behavioral (empirical) method or the modern
scientific method per se. In this master’s thesis, then, I hope to describe in detail the
4 On my use of the adjective “personal,” see Michael Polanyni (1958) Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy. For Polanyi (1958), “personal knowledge” is an “intellectual commitment,” and “it seems reasonable to describe this fusion of the personal and the objective as Personal Knowledge” (viii). In other words, personal knowledge is a type of wisdom that is objective because it is experiential. I will discuss these ideas more below (especially in chapter V); see also Eckstein (1956).
6
disciplinary and practical consequences that followed in the wake of the behavioral
revolution in American academic social science. This will require that the reader of
this thesis strive to “think outside the box” or “against the grain” of modern
mainstream empirical science. I am traveling back in time to engage in a debate that
is no longer so active. The debate between behavioralists and anti-behavioralists was
quite pitched in the 1950s and 1960s, and it came to occupy a number of social
scientists in many academic fields. I enter the debate imaginatively on the
epistemological level, or the philosophical level of how we know what we think we
know.
This last point brings up my style of presentation, or the form of argument that
my thesis takes. Those not familiar with the literature of contemporary political
theory might somehow feel that the main body of the text reads too much like an
extended literature review. I have struggled to utilize the canonical approach in
contemporary political theory in a new way. A summary listing of political theorists
who are considered canonical would include: Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes,
Locke, Rousseau, Mill, and Marx among others. A political theorist employing the
canonical technique or method of analysis takes various authors and compares them
by interpreting the texts in such a manner as to highlight a particular point or general
line of argument. For example, if one wanted to compare ancient and modern ideas
about different political theorists’ notions on political authority and legitimacy, one
could take the theory of Aristotle and compare it with say the theory of Hobbes. In
the process of comparing and contrasting the canonical authors’ viewpoints on the
7
topic, the political theorist is ideally able to illuminate or cast fresh light on a problem
or issue that is (or may be) relevant to contemporary readers. I follow this practice to
a point. The authors I have chosen for comparison are not members of the canonical
line-up, and so I do not feel that my approach easily maps onto the more conventional
one. In my thesis, I call what I am doing “setting the stage for encounter.” These
staged encounters are a variation on the common practice of comparing and
contrasting (canonical) authors for philosophical purposes. I have brought together
these authors on the death of political theory to show that the revolution continues,
and that political theory can never die.
In order to shed light on the contemporary relevance of the topic and the
authors chosen for review, I have also provided extensive (although not
comprehensive) biographical details and historical background information. This last
maneuver further separates my approach from most of what canonical theorists are up
to today. For most contemporary political theorists who use this approach, the
relevance of biography to canonical comparison is left implicit in their analysis of the
historic texts. In my opinion, this is because it is felt that the added biographical and
historical information is irrelevant to a succinct and narrow (even “parsimonious”)
reading of the classic texts. A better characterization of my approach to the “death
authors” might be what James Farr (2009) has recently called “stylized comparison”
or Arlene Saxonhouse (2009) has called “stylized narrative.” I believe that what
differentiates this form of textual (substantive) and discursive (hermeneutic) analysis
is that the threshold for acceptance (or “inter-subjective” deference) is far less than
8
the traditional canonical line-up. As I see it, I have repeatedly violated at least three
rules of a mainstream approach to writing about the canon in political theory today.
First, I have chosen to discuss authors that are not canonical. Second, I have included
detailed biographical information. Third, I have expounded a great deal on the
historical context of the period in question.
One last point on my approach to the death of political theory is in order. In
my telling the mere selection and interpretation of these authors is a political act.5
5 The “political,” in my understanding, is inherently moral, normative, and is full of contention and controversy (viz. it is inescapably value-laden). To theorize “with the grain,” is inherently non-political. This usage is very close to how Margaret Canovan (1974) defines “political thought,” in the “classic sense,” in which political thought “purports to reveal the nature of political things and to provide criteria by which to judge them” (1). Not without further irony from this essay’s present position, Canovan (1974) adds, “political thought in that sense is dead” (1). See also Wolin (1960).
It
is a political act because I have made a choice among competing claims to
knowledge. The choice to include some authors and not others, moreover, cannot
help but be a political one. The staging of these encounters is meant to result in a
critical exchange (Dielmansegg, Mewes & Glaser-Scmidt 1995). I endeavor to
clearly point out how each author sees the behavioral revolution, and neatly
demonstrate their different views on the death of political theory. The numerous
points of critical exchange which emerge are partly possible because the authors
chosen for analysis all address a specific topic at a distinct juncture in the history of
American political science. My interpretation of their reasons for writing, however,
does not, and I argue should not, exhaust the extent to which the reader must also be
critically engaged with the topic. In other words, there is not only a dialectic (not
dialectical materialism) between myself (the author) and the writers chosen for
9
discussion. There is also a relationship between you (the reader), and these same
writers. In short, I do not expect the reader to agree with my interpretation, and rather
expect him or her to be in fact critical. My approach has forced me to leave in (or not
edit out), a lot of information that is primarily historical in nature. I do this because I
deem this information crucial for most readers’ judgments and interpretations
regarding the death of political theory and so the effects of the behavioral revolution
in American political science (for a fuller explanation of this point of method see
chapter III). The staging of these encounters must be eclectic, uniquely personal and
original.6
Not too long ago, and in much of the discipline of American political science,
the behavioral approach to politics had achieved hegemonic status. The behavioral
literature makes it clear that by the close of the 1960s, the dreamed of promise of a
modern science of politics had been achieved in fact (1964 APSA survey; Wolin
1969).
Ultimately, I hope that my way of developing the problem (the death of
political theory), will allow others to see for themselves what can be done outside the
“empirical” (Dahl 1961) or the behavioralist confines that now characterize a great
deal of mainstream academic political and social science in the US today.
The Behavioral Revolution
7
6 Margaret Canovan (1974) defines “originality” as “the introduction of new categories and ways of seeing things, or the replacement of an old set by a different one” (6).
In historic context, the behavioral revolution refers primarily to middle of the
7 The 1964 survey is mentioned often in the behavioral/anti-behavioral literature in the late 1960s (e.g. I cite McCoy and Playford 1967). The survey was conducted by the APSA and is reported by Somit and Tanenhaus (1964) American Political Science: A profile of a Discipline. The survey asked respondents to rank the most influential political scientists of the era. According to McCoy and Playford (1967) only one of the top eight most selected political scientists did not utilize the behavioral
10
20th century American academic practice of political science (Adcock, Bevir, &
Stimson 2007). I argue that it was a reform movement that brought with it a
widespread acceptance of empiricist (in a positivist8 sense) notions of scientific
theory. Post-World War American political scientists would embrace two
components of classical European positivism (following in the general style of St.
Simon and Comte9
approach to politics (2). Wolin quotes Pool’s (1967) remarks as an example of the triumphal nature of behavioral political science rhetoric at the time (Wolin 1969, 1081). 8 “Positivism,” in my use, is a fusion of rationalist and empiricist presuppositions about the world into a sort of ideology or world-view. One of its primary components is a “value-free” science ( or in Weber’s formulation wertfrei Wissenschaft), or as I explain later, non-political or apolitical scientific research. For more on the empirical (in American positivist terms) see Dahl (1961) below. For a more definite account of the meaning of this term, see the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought (1991). See also Steinmetz (2005). 9Auguste Comte (1798-1857) is considered to be a founder of European positivism in the 19th century. His writings were appropriately encyclopedic and far ranging (Jones 1998, 3). The following quote is illustrative but is not a fair summation of his entire body of work. On the topic of politics, the young Comte says, “when politics is a positive science, that is a science of observation, it will have no more drawbacks than the confidence which we every day fearlessly accord to a doctor, to whom we are nevertheless entrusting our life” (Jones 1998, 3-4)
). The European positivist idea of a “value-free science” (wertfrei
Wissenschaft), was based on observation of the real world, and was coupled with the
natural and physical science’s “scientific method.” These two principles of European
positive science were made into cornerstones of the American behavioral method.
George Steinmetz (2005) is an anti-behavioralist or anti-positivist (in the context of
Steinmetz’s edited volume there is very little difference between these terms).
Steinmetz (2005) believes that the “uncanny persistence of positivism” over the last
fifty years (29), helps explains the “continuing hold of the positivist imagination”
today. “In general,” says Steinmetz (2005), “the positivist imagination” can be
identified by its reliance on:
11
general and usually empirical laws; in doctrines of falsification or
prediction; in a spontaneous preference for ‘parsimonious
explanations’ … or for mathematical and statistical models; and in
an adherence to a caricatured view of the natural sciences as a role
model (30).
In the political science and theory literature of the 1950s and early 1960s, I have also
repeatedly encountered this understanding of “science,” as it was appropriated from
the natural or physical (“hard”) sciences. Widespread and diverse discussions took
place about the meaning of scientific value neutrality, and the meaning of science and
theory in the European and American social and political sciences. Yet, I think it is
unfair to unduly affix a positivist epithet onto all of modern day American political
science. As such, I have tried to focus on how the behavioralists took over two
aspects of the classic (European) positivist tradition. These were the reliance on the
scientific method of the natural sciences, and the insistence on the value neutrality of
the scientific endeavor. As a consequence of the behavioral revolution, or so the story
goes, the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, and experiment became the
sanctioned way to do political science and theory in America. In other words, even
though I agree with Steinmetz’ (2005) characterization of the “positivist imagination,”
I should prefer to say the “behavioral imagination” or as Gunnell (1993) says, the
“behavioral persuasion.”
Contemporary Political Theory
The behavioral approach to politics has achieved professional status in the US.
Evidence for this comes from the experience of a graduate student today, and from the
12
fact that it is so hard for this student not to think in other terms.10 In a large part of
American political science today, theories are developed, hypotheses are forwarded,
and these theories are tested in methodologically rigorous ways. Even so, this is
probably not the case for students focusing on political theory. Political theorists in
the American academy today are simply not interested in the problems and
controversies in empirical and behavioral political science. Just as the proponents of
behavioralism as empirical theory have gotten past the methodological debates that
were salient in the 1950s, so too have American political theorists largely withdrawn
from the discussion (Gunnell 1993). Since most graduate students choose to focus on
the “scientific” areas of political science (comparative, American, etc), however, I
will not ignore this bigger picture. 11
Taken as a whole, the discipline of political science today is not
monolithically positivist, even though its median distribution can be described this
way. It must be stressed that this state of affairs in no way obtains in the subfield of
American political theory. In American political theory today, the opposite is actually
the norm (a widely distributed pluralism
12
10Steinmetz (2005) likens this condition to “a kind of trauma,” which he calls a “positivist haunting” (37). Elsewhere, I have written in a similar vein, that I feel like I suffer from a “positivist hangover,” because I find it so difficult to think otherwise in the American academy today (unpublished manuscript). 11I approach this thesis as both a political scientist and a political theorist, but without embracing either discipline outright. As such I consider this essay to be from an outsider’s viewpoint (i.e. I am not partisan). From the outside looking in, I am trying to understand, and make sense of the diverse arguments about the death of political theory.
now prevails). In statistical terms, there is
12 I understand the concept of pluralism in political terms. What this means is that pluralism is understood as a state of affairs in which diversity and difference (in terms of identity, culture, world-view etc.) are celebrated and encouraged as political concepts. There are both good and bad outcomes of the acceptance of pluralism in a society. More pluralism means greater diversity of opinion in the market of ideas, which J.S. Mill (1991) among others, has celebrated as a key to freedom and democracy (see also Tocqueville’s related ideas on the “equality of condition.”) On the other hand,
13
no normal distribution. There are a number of rival epistemologies and a subsequent
diversity of methods for conducting any given style of political theory.13
I have also found that American political theory is most clearly understood in
terms of what it is not. During the behavioral revolution this image is clearly
discernable given that the American political theorist’s I discuss all oppose (to some
degree) the over-time paradigmatic structuring of the discipline (Germino 1963,
Wolin 1969). From the experience of protest, the theorists in the 1950s and 1960s
came to understand that their way of practice must remain an open challenge to the
emerging mainstream and so to be unapologetically eclectic (Eckstein 1956,
Hauptmann 2006). If American political theory was to remain intact, and not fall
victim to assimilation into the behavioral notion of “empirical” theory, then it makes
sense that in the 1950s and 1960s, the debates about method in political science
would be quite prevalent (Wolin 1969). It seems correct to classify the contemporary
ways of political theory in America as a diverse and eclectic montage of approaches –
and none of them were (or are today) necessarily “normative” (meaning “law-like” –
nomos – or taking on the quality of law in a community). Of course, some self-
Even so, a
fair number of political theorists have addressed the epistemological orthodoxies in
mainstream political science from time to time (for two recent examples; see
Hauptmann 2005, Gunnell 2006). In fact, it seems that the enterprise of American
political theory has largely found its bearings as an undisciplinable enterprise, and by
focusing on what it was not (Wolin 1969; Dryzek, Honig, Phillips 2008).
pluralism seems to lead to value relativism and an apparent impossibility to reconcile one set of beliefs to another or judge one right and the other wrong (Brecht 1959).
14
identified political theorists may be inclined to work within the behavioral framework
of a value-neutral political science. But then, in my opinion, this theory cannot be
properly speaking political (see Wolin 1969 below; cf. McCoy & Playford 1967).
Against authors like Easton (1951) and Dahl (1958, 1961), I argue that modern
political theory cannot be value-neutral if it is to remain “political.”
To reiterate, the discovery has been made that the way of the political theorist
must remain eclectic (Eckstein 1956; Hauptman 2006). Given the political fact of
pluralism, there is not, and there cannot be, one predominant method of political
theory today. Accordingly, it appears that political theorists cannot be “scientists” in
the sense understood by modern political (empirical) science. To obtain such a skill
set, invariably requires that a student of American political science adapt to the
precepts and methods of a modern behavioral science (including its borrowings from
19th century European positivism). The modern scientist’s primary schedule of
methods (broadly behavioral or empirical), were once anathema to political theorists
in the 1950s and the 1960s. In large part this was because so many of them came to
understand that political theory must remain open and eclectic in its epistemology and
methods over the long run (Eckstein 1956, Hauptmann 2006). Thanks in part to the
efforts of Kuhn (1962), we now have a greater understanding of the consequences of
the tendency of practitioners to band together under a professional banner. This
knowledge impels one to doubt any modern discipline’s methods. In order to
challenge and upset any comfortable notions and easy visions of life that a “normal
13 On the varieties of American political theory today, see for example, Connolly (2006).
15
science” of politics engenders today, one begins to see that an ongoing critique is
justified (Kuhn 1962). 14
The behavioral revolution was in significant part a methodological revolt
against the “historicism” then prevalent in mainstream political science in the 1950s
(Popper 1944a, 1944b, 1945, 1962a, 1962b; Easton 1951, 1953). This style of
political theory had come to embrace a form of methodological historicism and
thought it could reduce past events into their constituent parts and then analyze the
casual pathways in service of predictive prophecy (Easton 1951, 1991; Voegelin
1953; Crick 1964; Gunnell 1978, 1991). Beneath the surface veneer of the old style
of political science, then, there was an insurgent “mood” (Dahl 1961), or a new way
of viewing the world (a Weltanschauung). Steinmetz (2005) calls this mood the
“positive imagination,” but that I will refer to it less inclusively as the behavioral or
empirical imagination (30). As a concept, “historicism,” has been defined many ways
This point is covered elegantly by Sheldon Wolin (1969; see
also Brown 2002), and is discussed in more detail below (chapter V). Meanwhile,
these widespread, but by no means monolithic conditions of eclecticism and endless
critique, make it very difficult for a student of political theory to make any headway
as a student of politics in the American academy today. The reader of this master’s
thesis will find both of these conditions operative throughout the essay. Hopefully,
the content will both strengthen the political imagination, and empower one’s critical
capacity for thought.
Historicism
14 See Popper (1969) “Reason or Revolution.” Incidentally, Popper (1969) explicitly denies being a
16
and has been used in a variety of forms over the years (Adcock, Bevir, & Stimson
2007). According to the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought (1991), there
are two general and completely incompatible usages of the term in circulation among
scholars. The first has deeper roots and goes back to a rationalist critique of the type
of historical prophecy that many social scientists indulged in during the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. Authors like Karl Popper (1944a, 1962b), attacked social
thinkers like Karl Marx for their so-called “historicism.” The designation of
historicism by Popper signified a collection of deadly assumptions (implicit and
explicit), which together allowed the social scientist to take historical trends and
interpret them in such a way (or so they thought) as to make predictions about the
near future.15
Marx’s story about the rise of the proletariat and the end of capitalism, were in part
based on his observations about the past and his concurrent belief that he had found
the key to the progressive stages of the human condition over time (Marx 1848). In
Marx’s telling, it was inevitable (due to his “dialectical materialism”), that the
economic forces generated by capitalism would eventually lead to capitalist society’s
For his critics, Marx is a classic example of this form of historicism
(Popper 1962b). According to Sheldon Wolin (1960):
Historicism was Popper’s name for a claim, as old as Hebraic
prophecy and as recent as Marx’s conception of dialectical
materialism, to knowledge of the ‘story of mankind’ in the form of
a ‘plot’ that would be realized at some future date (499).
“positivist” in this article (290). 15 “Presentism” is a related fallacy in historical research. For example, Gunnell & Easton (1991) define presentism as “a bias that comes from conscious or unconscious selection of historical facts in terms of present objectives” (3; cf. Wolin 1969).
17
dissolution and its ultimate replacement with communism as an alternative form of
society.16
Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolution is crucial to the first root of my
explanation for the death of political theory: the disciplining of American Political
science. It must be remembered that the “new science of politics” was not always so
This sort of prediction, based on an interpretation and imputation the past,
is the essence of the first type of historicist method almost exclusively referred to in
this essay (see Gunnell 1991, 1993; see also Easton 1951).
The second, and more recent type of historicism, is completely different than
the first (Adcock, Bevir, & Stimson 2007). Whereas Popper (1944a) and his
followers have always used the term in a negative sense as a kind of admonition, the
proponents of the newer historicism see it as a necessary corrective to the un-
historical and non-contextual “theory” that passes in social science circles today
(Adcock, Bevir, & Stimson 2007). In this meaning of historicism, the focus is
reversed, and the use of the past to supplement present understanding is very much
applauded (contemporary Marxists not excluded). It is understood that one cannot
know the present without knowledge of the past, just as no theory can be understood
out of historical context (Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought 1991). I do not
further discuss the second of these uses in this essay.
The Relevance of Kuhn Today
16According to Poulantzas (1968) historical materialism (“the science of history”) and dialectical materialism (“Marxist philosophy”) are distinct disciplines. He notes that historicists (he names the young Lukács) tend to reduce the latter is to the former, while the positivist-empiricists reduce the former to the latter (11). Although this is an interesting distinction to keep in mind, I will not further discuss either approach in detail.
18
preponderant (Storing 1962). In fact, the borrowing of positivist ideas and the making
of the behavioralist methodology actually caused quite a bit of controversy in the
1950s and throughout the 1960 (Schaar & Wolin 1963). In the 1950s and 1960s,
American political scientists disciplined themselves, and they did so by embracing a
methodological revolution they called “behavioral” (in terms of an “empirical”
science17
The work of Thomas Kuhn (1962) and his gifted devotee John Gunnell (1993;
2009), can help us make this connection. The behavioral method was a revolutionary
way of conducting scientific inquiry in American political science. My research
indicates that before the revolution there was neither a paradigm nor really a political
science “discipline” to speak of (see Easton’s 1951 contrary view, discussed below).
I understand a discipline to be an academic and therefore institutional organization
that includes a number of subfields devoted to it. Following Kuhn’s (1962) work
(discussed in chapter 2), a discipline is roughly equivalent to a paradigm in the sense
). The behavioral approach to politics was established in revolt against the
older diverse and multiple ways of historical, moral and speculative research (Gunnell
1991; Dahl 1961). At first glance, that is to contemporary eyes, it may seem like the
behavioralist as empiricist (e.g. Dahl 1961 and Easton 1951; see Germino 1963) have
already triumphed over the anti-behavioralist (e.g. Strauss 1954, Arendt 1958, and
Wolin 1969; see Steinmetz 2005). A significant task of this essay, then, is to uncover
the reasons for this apparent dominance and to reconstruct how modern empirical
science came to be in such a commanding (epistemological) position.
17On this special meaning of the “empirical” see Dahl 1958, 1961; on professionalization and disciplining see Gunnell 1991, 1993; Brown 2002.
19
that both terms describe the hegemonic quality of an organized body of scientific
knowledge on the world-view and practice of its members.18
In our day, the lasting effects of a paradigmatic practice are not considered by
most. Once upon a time issues like the value of modern (empiricist) science qua
science, seemingly intractable debates in methodology (like the nature of science
itself), and the general effects of an epistemology (e.g. on the choice of method), were
This idea of dominance
– to the exclusion of other approaches to knowledge – is a key to both the ideas of
paradigm and academic disciplines as I understand them (Wolin 1969). The study of
politics in the US would first for the first time begin to discipline itself. This
development corresponds roughly with the foundation of the American Political
Science Association (APSA) in 1903 (Gunnell 1991). Before the revolution, and
before the disciplining of political science or theory (at this time there was not a
recognized difference between theory and science), the practice was largely historical,
descriptive, and had little to do with scientific (“empirical”) theory as we think of it
today (Gunnell 1991, 1993; Dahl 1961; Easton 1993). As the revolution unfolded
over the 1950s, a number of social science disciplines (e.g. economics, psychology,
and sociology) were reorganized in line with the behavioral paradigm (McCoy &
Playford 1967; Wolin 1969; Steinmetz 2005). American political science was no
different.
18 Gunnell’s (2006) categorical distinction might help clarify the point about disciplines that I am trying to make here. According to Gunnell (2006) academic “disciplines” are specific “forms of research, training, and instruction” while “professions” are “distinct occupational entities” (479). In other words, disciplines are the broader framework (paradigm) within which a professional works. I further discuss the idea of paradigm (Kuhn 1962) below. For now, note that there can be a number of paradigms in a
20
highly contestable and vociferously debated. Today, it seems, these important issues
are largely left implicit and are safely ignored by most political scientists. This
condition obtaining, or so I will argue, we have achieved “normal” science in
America today (Kuhn 1962; see also Wolins’ 1969 contrary view, discussed in
chapter V). In order to see how I came to this conclusion, I turn to the work of
Thomas Kuhn. His historical vision, his idea of revolution and of scientific
discipline, are all integral to my understanding of these concepts in relation to the
American behavioral revolution and the death of political theory.
discipline, just as there can be a number of subfields within a discipline with or without varying paradigmatic frame works.
21
CHAPTER II
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND NORMAL SCIENCE
Scientific fact and theory are not categorically separable, except
perhaps within a single tradition of normal-scientific practice
(Kuhn 1962, 7).
Kuhn’s Theory of Scientific Revolution
For a time, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) was about as
seminal a book as you could find in the philosophy (or history) of science. In the
academic field of political science today, Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) is appreciated
(and largely ignored) as a great iconoclast and peddler of uncertainty (the bane of
modern scientific orthodoxy). Kuhn received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1949. He
went on to write and lecture at Berkeley (1956-1964), Princeton (1964-1979), and
finally MIT (1979-1991). He is widely acknowledged to have introduced the
historical emphasis on the concept of a paradigm as a key to understanding the
evolution of science over the millennia; and in particular, the evolution of the modern
social sciences since the 16th century (Almond 1966; Gunnell 1993).
To Kuhn (1962), a scientific paradigm represents a cluster of theories, various
forms of experiment, and specific bodies of knowledge (epistemic or discursive
communities) that developed over historical time. Working without a paradigm,
however, is not “normal science” (Kuhn 1962, 76). The key to normal science’s
paradigmatic development is that a theory or set of closely related theories is able to
explain a phenomenon or set of phenomena so well, that a body of researcher or group
22
of other professionals grow-up around it (cf. Berlin 1962; Wolin 1969). Under
conditions of normal science, adherents to a paradigm take for granted the
fundamental precepts of the founding theories of the field of study. As such, they are
able to move forward together, without debating the foundations over and over again.
Normal scientists go about testing and propagating refinements to the unifying
paradigm (Berlin 1962).
When foundations of an organization are considered to be stable or
immutable, then the prospect for fundamental change is very small. Once an
organization like an academic discipline has laid down a sufficient groundwork for
others to work from, the foundations that came before consolidation are usually, but
not always, no longer considered or debated (Wolin 1969). As Kuhn (1962) says,
what remains is “mop-up work,” which is what usually “engage most scientists
throughout their careers” (24). When applied, scientific paradigms are understood
and expected to adequately explain certain observable and material (empirical)
phenomenon that the modern social scientist wishes to understand. Paradigms can
come and go over time and there can be periods without a guiding paradigm in a
particular field of science (Kuhn 1962).
I argue that the behavioral revolution in American political science was a
scientific revolution in the Strong Kuhnian sense described above. It seems that
before the behavioral revolution, however, there were a number of demi-paradigms
that would not count as full-blown hegemonic and disciplining frameworks for
scientific thought and research (Kuhn 1962, 13). Although unlikely, it is possible,
23
says Kuhn (1962, xi) that “two paradigms can coexist peacefully” (perhaps we see
something of this in the relationship between political science and political theory
today). Yet it seems to me, there was no paradigm in Kuhn’s (1962) sense, before the
behavioral era (this point is contrasted with Wolin’s 1969 viewpoint below). This is
because there was no dominant paradigm prior to the behavioral revolution. If there
can be periods without a paradigm in a scientific discipline, it also follows that it is
conceivable for a paradigm (in terms of an epistemological world-view and a canon of
acceptable methods) to remain dominant for extended periods of time; perhaps even
forever (Berlin 1962).
Normal scientific activity is contrasted with the efforts that embrace and
facilitate a “scientific revolution” (Kuhn 1962). Kuhn (1962) describes a scientific
revolution in terms of the historical movement from one hegemonic or dominant
paradigm to another. One example of this phenomenon is the Copernican
Revolution.19
the community’s rejection of one time-honored scientific theory in
favor of another incompatible with it. Each produced a consequent
shift in the problems available for scientific scrutiny and in the
standards by which the profession determined what should count as
an admissible problem or a legitimate problem-solution. And each
transformed the scientific imagination in ways that we shall
For Kuhn, a “scientific revolution,” like the Copernican revolution and
the broader scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, bring in its wake:
19 On the history and philosophy of science see also Kuhn (1957), The Copernican Revolution; Polanyi (1955) “From Copernicus to Einstein”; Ferris (1988) Coming of Age in the Milky Way. See also my related discursus on the philosophy of science below.
24
ultimately need to describe as a transformation of the world within
which scientific work is done (6; emphases added).
A scientific revolution is preceded by a “crisis” (Kuhn 1962). I argue that the
“crisis” in early 20th century Anglo-American political thought can be characterized,
in part, as a loss of trust and confidence in the older ways. The previous diversity of
methods was deemed insufficient to the scientific promise of the American study of
politics (Wolin 1960; Dahl 1961; Gunnell 1991; Easton 1991). There were many
reasons for these feelings, moods or attitudes among scientists, but I propose that the
behavioral revolution took advantage of the opportunity provided by the crisis in
confidence in science following the World Wars (see chapter III). Overall, this crisis
was felt differently in the physical and social sciences. Whereas in the latter a
discussion centering on the responsibility of scientists for their discoveries (e.g.
nuclear fission) was prominent, in the former the discussion centered more on the
failure to live up to the moniker “science” in terms of a noticeable, if only
incremental, advance in knowledge over time (Kuhn 1962).
In Kuhn’s (1962) terms, a scientific “crisis” preceding a revolution is
characterized by a “sense of failure,” or a mood and an attitude among practitioners
(75; Dahl 1961). This feeling spreads among the revolutionary cohort. These men
and women increasingly come to find that the earlier science had mistakenly “given
every reason to consider [basic problems] solved or all but solved” (Kuhn 1962, 75).
In retrospect, it is evident that since the old model was overturned, the earlier
generations of scientists were incorrect: “which helps to explain why the sense of
25
failure, when it came, could be so acute” (Kuhn 1962, 75; see also Berlin 1962). In
all major cases, “a novel theory emerge[s] only after a pronounced failure in the
normal problem-solving activity” (Kuhn 1962, 74-75). Failure and crisis in the
reigning paradigm precede the development of scientific revolutions (Kuhn 1962).
The behavioral revolution in American political science certainly appears
prima facie to conform to this pattern. This does not mean that there was necessarily
a dominant paradigm prior to behavioralism in the 1950s and 1960s (even though
Easton 1951 seems to suggest this). According to Kuhn (1962), a crisis occurs when
anomalies or stubborn paradoxes in an existing paradigm become too great (for more
on this idea, see my discussion on the philosophy of science below). The crisis that
precipitated the behavioral revolution was a failure in confidence in the older diverse
ways of political science and theory. By definition there was no paradigm and so no
discipline in American political science. In Kuhnian terms of scientific revolution,
apparent contradictions and inexplicable anomalies led to new theories that better
explained the observed facts (Kuhn 1962). The older ways of political science were
not necessarily methodologically rigorous. I argue therefore that before the
behavioral revolution there was no paradigm in political science. The approaches to
politics were diverse and their methodologies were open and eclectic. In time, this
situation of methodological pluralism came to be seen as anathema to the promise of a
truly scientific study of politics (Dahl 1961).
26
The American Science of Politics (1950-1970).20
Before I present the core section on the death of political theory, a bit of
broad-range historical background will be useful. To understand the present state of
affairs it will be useful to consider the historical context in which modern political
science in America came to be. To begin the discussion of the death of political
theory, then, I present the first staged encounter between John Gunnell (1991, 1993)
and Robert Dahl (1961). By “staged encounter,” I mean that I have selected two
divergent viewpoints on the topic in question (one from “theory” and one from
“science”). In this chapter, the topic is the behavioral origin of contemporary
American political science. Two opposing viewpoints are contrasted and compared.
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of this master’s thesis are focused on the context of
American academic political theory and philosophy as it was practiced during the
period of 1950-1970. Unless I am explicitly drawing comparisons between the past
and the present, it can be safely assumed that I am reflecting only on the period in
question. In his preface, Kuhn says that he takes a “paradigm,” to be a “universally
recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and
solutions to a community of practitioners” (1962, x). I argue that increasingly over
the period in question, political scientists in America understood (implicitly and
explicitly) their discipline as having achieved, to a preponderant degree, the status of
“paradigm,” under the heading “behavioralism” or “empirical” political science
(Laswell and Kaplan 1950; Easton 1951; Dahl 1961; Almond 1966; Pool 1967).
20 The title of this section is taken from Bernard Crick’s (1964) excellent history of the discipline, called The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions. For an earlier exposition on the
27
I highlight both Gunnell’s (1991, 1993) and Dahl’s (1961) explicit reasons for the
origin and significance of the behavioral revolution. The encounter between these
two political theorists’ views on the history of the discipline, and in particular, on the
disciplinary effects of the behavioral revolution and the death of political theory, are
very different. By placing their opposing viewpoints in succession, I hope to
highlight their points of agreement and controversy. These dueling histories will set
the stage and provide the context for the encounters to follow in chapters IV and V.
Gunnell’s Discipline: History as Genealogy
John Gunnell received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley
in 1964. He writes from over thirty years of experience in the field of political theory.
His specialties are the disciplinary history of political science and the evolution of the
sub-field of political theory. His insider viewpoint is “genealogical” in a particular
sense. He is focused on the ideas and works of political scientists as they have
articulated them over the years. His history, then, neglects the external forces that
were also at work on the outcomes in question. Be this as it may, Gunnell’s
genealogy represents an authoritative and until quite recently, novel attempt to
organize and understand the history of the American discipline of political science.21
same topic, see his 1954 article, titled “The Science of Politics in the United States.” 21 For two recent and excellent examples of disciplinary history in American political science see the following: Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges since 1890. Robert Adcock, Mark Bevir, and Shannon C. Stimson eds.; and Discipline and History: Political Science in the United States. James Farr and Raymond Seidelman eds.
Gunnell (1991) characterizes the period before the founding the APSA in 1903 as the
discipline’s “prehistory” (Gunnell 1993, 6). I focus on his view of the behavioral
28
revolution and the consequences for science and theory that he finds flow from that
history. In his article in the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Theory titled,
“Political Theory and Political Science,” Gunnell characterizes the behavioral
movement as a “conservative revolution” (1991, 388; see also McCoy & Playford
1967). The behavioral revolution in Gunnell’s (1991) telling was a counter-
revolution that sought to reverse or to drastically alter the perceived tide of the
discipline’s history in the early 1950s. Like many other modern historians of the
discipline, Gunnell credits Charles Merriam and the Chicago school of politics for
seeking, and largely succeeding in establishing, an “objective and methodologically
sophisticated mode of social science inquiry” (1991, 387). Gunnell (1991) claims that
the leaders of the behavioral revolution were predominantly:
trained as historical and normative political theorists and saw the
development of empirical theory as the key to scientific advanc[e].
[They] introduce[ed] an unprecedented meta-theoretical
consciousness about scientific theory and explanations [that]
pointedly rejected the history of political theory as the basic
meaning of theory in political science (388; for more on “basic
meaning,” see Berlin 1962 below).
According to Gunnell (1991), Merriam and his allies (e.g. Laswell and Easton),
developed the central tenets of American behavioralism. By the mid-1960s these
ideas would become dominant guiding principles in many fields of social science
(Gunnell 1991).
By the late 1960s, political theory was officially divided into three by the
APSA: Historical, Normative, and Empirical (Gunnell 1987, 390). At this time, the
29
behavioral movement was certainly not monolithic (even though the student might
find it difficult to detect any alternatives). Gunnell’s work taps into the widespread
feeling among political theorists that their form of practice had been subject to
widespread “devolution,” “dispersion,” and even “death” by the end of the 1960s
(Gunnell 1991). “The behavioral persuasion” (Gunnell 1991, 388), says Gunnell,
constituted a “theoretical revolution” in the sense that the older moral and political
theory was largely abandoned in favor of a new kind of politically “neutral” theory
(basically, “abstract” or “formal” theory; cf. Easton 1966). Gunnell (1991) reports
that there was a shared feeling that political theory would be saved or it would be lost
for all time. Political theorists like Wolin and Strauss (although from very different
perspectives) defended political theory as traditionally practiced. During the 1960s,
the opponents of the “behavioral persuasion” fought resiliently as wave after wave of
behavioral “empirical theory” was challenged (Gunnell 1991). This counter-
movement sought to resuscitate and reestablish political theory, and to recapture the
“basic meaning” of “theory” in political science (Gunnell 1991, 388; see also Berlin
1962).
In The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American Vocation,
Gunnell (1993) provides more details about the behavioral revolution and the death of
political theory. First, says Gunnell (1993), there is a theoretical dilemma to be noted
issuing from the fact that an academic and empirical political science seeking to speak
with a “neutral voice,” while still remaining relevant to the world of politics (5). So it
seems that American political science in the 1950s and early 1960s became apolitical
30
(McCoy & Playford 1967). To put the matter somewhat cryptically, Gunnell (1993)
says, “science and society required, as a matter of principle, separation in order, as a
matter of practice, to get them together” (5). In time, this issue, an apolitical science
in a world in real need of political and moral guidance, was expressed and became
once again, “the special province of political theory” (Gunnell 1993, 5). A vocal
group of political theorists began to critique mainstream political science in America
for its failure to address the political realm (and “morality” in general).22
During the 1950s and 1960s, and accompanying all the changes in the
academic and political life of the nation, there was the steady influx of German
émigré scholars (Ch. 8 “Coming to America”). Gunnell (1993) describes this
development as nothing less than the “crux” of his book (6). During this period,
political theory was “reinvented” by the injection of the “Weimar experience” into a
political theory that grew out of the subfield’s evolving discussion about the issue of
“theory and practice” (Gunnell 1993, 252). Before this period, the discussion or
discourse of the anti-behavioralists had not begun in earnest. David Easton’s (1951)
article titled, “The Decline of Modern Political Theory” (see below), was “the first
shot in the behavioral revolution” (Baer, Jewell, & Sigelman 1991). Gunnell (1993)
contends that the injection of the Weimar experience into political theory precipitated,
The retreat
into the abstract realm of value-neutral empirical theory is criticized by prominent
anti-behavioralists like Strauss (1954), Arendt (1958, 1962), and Wolin (1969), and
these viewpoints are all discussed below.
22See Surkin & Wolfe (1970).
31
in turn, a related backlash or counter-revolution (or “blowback” 23) by mainstream
political scientists in America. Those members of political science who were of the
behavioral persuasion saw this reformulation (or rather, counter-formation) of
political theory as a threat to their basic values such as “liberalism, scientism,
relativism, and historic optimism” (Gunnell 1993, 7).24
23 “Blowback” is a reference to Chalmers Johnsons’ 2006 use of the term. It is very similar to the way Gunnell (1987) envisions the mechanics of “counter-revolution.” See also Steinmetz’s (2005) usage: “epistemological blowback” (40). 24 Gunnell (1993) goes on to note a further irony in the mainstream political science reaction to the émigré scholar’s reformulation of political theory viz. their attachment “to another body of émigré literature – the philosophy of logical positivism and empiricism” (7).
By the close of the long
sixties, both political science and political theory in America had been “mortgaged to
realms of discourse that were in many ways alien to their experience of both science
and politics” (Gunnell 1993, 7). Consequently, political theory became “estranged”
from political science (Gunnell 1993, 8). By the end of the 1960s, says Gunnell 1993:
“Two distinct images of theory emerged: one as a normative/historical project and one
as the core of an empirical political science” (8; more on “empirical” political science
below). “Normative” as moral theory and “historical” as the development of political
ideas was opposed to “empirical” theory (for example, think about the 1968 APSA
division of political theory into normative, historical and empirical versions cited
above). According to Gunnell, Kuhn’s (1962) work reminded political theorists, or
some of them anyway, that “history can be an antidote to the images by which we are
possessed” (1993, 6; see also Gunnell 2009). This new critique was taken up by
political theorists and other social scientists that were fed-up with the dogmatism and
32
exclusionary practices that had come to characterize behavioral academic science in
middle of the century America (Gunnell 1993).
It should be clear from this summary that Gunnell’s history is primarily
critical. I think it’s safe to say, moreover, that Gunnell would view the death of
political theory as an illusion and a myth that was created in part by the particular
members of the discipline for various personal reasons (Gunnell 1978, 1987, 1993).25
Dahl received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1940. He later turned down
his draft deferment and went into combat as an infantryman fighting in Europe (Baer,
Jewel, & Sigelman 1991). After returning from Europe, Dahl was hired as professor
at Yale in 1946, where he would remain until retiring in 1986 (Baer, Jewel, &
Sigelman 1991). In 1961, Dahl published a daring essay titled, “The Behavioral
Finally, if this stance can be understood to be pessimistic, Robert Dahl’s (1961)
history of the academic discipline is decidedly optimistic. The decent of political
theory (1993) is characterized in negative terms by Gunnell. The formerly eclectic
approach (I mean not beholden to a paradigm or hegemonic idea of practice) in
American political theory, was progressively supplanted by the newer science of
politics, and its revolutionary form of “empirical theory.” Robert Dahl’s (1961) work
is a positive case in point.
Dahl’s Discipline: A Monumental Protest
25 One of Gunnell’s (1978) more famous contributions to American political theory is his thesis that the “great tradition” or the “cannon of political theory” is a myth, because it represents nothing more than a construct made by political theorists. Much like the movement of behavioralism from revolutionary to mainstream, the knowledge of the canon’s origins has become the “discursive legacy of a past which has receded from consciousness” (Gunnell 1993, 2).
33
Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest.” I
say “daring” in retrospect, because he dared to declare that the behavioral revolution
was in fact over in 1961. This was a non-normative statement, by the way, because
the movement had (putatively) reached its goals. In academic terms, Dahl is already a
leading democratic theorist. He is aware of traditional political philosophy, and
presumably he knows about the ongoing debate over modern theory’s role in political
science (cf. Lowi 1987; Gunnell 1993). For Dahl (1961), it appeared safe to eulogize
the movement and to move on by building a “monument” to its ultimate success.26
For Dahl, the “behavioral approach” to political science researches “might
better be called the ‘behavioral mood’ or perhaps even the ‘scientific outlook’ … [a]
mood of protest, skepticism, reform, and optimism” (Dahl 1961, 768). The mood of
the behavioralist was revolutionary and so were the insurgents’ efforts to break with
the older tradition of methodological eclecticism and moral theory.
Dahl’s (1961) argument seeks to explain what was distinctive or characteristic about
the behavioral revolution in American political science. At the same time, Dahl
means to illustrate the historical trajectory that had carried the American discipline to
its epistemic location and methodological state of affairs in the early 1960s.
Dahl’s Empiricism
27
26 See Habermas (2003), “Interpreting the Fall of a Monument” for a contemporary German treatment. 27 See both Easton’s (1951) and Wolin’s (1969) differing versions of what pre-behavioral social science in America looked like (discussed in more detail below).
While Dahl
does not use any sort of classification system in terms of historical phases, he does
map out the development of political science from what was originally an
34
“impressionistic,” “historical,” “philosophical,” “journalistic,” and “descriptive-
institutional” endeavor, to a new mode of analysis (Dahl 1961). The behavioral
movement was revolutionary because the insurgents conscientiously sought to
supplant the older ways of political science by making their profession “empirical” in
theory and in practice. Dahl’s form of empiricism was revolutionary too. The
political scientists who were involved in fostering the behavioral or scientific outlook
during the insurgent or “sectarian” phase of the revolution were aware of a growing
sense of a common outlook (Dahl 1961, 766). Dahl summarizes the nature of the
consolidating paradigm:
The behavioral approach is an attempt to improve our
understanding of politics by seeking to explain the empirical aspects
of political life by means of methods, theories, and criteria of proof
that are acceptable according to the canons, conventions, and
assumptions of modern empirical science (Dahl 1961, 767).
As this quote demonstrates, the behavioralist’s empiricism in the early 1960s took the
common practice of finding substantive formations in the world (useful for backing
up one’s theoretical claims), and then elevated this practice to the standard (or “basic
meaning”) of all theory in political science (cf. Berlin 1962).
“Empirical theory,” in behavioral science, came to mean any hypothesis that
could be verified “objectively,” that is, with data observable in the world (incidental
to this point, and discussed more below, is how this maneuver would exclude a whole
range of traditional and moral theory). What I mean can be gleaned from the
following quotation by Dahl (1961) which relates the advice of one of the early
35
founders of the behavioral outlook at the University of Chicago, David Truman
(1951):
Research must be systematic … This means that research must
grow out of a precise statement of hypotheses and a rigorous
ordering of evidence. … In the second place, research in political
behavior must place primary emphasis upon empirical methods …
Crude empiricism, unguided by adequate theory, is almost certain to
be sterile. Equally fruitless is speculation which is not or cannot be
put to empirical test (Truman 1951, quoted in Dahl 1961).
In my mind, this quote of David Truman (1951) is the quintessential example of the
behavioral or modern empirical method as it has been practiced in American political
science since the 1950s. Certainly not all political scientists will agree with me on
this point. For now, suffice it to say that I interpret Truman’s (1951) usage to be the
equivalent of behavioral or modern empirical theory.
Already in 1961, Dahl is confident enough in the triumph of “empirical
theory” over “normative theory” that he crafts his essay as a celebration of a
revolution that has run its course. The behavioral revolution was a successful protest
that ushered in a new science (or loosely, a paradigm) and it pushed out the former
philosophy or the older theory (historicist, classical, and traditional theory). The
factors identified by Dahl (1961) in the rise of the behavioral approach are: (1) The
organizational work of Charles Merriam (1874-1953) at the University of Chicago,
(2) the influx of German “refugee scholars” in the 1930s, (3) World War II and the
“confrontation of theory and reality” (764), (4) the foundation and early work of the
Social Science Research Council (mid-1940s), (5) the emergence and rapid
36
dissemination of the survey method, and finally, (6) the rise of the great philanthropic
foundations like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford (cf. Lowi 1987). All of these factors
in the behavioral revolution have been discussed in Gunnell’s work (see above), and
they will reemerge time and again as the analysis on the behavioral revolution and the
death of political theory continues.
Dahl’s Tribute to the Scientific Imagination
The dismissal of mere history became prevalent among behavioral political
scientists in the 1950s and 1960s. Dahl notes this development with some remorse.
He states that “the scientific shortcomings of an a-historical theory in political science
are manifest” (Dahl 1961, 771). Like the analysis of historical factors, the neglect of
the development of general theory is somewhat problematic for Dahl (1961):
The scientific outlook in political science can easily produce a
dangerous and dysfunctional humility of the social scientist who
may be quite confident of his findings on small matters and dubious
that he can have anything at all to say on larger questions (772).
In connection with this point, Dahl notes that the behavioral political scientist must
find a way to accommodate general theoretical speculation, which depends crucially
on the “use of the imagination” (772). This statement comes at the end of Dahl’s
(1961) essay, and I believe it represents his meager and perhaps diversionary
concession to the holdouts of the older political theory (cf. Dahl 1958 below).
Despite my own misgivings about Dahl’s other conclusions, however, I agree with
him when he says, “surely it is imagination that has generally marked the intelligence
of the great scientist, and speculation – often times foolish speculation, it turned out
37
later – has generally preceded great advances in scientific theory” (1961, 772). This
theme of scientific imagination is important and it will be discussed in more detail
below (see related discussion in Kuhn 1962 above and in Berlin 1962 and Wolin 1969
below).
In the end Dahl (1961) is optimistic that “unities can be forged anew.”28
28 For Dahl (1961) there are “five fragments in search of unity” in American political science (770). These are: “empirical political science, standards of evaluation, history, general theory and speculation” (770).
Yet
he is clear that he believes that the behavioral revolution understood as an emphasis
on “empirical inquiry” will lead the way for the foreseeable future (772). Finally,
Dahl summarizes the impact of the behavioral revolution on political science up to
1961 masterfully:
The impact of the scientific outlook has been to stimulate caution
rather than boldness in searching for broad explanatory theories.
The political scientist who mixes skepticism with methodological
rigor is all too painfully aware of the inadequacies of any theory that
goes much beyond the immediate data at hand. Yet it seems clear
that unless the study of politics generates and is guided by broad,
bold, even if highly vulnerable general theories, it is headed for the
ultimate disaster of triviality (772).
I think the first two sentences of this quote are even truer today. When Dahl (1961)
first made this statement it was still a bit startling. Today hardly anyone questions the
preeminence of empirical theory in the practice and evaluation of work in American
political science. The last sentence of the quote represents a lesson that Dahl (1961)
briefly touches on, but it seems to me is still largely ignored today.
38
Dahl’s Legacy in American Political Theory Taken as a whole, Robert Dahl’s work brought the empirical back in to
political analysis. This view is shared by Arlene Saxonhouse (2008), and is related in
her article titled “Exile and Re-entry: Political Theory Yesterday and Tomorrow.”
Her pessimism towards Dahl’s work is of a similar order as the attitude of Gunnell
(1993) toward the behavioral revolution and the “descent” of political theory in
general. She tells her readers that Dahl’s (1956) A Preface to Democratic Theory,
took “the ‘normative’ out of theory and replace[d] it with [the] ‘empirical’”
(Saxonhouse 2008, 830). It may be the case that Dahl could say he was simply not
addressing normative assumptions, but as I see it, by ignoring them he was
perpetuating their neglect.29
Saxonhouse (2008) states that “natural rights” and “natural law” once
provided the needed ethical and moral guidance for some political philosophers. She
Saxonhouse finds that Dahl’s (1956) embrace of
behavioralism required that he “eliminate the normative” from the former practice
(2008, 845). Saxonhouse quotes Dahl (1956) at this point; he says, “to undertake an
exhaustive inquiry into these ethical propositions, is beyond my purposes”
(Saxonhouse 2008, 45). Given the above discussion concerning the new empiricism
and the behavioral revolution, it seems in modern times those normative or moral
principles are not offered and are not evaluated explicitly. As such they must remain
implicit and the justifications of ethical principles are not discussed by political
scientists (cf. Easton 1951; Berlin 1962).
29 Jacinda Swanson (2009), personal communication.
39
thinks that Dahl (1956) finds these theoretical schemas impractical (not practical or
without use-value) in his day (Saxonhouse 2008). Of concepts like “natural law” or
“natural rights” Dahl (1956) says, “such an argument inevitably involves a variety of
assumptions that at best are difficult and at worst impossible to prove to the
satisfaction of anyone of positivist or skeptical predispositions” (Saxonhouse 2008,
45). For Dahl (1956) there is an important distinction to be made between the
enumeration of basic political principles and the actual demonstration of their
justified application in the modern world (cf. K. Burke 1989). To be justified in
Dahl’s eyes, political principles and ideas like the “common good” must be
susceptible to empirical testing, verification, and so reliable prediction (Saxonhouse
2008, 845). A concept like “the common good” is not “valid” and not so amendable
(compare Dahl’s 1958 review of Juevenel below).
At the time, Dahl’s (1956) cry for “operationally meaningful” theory in
political science was well received (Saxonhouse 2008, 846). To be “operationally
meaningful,” for Dahl (1956) means that the principles under discussion must be
susceptible to (behavioral) scientific scrutiny and so “empirical” verification (cf. Dahl
1961 above). For example, an idea like “power” is studied in an academic setting and
is best studied in terms that can be verified empirically (any other “faces of power”
must not be admitted30
30 For more on the “faces of power” debate, see Bachrach and Botwinick 1962.
). In sum, says Saxonhouse, “the present trumped the past and
political science with the goal of predictions looked to the future” (846). Saxonhouse
(2008) uses Dahl’s early democratic theory to demonstrate how it was that by the end
40
of the 1950s, the empirical science of politics was nearly, if not entirely, hegemonic
or paradigmatic among active political scientists. What this meant in terms of
political theory, traditionally conceived, was that it was viewed as a species of
classical political philosophy. As “the study of canonical texts of political thought” it
became “exiled” from scientific theory and was increasingly treated as mere
“intellectual history or tossed into the bin of irrelevancy” (846; see also Easton 1951;
Dahl 1958; Strauss 1954; Gunnell 1993).
In addition to Gunnell (1987, 1993) and Dahl’s (1961) unique ways of telling
history, their two viewpoints bring to the surface an important dualism that is still
with us today (and already highlighted above). “Empirical” political science is
contrasted with “normative” political theory and the latter is maligned as “non-
scientific.” The loss of “unity” (Dahl 1961) had precipitated the historical parting of
ways between political science and political theory.31
31 To get an idea of the very real push to “unify” all the social sciences under the behavioral and positivist epistemology see Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, & Charles Morris eds. (1955) Foundations of the Unity of Science: Toward an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. For a more complete picture, see also Stiemetz’s (2005) treatment of “logical positivism or logical empiricism” (30).
There are a number of possible
interpretations of this disturbing phenomenon available to us today. So far I have
highlighted the force of the American behavioral revolution on individual political
and social scientists, and thus how it was that individual political scientists like
Truman, Dahl, and Easton took advantage of the crisis in scientific knowledge in the
early 20th century. Before looking at the reasons that American and European
theorists and scientists raised the question of the death of political theory in chapter 4,
it will be profitable to first consider a particular historical episode in its general social
41
and political environment. The episode is the rise of modern science (highlighted by
the invention and proliferation of atomic weapons and the 1950s space race between
the US and Soviet Russia). The time period is 1950s America and I wish to find an
answer to the question: what is the historical the context for the behavioral revolution
and the death of political theory? In the following section, finally, I endeavor to set
the stage for the literary encounters that make up the core of this essay (chapter IV).
42
CHAPTER III
HISTORICAL INTERLUDE
Neither the life of the individual nor the history of a society
can be understood without understanding both
…
No social study that does not come back to the problems of
biography, of history and of their intersections within a
society has completed its intellectual journey
C.W. Mills (1959).
Time Travel or Imaginative Journeys
The historical interlude is important because we need to be able to travel in
time in order to understand the full impact of the literature for our own interpretation.
Without placing the texts into historical context they will lose their political
significance and their relevance to our thinking today. I have placed the historical
interlude at this juncture in the essay because it covers the geopolitical history
(context) of the US from 1950-1960. In this section the goal is to imaginatively travel
back in time. What was it like to live and work in 1950s America? This interlude
will thus help make sense of the dueling disciplinary histories just presented; and it
will give us a picture of the external or geopolitical context in which political
scientists and theorists continued to work and live.
43
The 1950s: Science and Culture in America.
The 1950s were a dark time in the history of the United States and the
Western world. The two rival superpowers, the United States and Soviet Russia stood
fundamentally opposed to the each other’s very existence. It was presumed that
someone’s “fingers were on the triggers” and that “nuclear” holocaust was all too
possible. A possibility that for the first time in recorded history, could potentially
spell the very end of humanity itself.32 Adding to modern American anxiety was the
great political and economic power the nation had come to acquire following the two
World Wars. Our expanded war economy plus our victories on two sides of the globe
ensured our strength and critical advantage (Eisenhower 1953). The new level of
geopolitical strength was now seen as being indispensable to the safety and national
security of the people and its democracy (Jarecki 2006). Following WWII, the
Soviet’s refused to withdrawal from Eastern Europe. This betrayal of the terms of the
war time alliance provoked the US to set up a new league of nations. This time,
however, we would not fail. It was decided that the US could no longer afford to
stand down, as it were, and de-militarize. In terms of nuclear proliferation, for
example, quite the opposite actually happened (The Soviet Union detonated its own
bomb on August 29, 1949; followed later by Communist China in 1964).33
32 Incredibly, some commentators are still advocating in favor of greater proliferation. See for example, a recent Newsweek article by Jonathan Tepperman, “Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb” Newsweek September 7, 2009. 33Let it never be forgotten how we discovered the geopolitical effects of the first and only nuclear weapons tested on human populations. The bomb was a game changer in the world of international affairs. When the first two were dropped on the unsuspecting populations of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945), the literal fragmentation of buildings and bodies truly began the atomic age.
The
44
American nation, for better and for worse, set out to “make the world safe” for its
style of liberal-capitalist democracy (Johnson 2006; Jarecki 2008).
The hot wars eventually cooled into a Cold War. A perpetual war effort was
now required. The American people would be called upon to make a number of
important sacrifices in perpetuity. It became necessary for a continued national
investment in research and development of weapons of mass destruction, as well as an
exponential improvement in the techniques and the efficiencies of modern warfare
(see, for example, Bush 1945 “Science the Endless Frontier”; see also Arendt 1954;
Eisenhower 1961). The new order would require that the American people continue
to send their sons and their daughters to fight the wars that were deemed necessary in
order to “contain” the spread of communism. This effort against communism was
needed to ensure the very survival of American democracy (Korea 1950-53; Vietnam
by the end of the 1950s). It would also mean that public investment in the
development of science would continue, and that American sons and daughters would
be needed to fill the ranks of the universities and boot camps in order to train the next
generation of scientists and replacement soldiers. Increasingly it meant that one had
to truncate the freedoms that had been part of the old order (McCarthyism and “Red
Scare”). Yet historical memory is short, and the old ways of life are quickly forgotten
by succeeding generations. Politically, the 1950s were among the most dangerous of
the Cold War. Geopolitically, the decade of the 1950s was a dark era when the two
superpowers went back and forth as they played a dubious game of military and
45
public relations – thrust and parry – deadly escalation.34
In 1957, the world entered a new age of space exploration.
During this time there was
simultaneously the threat of nuclear annihilation and the promise of escape. The
escape from the threat of nuclear holocaust, ironically, was provided by the very same
means that gave rise to the danger in the first place. The advances of modern science
had simultaneously provided the means for total destruction and total liberation (cf.
Kaplan 2009 and Arendt 1961 below). The space race in the 1950s provides an
excellent analogy to illustrate this point.
Sputnik Mania
35
34 From an American perspective, and in terms of the Cold war’s potential to turn hot in the 1950s and 1960s, these developments perhaps reached their historical and political climax in the Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). 35 “Sputnik Mania” (2007) is a documentary film by David Hoffmann. The following section is a summary and commentary on the content of that film. This film-based discussion is meant to highlight the external cultural and scientific environment in which Americans lived and worked in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Surly the
terrestrial exploration of the universe beyond our planet had been ongoing since the
beginning of recorded time. The Russian satellite “Sputnik” came to mean (in
English), the earth’s “companion traveler” and was the globe’s first orbiting
“satellite.” With Sputnik’s launch our imaginative horizon was forever expanded.
With the Sputnik satellite, the “space race” finally began (of course, many science
fiction authors had long dreamt of this human possibility). The beginning of this
contest was tied to the development of modern rocket technology, which let it be
remembered, could be used for both peaceful exploration as well as for horrible
destruction. “Sputnik Mania” (Hoffmann 2007), recounts how the American nation
46
was inexorably propelled into the space race. The NY Times (1957) declared that
Sputnik represented “a symbol of man’s liberation from the forces which have
hitherto bound him to earth.” In terms of international politics, the Soviets could now
point to Little Rock, Arkansas as an example of the failure of American ideals and
simultaneously to Sputnik as an example their own technical superiority.36
On December 6, 1957 the US made its first attempt to match the Soviet
achievement. “Kaputnik!” was the headline after the rocket failed to get past the
launch pad. The rocket exploded along with American hopes for immediate response.
“Flopnik” caused the NY Stock Exchange to close early, and was used vigorously by
Khrushchev and the Soviets to increase the intensity of their PR campaign;
humiliating their adversaries once more. Following this failure, Eisenhower
reluctantly called on the US Army, and its developing “Redstone” missile program
The
United States responded in a way that would be common over the next few years, we
tested another nuclear (“hydrogen”) bomb. The Soviets, as though to mock our earth-
bound maneuver, sent a second rocket and a second satellite into outer space. Sputnik
II (1957) carried a communist passenger; a dog by the name of comrade Laika. The
Soviets never intended for the animal to return to earth alive. The “sky dog” Laika
became a sort of hero and cause célèbre in the United States and around the Western
world. Sputnik mania had become “mutnik” mania. American fears were displaced
by their outrage over the sacrifice of a Russian dog named “Laika.”
36 In 1957 America, Little Rock, Arkansas was the epicenter of the national debate over desegregation and “The Little Rock Nine.” The veteran 101st Airborne Division was called in by President Eisenhower to force the integration and to quell the local resistance to the racial integration of public
47
(headed by the German émigré scholar Wernher von Braun). Originally, Eisenhower
had wanted to avoid military involvement in the development of the US’s space
program, but the Army assured him that they were ready and capable of putting a
satellite into space. On January 31, 1957, the Army-built Explorer I was launched
and it reached earth orbit. In the spirit of modern American science, Eisenhower
(1957) promises that the US will share the data from the mission with the rest of the
world.37
Significantly, the defense debate on Capitol Hill becomes a central feature of
Eisenhower’s second term. Ironically, the American president and former
commanding general of allied forces, found himself being accused of being “asleep at
the switch.” Incredibly, the view resonates among the citizenry and the public’s
opinion comes to reflect an attitude about their former hero as being too reluctant to
make the necessary sacrifices for the ongoing defense of the nation. At the same
time, “space fever” spreads throughout the country. (Incidentally, in terms of modern
mass psychology, this “fever” is highly related to “the Red Scare,” McCarthyism and
the feelings and symptoms that drove the fear of Communism per se
38
schools in Arkansas. For an illuminating if not controversial treatment of this event, see Hannah Arendt (1959) “Reflections on Little Rock” in Dissent vol. 6, No. 37 The following year, on July 29, 1958, President Eisenhower transferred the military space program to a civilian space agency known as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA. 38 On this point, see the striking and award winning documentary film about the Vietnam era by Peter Davis (1974) titled, “Hearts & Minds.”
). Across the
country, parades are organized in order to commemorate the event. Hollywood and
other media take full advantage of the new interest. Boys and girls can purchase and
build their own model rockets. And so it seemed for the first time, that modern
48
scientific advance was to be tied for all time to both the great promise of liberation
and to a simultaneously growing danger of total annihilation. By May of 1957, both
the US and the USSR were regularly (and one hopes reluctantly), testing nuclear
weapons. Citizens were advised to “duck and cover” by “civil defense” films.
Practice drills and mock mobilizations of entire cities took place, each citizen doing
his or her part to survive the imaginary nuclear blast. Nothing it seemed could stem
the tide toward large-scale annihilation and mutually assured destruction.
49
CHAPTER IV
THE DEATH OF POLITICAL THEORY
It seems very pretty … but it's rather hard to understand.
Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas –
only I don’t know what they are!
However, somebody killed something:
that’s clear at any rate –
(Alice on the Jabberwocky in Carroll 1872, 134).
The weight of the past on many social, educational, and political concepts
and institutions is itself helping to create crisis, and that the past,
even in its death throes, is taking too long to die
(The Death of the Past, J.H. Plumb 1970, 15).
The Death of Political Theory
During the 1950s, and especially in the 1960s, the epistemological status of
the study of human behavior becomes clearly expressed in a dominant methodology
prevalent among scientists studying modern politics at the time (Hauss & Kariel
1970; Steinmetz 2005). The combination of science and method came to dominate
the profession (Wolin 1969; Gunnell 1991). This fact is still evident today, for
example, in the instruction given to graduate students and the material they are
expected to be familiar with. At any rate, in what follows I will be primarily focused
on the 1950s, and to a lesser extent the 1960s. When we focus our attention on the
past, while holding comparisons with the present in abeyance, we can see what it was
50
like to be a political scientist during the time. This was a world where the behavioral
or “empirical” method (Dahl 1961) of scientific political science was dominant.
We can travel imaginatively back in time. We can see, feel, and experience
what it was like to be a participant in the behavioral revolution. The foregoing
historical interlude should help facilitate this imaginative task. In the 1950s, the
question about the death of political theory became something of a touchstone for
political theorists in the US and Great Britain. Indeed a decade later, as William
Connolly (2001) recalls, “to study political theory in 1960 was to participate in an
enterprise widely thought to be moribund” (3). The authors who partake in the
discourse on the death of political theory in the English world were not all native
speakers. Again, those I highlight are – David Easton (1951), Alfred Cobban (1953),
Leo Strauss (1954), Peter Laslett (1956), Hannah Arendt (1954, 1958, 1963), Robert
Dahl (1958), Isaiah Berlin (1962), and Dante Germino (1963). No doubt there are
others that have devoted serious attention to this problem, but these are the authors
who emerged during my personal process of discovery. These authors do not all view
the death of political theory in the same way, nor do they all see this event as a bad
thing. Nor do the European authors I discuss (Cobban, Strauss, Laslett, Arendt, and
Berlin) concern themselves primarily with the behavioral revolution as it unfolded in
the US. The European authors, as I will make clear, are responding to the larger
issues that are thought to explain the drive behind the death of political theory
discourse.
51
I treat Easton (1951) as the first work that attempts to understand the
relationship between the behavioral revolution and the death of political theory in
America. In my telling, both Easton and Dahl (1958) are unique among the selected
authors on the death or decline of political theory. They were both proponents of the
revolution in American political science and their respective visions had a significant
impact on the development of empirical and behavioral methods. The behavioral
insurgents wanted to make political theory empirical (i.e. behavioral) and causal (i.e.
scientific). Whether European or American, all the other authors I review have tried
to defend the old practices in different ways. I will endeavor to critique all the
positions, and I will offer a concluding synthesis on why the old tradition of political
theory had took a “morbid” turn in the 1950s (Dryzek, Honig, & Phillips 13).
During the 1950s, we can witness a growing intellectual concern with
remembering and even lamenting what had been lost in the transition to the new post-
war global order. It often seemed that the sacrifices of many Americans had
unintentionally aided in the emergence of new dangers (Wolin 1992). A similar
dynamic was working on the academic universe as well. It seems that in the 1950s,
the old order of relative eclecticism and non-paradigm social science (or a state of
methodological pluralism) quickly gave way to the new behavioral and empirical
science (cf. Easton, who thought there was a pre-behavioral paradigm in American
political science in 1951). While the new idea of social science was gaining more and
more adherents, a subset of English speaking academicians came to mourn the death
of political theory. While the Americans debated the merits and faults of the new
52
empirical-behavioral science, the Europeans were primarily interested in discussing
the loss of traditional political philosophy as it had been practiced in the Western
world up until the 1950s. As I see the matter, Easton (1951) is unique among the
proponents of the behavioral revolution. He not only wanted to encourage the use of
empirical (causal) theory, but he was also aware of the philosophic loss that the
Europeans were to discuss so passionately. As Easton (1951) understood, the primary
danger extending from this loss was an ignorance of moral or political philosophy.
Yet the knowledge that political philosophy was once equated with moral theory
would quickly be forgotten in the American academy.
All the authors reviewed below were in agreement that traditional political
theory, as it had been practiced since the beginning of recorded history, had very
nearly, come to an end. Very few scholars were practicing it. In terms of academic
organization, political theory was beginning to find itself increasingly maligned and
even intentionally mocked outright (Gunnell 1991). Easton’s (1951) essay on the
“decline” of political theory is the earliest comprehensive treatment of the topic that I
have came across. His treatment of the death of political theory sets the stage of
discourse and encounter that I will develop over the remainder of this essay.
The Decline of “Creative Value Theory”
In James Farr’s (2006) article, “The History of Political Thought as a
Disciplinary Genre,” he describes early 20th century “history of political thought.” It
was a “disciplinary genre” of political theory characterized by the narrative and
critical history of ideas led by such luminaries as William Dunning and George
53
Sabine (Farr 226). This genre would be displaced by the rising tide of behavioralism
in the US. In this sense, Easton proves to be a “bellwether critic” (Farr 2006). In
terms of scholarly work, the first salvo in the so-called “behavioral revolution” was
David Easton’s (1951) siren call for a refocused political theory, and “a return to the
tradition of creative theory” (46). 39
39On the other hand, a convenient bookend for the behavioral period in American political science was David Easton’s (1969) APSA presidential address. He now took the opportunity of his election to APSA presidency to try and bring the conflict to a close by officially recognizing the close of a movement and the beginning of a new revolution in the discipline, an idea he christened “post-behavioralism” (Easton 1969, p. 389). Again, the new movement was “post-behavioral” because the behavioral revolution had reached its goals.
In an interview conducted by John Gunnell in
1988, Easton says he wrote his 1951 article as part of his search for a new kind of
theory – one that would “diverge considerably from political theory – the history of
ideas largely – as it was taught” at Harvard (Baer, Jewel & Sigelman 1991). He was
searching for a “theory that was explanatory rather than only historical” (Baer, Jewel
& Sigelman 1991). In retrospect, Easton tells Gunnell:
My 1951 article on the decline of modern political theory was
cathartic for me. So I got out of my system the feeling that there
had been a decline associated with the severe reduction in attention
to moral issues, the imaginative quality that had traditionally been
built into political theory (Baer, Jewell, & Sigelman 1991, 203).
This “imaginative quality” has been discussed before (Kuhn 1962; Dahl 1961), and it
will continue to be important throughout this essay (all of the authors in this chapter
discuss it to some extent; see especially Wolin 1969 in chapter 5). Gunnell interjects
the following comment before the text moves on to another subject:
54
Whether correctly or incorrectly, many people have understood your
1951 article to be the first shot in the behavioral revolution (Baer,
Jewell, & Sigelman 1991, 203).
Easton received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1947, and he accepted a position at
the University of Chicago that same year. In his 1951 article, the interplay between
the former school of influence (more historical) and the latter (more behavioral) is
quite pronounced. According to Easton (1951), theory as the history of political ideas
had become narrowly focused on “retailing information about the meaning, internal
consistency, and historical development of contemporary and past political values”
(Easton 1951, 40). Little political theory of the recent past had paid sufficient
attention to “constructive value theory” or to the creation of a “new value theory”
(Easton 1951, 40).40
40 To my eyes the situation described by Easton is ironic. The irony is that Easton (1951) is criticizing the historically minded political theorists of his day for being too empirical and too scientific. Their scientism led them to reject the construction of value theory on the premise of scientific value relativism. A further irony, and possibly a point of misunderstanding, is that it is precisely this fault
In short, political theorists in 1951 were predominantly
historical theorists and their theory was “historicist.” This type of historical study had
become “empirical,” obsessed with facts, and neglectful of the value side of the
equation (Easton 1951, 40). It seems to me that this is the crux of what Easton (1951)
meant by the “decline of modern political theory.” The early Easton (1951), had
thought that facts and values had been arbitrarily separated by the historical and
empirically minded political theorists of his day (for example Easton 1951 mentions
George Sabine and W.W. Willoughby). He wanted to remind his colleagues that
there were two sides to political theory, and he did so by calling for a return to
55
normative, moral, or “creative value theory” (Easton 1951). As the later Easton’s
writing bear witness, the perfect balance between positivist and modern scientific
method and the propagation of political principles and values for society to live by is
not an easy admixture to administer (cf. Easton 1966).
Why the “decline” of political theory in 1951? To begin with, Easton (1951)
believes that traditional political theory has become historicist and reductionist. I will
discuss this form of reductionism in a moment, but first I will present what Easton
(1951) meant by historicism. Consider another definition of “historicism,” The
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (2005) definition, following Popper, as “any belief
in the necessity of historical processes, or belief that such processes are governed by
laws, and are immune to human choice and agency” (167).41
(roughly scientism) that I am now criticizing modern American behavioral or empirical political science. So it seems we may have come full circle since the early 1950s.
Easton (1951) claims
that modern political theory is under the influence of “the historical approach” (i.e.
what Adcock et al. 2007 have called “developmental historicism”). Historicism has
“seized the minds of theorists” and they have failed to “create new conceptions of
values” (40). Historicists (e.g. George Sabine and W.W. Willoughby) have taken the
old way of providing a “systematic value theory” that is commensurate with its
historical era, and replaced it with, or indeed “assimilated” it, as Easton says, into an
“empirical or causal social science” depriving the older way of its valuational power
(1951, 40). In this system, “facts and values” are strictly separated, and the latter
41 In many ways Easton (1951) is echoing Karl Popper’s (1945, 1962) concerns about the inherent dangers of the methods of historicism; the accompanying unreasonable projection, and irrational tendencies of historical prediction or prophecy masquerading as “scientific objectivity” (Easton cites
56
quality is squarely marked-off as out of bounds and outside the realm of appropriate
scholarly (“scientific”) activity (Easton 1951, 40). This separation between facts and
values is what I mean by reductionism. The reductionist element in early 1950s
political theory was due to the widespread scientism and the positivist pretense, as
Easton puts it, that “all a social scientist can legitimately say about moral categories is
that they are a product of the historical situation” (1951, 42). Easton (1951) blames
Hume and Max Weber for popularizing “the relativistic attitude toward values” in the
social sciences (43). Scientific value relativism (Brecht 1959), is closely associated
with the positivist conceit that value-neutrality is desirable and possible and can be
established through the modern empirical and reductionist methods of behavioralism
(cf. Dahl 1961). In short, a scientist operating on the premise of value relativism
thinks that values must be ignored, and that ultimately they can do better without
discussing them.
Historicism as a species of historical interpretation with its concomitant
avoidance of value theory has had “unanticipated consequences” (Easton 1951, 43).
Unlike in the 19th century, Easton (1951) argues, social scientists in the 20th century
“do feel the need for some guidance for our conduct in practical affairs” (44). The
situation of Western Europe up until the rise of National Socialism in Germany,
Holocaust, and totalitarian government, did not require, as it does today, “a choice
among fundamentally irreconcilable and competing values” because there was no
widespread questioning of value theory or belief systems at the time (Easton 1951,
Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, as well as his series of articles in Economica 1944 and 1945).
57
44). Easton (1951) says that the theorists in early 19th century Europe “conjured up”
the “conditioned self-image of an amoral science” (48; cf. Gunnell 1993; 2009). This
situation of loss in 1951 has occasioned an educational “oversight” in terms of the
development of political theory, that “has been assigned to no one” (Easton 1951, 48).
What had been lost, it seemed, was the political imagination required to recreate value
theory.
Traditional “political theory” had been “converted to historicism” (Easton
1951, 50). In the process, says Easton (1951) political theory had “neglected its
earlier function of linking knowledge of political facts to political goals” (50).
Historicism and scientific value relativism have “carried political theory far from the
original practical problems that gave it birth;” leaving this tradition behind, in the
middle of the nineteenth century, and “ending perhaps with Hegel and Marx” (Easton
1951, 43). The “poverty of political theory” is to be found in its reliance on “a form
of historical analysis,” which rejects the creation of values on relativistic or
reductionist grounds (Easton 1951, 36). Easton (1951) summarizes this state of
affairs well –
If the preferences of each person or of each historical epoch were
neither better nor worse than those of another, then it seemed, if not
a waste of time, at least purely aesthetic and therefore politically
meaningless task for scholars to devote themselves to the creative
elaboration of value systems (44).
“However illogical,” as a premise it may be, the “relativistic conception” of values
and belief systems was accepted by a significant majority of political scientists and
theorist (Easton 1951, 44). Political theory’s “hitherto creative functions promptly
58
evaporated” (Easton 1951, 44). The historicist orientation had further limited the
ability of the theorist to attempt a “radical reconstruction of his inherited system of
values” because their method (reductionist and relativistic) prevented them from
seriously studying and saying anything meaningful about those “moral categories”
they considered to be outside the domain of “objective” science (Easton 1951, 42;
45).42
42 Compare Polanyi’s (1958a) characterization of this idea as containing a “mistaken ideal of objectivity” (7).
Political theory was “converted to historicism,” and then “neglected its earlier
function of linking knowledge of political facts to political goals” (Easton 1951, 50).
Easton (1951) sets out to right this wrong by reminding his fellows what is at stake.
The evaluation and creation of values by the political theorist of the past is an “art,”
by which Easton (1951) seems to mean a type of craft that did not lay claim to modern
empirical and scientific scrutiny (49). Easton (1951), says that students of political
science and theory are not taught the art-form of the “value-creating theorist of the
past” (49). Instead they merely “circle about his art, seeking to explain empirically
the form it takes, but seldom trying to understand it as an imitable attempt at value
construction” (Easton 1951, 49). Easton (1951) puts the consequences of this
situation in stark terms:
Failure to realize the function that value-creation plays in empirical
research means that the choices of political scientists, like other
social scientists, will be molded not by the conscious adoption of a
set of values, but by the implicit and intuitive acceptance of a value
framework which they have accidentally acquired (49).
59
Easton’s diagnosis of the decline or “death” of political theory is, like Gunnell’s
genealogy, focused internally on the history of political scientists themselves; their
particular work and their professional development over time. The next author I will
discuss is Alfred Cobban. In contrast to either Gunnell (1987, 1993) or Easton
(1951), Cobban (1953) is focused on the external geopolitical or general world-
historic situation in which modern political scientists come to find themselves. What
are the epistemological and methodological consequences of this shift in focus for the
analysis of the death of political theory in the 1950s? Turning to the Cobban’s
diagnosis we can begin to see the difference.
Decline from another Angle
Alfred Cobban (1901-1968) was an English historian who specialized in the
French Revolution and who taught at University College, London. In an early
treatment of “totalitarian government,” titled Dictatorship: Its History and Theory,
Cobban (1939) writes not as a historian but as a “political scientist” (10). Although
the materials drawn on were primarily historical in nature, the recent rise of
totalitarian governments is “too close” to be treated and analyzed as a historic
phenomenon (Cobban 1939). Cobban (1939) imagines that he is treating the topic in
the manner of a political scientist, and so he takes time in his preface to say that he
has left out any formal “moral judgments” (13). Cobban (1939) feels that
developments in “political philosophy” have necessitated that he be clear that his
political science on the topic of totalitarian governments has “without drawing morals
60
[t]ried to indicate consequences, and leave any judgment to the reader” (14). The
parallel to Easton’s (1951) criticisms of the behavioral methodology should be
abundantly clear. Cobban believes that in order to do political science, he must
refrain from making moral judgments.
The title of Cobban’s (1953) article “The Decline of Political Theory,” is
exactly the same as Easton’s (1951) article, minus the qualifier “modern.” The
absence of the word “modern” is an indication that Cobban (1953) was up to
something quite different that Easton (1951). Two years after Easton’s (1951) article,
the same themes of political philosophy as “historicism” and of the loss of moral
theory are still eminent or salient in Cobban’s (1953) discussion. Even so, there is
more going on in Cobban’s (1953) analysis than with any preoccupation with
American behavioralism. Accordingly, I will focus on the bigger picture that Cobban
(1953) means to paint on the death of political theory.
Cobban (1953) opens his historical critique in Political Science Quarterly
with the polemic sentence: “Political theory is not a progressive science” (321). In
other words, nothing new has come of political theory as is evidenced by the lack of
giants in the field (recall Easton 1951). Cobban (1953) is restating a viewpoint that is
evidently shared by many of his contemporaries (see Berlin 1962 below). This
viewpoint looks at the work of say Aristotle, and then compares the form and content
of the ancient Greek philosophy to modern political theory in the early 1950s, and
finds that “progress in the subject was imperceptible” (321). “Progress” in terms of
achievement has been lacking because there has been a “long interval” since there has
61
been “any original political thinking” (325). Cobban (1953) disagrees with these
“cynical” assertions, and observes that even if “political ideas do not progress, their
formulation certainly changes” (321). The formulation of political thought changes
because the world changes, in various degrees of rapidity, but always and forever the
“conditions of social life” change over time (Cobban 1953, 321). Over the long term,
these changing conditions then influence different outlooks and other individual
characteristics. The general form of political ideas may not progress, but because of
the fluctuating rate of social change over the centuries, it is necessary to “restate” the
grand “political principles” in a manner fitting the needs of the age; that is, if “the
tradition of political thinking [is to] remai[n] alive” (Cobban 1953, 321). The notion
that “cherished political ideas may be capable of dying” is not as farfetched as it may
sound (Cobban 1953, 322). “Political ideas are not immortal,” says Cobban (1953),
and because there is a “general tendency to cease thinking about society in terms of
political theory,” we can speak of the death or decline of political thinking in the
modern era (Cobban 1953, 322).
Cobban offers a historical example of how it could be that political theory
could be dead or moribund. Cobban (1953) notes that there has been a tradition of
political theory “stretching back for two and a half millennia, though with one
considerable break” – the Roman Imperial era (321; cf. Lippmann 195543
43 See Lippmann (1955) for a similar discussion of the decline of “public philosophy” or political and moral theory in modern times (81, 85).
). Once
before in the long history of the West (beginning with the ancient Greeks), Cobban
(1953) argues, political theory came to a grinding halt. Cobban (1953) is careful to
62
attenuate the parallel drawn between the ancient and the modern worlds of political
affairs. Even so, there is enough similarity for Cobban, the professional historian, to
make some tentative observations. In Roman times, he argues, the political principles
that arose out of the experience of the city-state came to be incapable of giving
meaning and continuity to the expanding power and demands on its governance. The
Romans citizen decided on a new form of government (empire) to save their way of
life. Cobban finds that “in the period when Caesarism was rising, the ideas associated
with the old Roman conception of libertas were falling” (1953, 324). They had to
adopt an imperial form of government because their republican way of life had been
so successful that their territorial gains necessitated greater control and government
efficiency (Cobban 1953, 324). Cobban (1953) holds that it was this movement or
adaptation to changing circumstances that immediately preceded the end of political
theory in the Roman Empire (324). The “turn away from political theory” by the
citizens of the Roman Empire was accompanied by the turning of genuine political
life into mere dictatorship and clientelism (Cobban 1953, 322). At this point in
ancient Roman history, Cobban (1953) says, “political thinking as the Greeks
understood it ceased” (323). Although Cobban (1953) does not explicitly say so, it
seems fair to say he means that political thinking in Greek terms would mean the
active participation of citizens in the policies of the state. Cobban’s (1953) primary
premise here is that the Roman Empire, as an imperial form of government, was
incapable of producing political theory as such. Without the freedom of the
63
individual citizen to participate in the affairs of the state political theory cannot be
articulated.
If one will grant to Cobban that such a concentration of political power existed
in the Imperial Roman era, one can follow his provocative (and historicist) thesis that
the citizens of Western democracies in 1953 were experiencing many of the same
conditions that precipitated empire in Rome (including the absence of political theory
traditionally conceived). 44
Cobban (1953) holds that “for political theory to exist … there must be an active
political life … one does not expect to find it flourishing among Australian aboriginal
tribes” (324). Drawing on his implicit reference to Greek political thought, I believe
Cobban (1953) means that without a certain type of social formation (relatively
open/liberal and market-driven as both Ancient Greece and Rome were) the
conditions for political thought (education, leisure etc.) will be absent. It seems that
Cobban (1953) believed that the only time that political theory ceased was during the
height to the Roman Imperial era. This happened because the imperial bureaucracy
Comparing in a somewhat loose manner, Cobban
juxtaposes Imperial Rome with the situation of Western democracies in 1953:
Since the majority of the population are naturally outside the chosen
circle of bureaucracy or party there is also a need, as long as a
degree of political consciousness survives in any part of the
excluded majority, for a machinery of repression, a system of
delation and espionage, political police, concentration camps or
prison and the rule of universal suspicion (Cobban 1953, 323).
64
had crushed it. In all other times and places there was the possibility that genuine
political thought could occur given the proper conditions. In a “non-political age,”
Cobban seems to think that bureaucracy may be restricting political thought once
again (1953, 329). Cobban’s (1953) analysis is deeply affected by a “political
pessimism,” and is closely connected to an ongoing “decay of political ideas” (328;
see also Wolin 1992 “Pessimism is a mood,” 249).
While discussing the meaning behind the title of Ortega y Gasset’s (1932) The
Revolt of the Masses, Cobban (1953) views the separation of fact and value in social
science in decisive terms. Cobban (1953) interprets Ortega y Gasset’s theory and
finds “the feeling that ethical values have no place in the field of social dynamics” has
led, in turn, to a situation where men and women behave without thinking about
values or the practical implications of their actions (Cobban 1953, 328). In other
words, modern men and women come into positions of power, and they “live their
lives without theory” (Cobban 1953, 328). The “masses” are understood as a social
aggregate by Ortega y Gasset (1932). As individuals, most citizens are now simply
“experts” and “technicians” who do not think about values but merely implement
techniques that have proven successful in the past (cf. Easton 1951). This “especially
German disease” has led to the worst “stupidity” in political affairs, but the politician
is not to be blamed for his or her ignorance (Cobban 1953, 328). How can they “be
held responsible for failing to translate political theory into practice if there is no
theory to be translated?” (Cobban 1953, 328; cf. Strauss 1954) Both Isaiah Berlin
44 At this point Cobban’s (1953) analysis provides an example of a historicist exaggeration and imputation of past and present discourses concerning the state of political things (e.g. Easton, Gunnell,
65
(1962) and Hannah Arendt (1963) pick up on this global theme of the absence of
political theory in the modern age and are discussed below.
Cobban sums up his external diagnostic by rejecting it, in part, and by arguing
from a slightly different vantage point. Cobban (1953) warns that to take his line of
argument as “the whole truth would be to despair of the political community
prematurely” (329). Instead he gloomily concludes by wondering if “it is true that
political theory has ceased to develop,” then maybe this “a sign that political life is in
fact coming to an end and that we are entering a nonpolitical age, as the ancient world
did?” (Cobban 1953, 329) In the end, Cobban (1953) muses that perhaps it is
advisable to turn to the internal dynamics of political theory after all, and to ask
whether “something has gone wrong with political thinking itself” (330; cf. Tracy
Strong 2002).
Arendt’s Diagnosis (Part One)
Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become
political by definition, for speech is what makes man
a political being
(Arendt 1958, 3).
Cobban (1953) has raised the issue “thoughtlessness” in his general diagnosis
of the decline of political theory. Arendt addresses the same issue in a novel manner.
The unique thing about Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), is that she does not focus her
work on either the general loss of thought in the modern age or the particular
& Graziano 1969).
66
manifestations in the American academy. To my knowledge, Arendt’s work does not
directly address the problem of the death of political theory in explicit terms. Her
critique, like the other Europeans reviewed, is more general. She is focused on the
big picture, but she is keenly aware of the modern tension between science and
theory. Arendt’s political theory also serves as a nice bridge between the Anglo-
American authors reviewed above, and the German viewpoint of Arendt and Leo
Strauss (see below).45
Arendt’s 1958 classic book of political theory is simply titled, The Human
Condition. Her voice echoes from the past in a way that is analogous to Eisenhower’s
(SCORE) message to the world from the first American telecommunications satellite
in 1958:
This is the President of the United States speaking. Through the
marvels of scientific advance my voice is coming to you via a
satellite circling in outer space. My message is a simple one:
through this unique means I convey to you and all mankind,
America's wish for peace on Earth and goodwill toward men
everywhere.
Arendt’s voice comes to us like that first grainy but nonetheless audible message from
outer space. Arendt (1958) theorizes that “it could be that we, who are earth-bound
creatures will forever be unable to understand, that is, to think and speak about the
things which nevertheless we are able to do” (3). Much like Cobban’s (1953) analysis
above, Arendt (1958) believes that we (that is human beings), are in danger of losing
45 Arendt, as Gunenberg (2002) has said of her national and intellectual pedigree, is an “American political thinker of German origin.”
67
our ability to think and act politically. For her, the threat is not so much bureaucracy
per se, but the invasion of the “social” and private interests into the public realm (cf.
Pitkin 1998). This is not the place to get into the “social question” or the problem of
freedom as Arendt often addressed them. For now it is sufficient to note that she also
believed that modern science as it had manifested as behavioral and positivist science
was a significant factor in our loss of aptitude for political thought (Arendt 1958).
Arendt (1958), it seems, has taken a rather pessimistic stand on the meaning of
“the advance of modern science.” One can hardly blame her today for this reasonable
outlook. But there is far more than gloomy pessimism to be gleaned from her
message for us today. Arendt’s (1958) book is nominally about the human condition.
She elaborates on the way, in her view, that the active life of human beings has been
framed by modern industry and its type of scientific advance. Labor, work, and action
are the titular concepts or categories that she invokes and elaborates throughout in
order to make the general point on which she dedicates her prologue. Her general
purpose is to reconsider “the human condition from the vantage point of our newest
experiences and our most recent fears” (Arendt 1958, 5). As such, she is not offering
answers to the perplexing political questions raised by the times and addressed in her
book. These answers, if attainable, are in fact “matters of practical politics;” they are
“subject to the agreement of many,” and as a consequence, they will never be satisfied
by the “theoretical considerations or the opinion of one person” (Arendt 1958, 5).
Matters of practical politics in a democracy are by definition for Arendt (1958),
phenomena that only occur among a group of people deliberating openly and equally.
68
Standing beside Prometheus, Arendt (1958) intones, “we” are “creatures of the earth,”
but “we” have crafted a form of life that is manifestly not of this earth” (3). “Should
it turn out,” she goes on:
that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought
have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the
helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how,
thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is
technically possible, no matter how murderous it is (Arendt 1958,
3).
As I interpret this passage, knowledge as know-how is analogous to the disciplining
effects of modern scientific paradigms discussed above (Kuhn 1962). As a modern
social scientist, one merely has to learn a skill or set of skills without really thinking
about it. It follows that this type of knowledge has parted company with thought
(which would think about it). Arendt (1958) merely wishes to compel her reader “to
think what we are doing” (5). We must not simply accept the paradigm of the day.
This is not a matter of resistance for resistance sake. Instead, we should actively work
to refashion the framework of thought that has been handed down to us, and which
has come to dominate modern scientific practice (cf. Cobban 1953). This, it seems to
me, is especially true of the behavioral approach to social science, which reduces
everyone and everything to points of data, devoid of any moral character whatsoever.
The “central theme” of Arendt’s (1958) book, is fundamentally “a matter of thought,
and thoughtlessness – the heedless recklessness or hopeless confusion or complacent
repetition of ‘truths’ which have become trivial and empty” (5). The truths which
69
have become “trivial and empty,” in my reading, are closely analogous to the facts
and assumptions of the modern and behavioral scientific world view (as it was most
clearly manifest in the 1950s and the 1960s).46 The behavioral persuasion (Gunnell
1991) represents a particular perspective that has invaded the social sciences,
incapacitated traditional philosophy (Arendt 1954), and in the process, left many of us
thinking “what we are doing?”47 Normative or value-creating theory, as Easton
(1951) envisioned it, could perhaps help get past nonpolitical thinking and the failings
of the behavioral revolution. Or, perhaps, a related perspective might illuminate how
the death of political theory was thought best averted.
Strauss’ Viewpoint
Leo Strauss (1899-1973) specialized in classical political philosophy and has
had a tremendous impact on subsequent American developments in that field. He was
among the numerous Jewish scholars who immigrated to the United States during the
years leading up to and during the Second World War. Strauss’ last year in Germany
was 1932 (Gunnell 1993, 175). According to Peter Kielmansegg (1995), Arendt,
Strauss, Marcuse, and Hans Morgenthau were “the four most influential of th[e]
refugee intellectuals” (1). In comparing the impact of Strauss vis-à-vis that of Arendt,
Kielmansegg states that Strauss “had a much greater influence on political philosophy
in the United States than Hannah Arendt, who is read more and given more attention
in Germany” (5). This lopsided focus between the two émigré scholars is attributed to
46 On closely related point see Schumacher (1977) on his notion of the “scientific mechanists.” 47 Pitkin (1998), in chapter one, discusses Arendt’s (1958) uses of the pronoun “we,” and the concept of the “social” in The Human Condition and may be of interest to some readers.
70
the fact that an entire “school” of enquiry developed around Strauss at the University
of Chicago – “certainly a very remarkable state of affairs for an émigré”
(Kielmansegg 5). The tradition of the so-called Straussian school continues to figure
prominently in present day research the Universities of Chicago and at Notre Dame.
It seems to me that both Arendt and Strauss are evaluating the death of
political theory (or our capacity for political thought) in terms of the world-historic
situation and not to the American behavioral revolution per se. On this geo-historic
level, Strauss can be viewed as a staunch opponent of “modernity.” Modern author’s
like Strauss and Arendt have repeatedly characterized “modernity” as that condition
or the state of affairs within society that has rejected important aspects of the ancient
or the great tradition. This tradition in terms of political philosophy began with Plato
and ended roughly with the work of Karl Marx (1818-1883). In this sense, then, it
seems that the modern idea of political theory really began with Marx and his
followers. The idea was not merely to describe and interpret the world, but in
addition to strive to change it. To follow the work of Marx meant a logical shift not
just away from but onto a particular field or path. Political philosophies new path
began with Marx’s inversion and consequent obliteration of the great tradition
(Arendt 1954; Canovan 1970).
The tradition as it had been handed down from Plato to at least Rousseau saw
the role of the political philosopher in terms of a disinterested aloofness from the
political arena. Marx’s inversion of priorities upset whatever balance had been
achieved in Western political philosophy. To be against modernity meant to Strauss a
71
return to the thought before (preferably long before Marx), and the corrupting
influences of the “relativistic” and the “scientific” ideas that made his thought
possible (Strauss 1962; see also Brecht 1959; cf. Easton 1951). In terms of
intellectual sublimation this development has rendered modern thinkers, so to speak,
“rootless” (Wolin 1960). It is no longer possible to appeal to the old tradition of
political theory which had exhibited some continuity throughout the millennia.
Instead one feels compelled to follow current trends and conform to contemporary
ideas. Ironically, Marx’s destruction of the old moral and political order of
philosophy meant that a challenge to the status quo would be ongoing. There was no
longer any anchorage for the political theorist to cling to (cf. Lyotard 1984). Each
individual in each generation would have to fight it out on shifting ground in order to
remake the world in his or her own image.
As I interpret Strauss, he fought against this “crisis” in knowledge and sought
to reestablish the lost tradition of moral and political philosophy (or at least a
particular version of it). The loss of the ancient tradition of political and moral
philosophy precipitated and encouraged the intensification of the great “crisis of
modernity.” This crisis is in principle an intellectual one. For Strauss the tools most
appropriate to its resolution were to be found already made in classical (Greek)
political philosophy of the past. Strauss’s method can be described as exegetical in
the literal meaning of the term. He treated the ancient texts as “sacred” and believed
that the ancient canon provided all the knowledge necessary to uproot and move
beyond the “crisis” in the modern world (Saxonhouse 2009, 733).
72
“What is political philosophy” (1954) is the best article I found of Strauss’
that directly addresses the death of political theory. It was published originally as a
two-part lecture given by Strauss at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1954. It is
reprinted in Volume 19, Number 3 (1957) of The Journal of Politics (the pagination
that I cite is based on The Journal of Politics reprint; while for consistency sake, I
reference the original lecture date of 1954). In this article his discussion of the death
of political theory is very brief and can be found on two pages (345-346). This
example of Strauss’ (1954) diagnosis is instructive, and this extract gives a fair taste
of his political philosophy in general. Incidentally, Strauss’ vision also demonstrates
a unique way of viewing the death of political theory in the modern age. “Political
philosophy,” says Strauss (1957) in the classical vein, “is the attempt to truly know
both the nature of political things and the right, or the good, political order” (345). In
other words, political philosophy is an ancient art form that seeks to establish
comprehensive means to reach comprehensive ends that any rational individual (of
sufficient intelligence) would agree upon. Political philosophy in this sense, then, is
manifestly not modern political theory as Easton (1951) thought it had become or
Dahl (1958) wished it to be.
Political philosophy and its theory are essentially the same way of thinking
and practice that Plato and Aristotle joined in and improved on so well. The trouble,
according to Strauss (1954), is that political philosophy and its practice was in a
dreadful “state of decay and perhaps of putrefaction, if it has not vanished altogether”
(345). The political philosopher (as opposed to the modern political scientist), is
73
concerned with goals and objectives that are never entirely clear and unambiguous.
They are always “essentially controversial” or contested (Strauss 1954, 345). For
example, says Strauss, “the goal of the general is victory” and the “goal of the
statesman is the common good,” but whereas the former goal of victory in battle is
never in question, the latter goal of “the common good” is, and always will be,
essentially contested (345; cf. Dahl 1958 below). To clarify this point, you can put
the matter another way and say that different people can always disagree on what the
“common good” is, just as different people can always disagree on what constitutes
“justice” in a given situation. In modern political science, according to Strauss
(1954), it seems that a “temptation” has arisen whereby many political scientists have
sought, by default, to:
evade the comprehensive character of politics and to treat politics as
one compartment among many. This temptation must be resisted if
we are to face our situation as human beings, i.e., the whole
situation (345).
For Strauss (1954), then, political philosophy has been deprived of its original
fullness (we “find it cut into pieces which behave as if they were parts of a worm”),
when it was synonymous with political science (epistēmē politikē), and when it was
the “all-embracing study of human affairs” (346). Much like Arendt (1958) above,
Strauss (1954) is rejecting modern political theory in its behavioral and empirical
manifestation. Both these authors refused to give in to the likes of Dahl (1958, 1961).
Like the early Easton (1951), both Strauss (1954) and Arendt (1958) found the source
of the decline of political theory in its members’ rejection of the moral and political
74
aspects of their practice. What remains of the old philosophy for Strauss in 1954?
Lamentably, all that remains is “pitiable rump” (Strauss 1954, 346). Barely anything
remains after the great reduction of the domain of traditional political philosophy. In
other words political philosophy has lost its claim to the subjects of the “scientific”
studies of politics, economics, and sociology. In short, the old philosophy had
divided itself up into various compartments or the fields of modern social science. As
the modern age and the behavioral revolution progressed into the present, the old
philosophy has been broken down into worm-like parts that no longer bear any
resemblance to each other (much less the former whole). The remnant of a once
unified and coeval philosophy is hard to look at (Strauss 1954). In the end, Strauss
(1954) finds that the true search after the moral and politics of right is abandoned or
never even discovered by those “honest” men and women who might have from the
start advanced relevant and comprehensive political theories about the world of
human affairs (346).
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention two further points about Strauss
the modern political philosopher. First, it should be noted that Strauss’ “untimely
message” (Kielmansegg 1995) has been used in diverse ways, from so-called
“neocons” to “revivalists” like Catherine and Michael Zuckert (2006). To some he is
a controversial figure, while to others his form of political theory is the best way to
practice. Secondly, Strauss (1962) famously contributed an essay to a volume of
works dedicated to a critique of the “new science of politics” (Storing 1962). The
final lines of this essay infamously read:
75
Nevertheless one may say of it [the new political science] that it
fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not
know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns (Storing
327).
Here, Strauss (1962) is directly accusing the new behavioral sciences of neglecting
their role in contemporary society (this was especially true of political science’s
perceived irrelevance to the political realm in America). The Storing (1962) volume
valiantly demonstrated the thesis that the “new science of politics” had become the
new mainstream under the banner of behavioral political science in America. The
Storing (1962) volume heavily critiqued this paradigm and its acceptance of a value-
neutral and objective science. Not without irony, this essay would arouse the ire of
Schaar and Wolin (1963), whose “review article” would attack Strauss and the other
contributors to the Storing volume. This hardly veiled polemic was published in The
American Political Science Review and was followed-up by rejoinders from Strauss
and the other volume authors.48
To conclude this section I must restate that because of the various
interpretations of Strauss’ oeuvre, he is a somewhat controversial figure in political
theory today. Strauss’ (1954) viewpoint is important because it is from the
perspective of classical political philosophy. This viewpoint from the old philosophy
has survived into our own day, in part, due to his efforts. Strauss (1954) thinks that
48 The critique by Schaar and Wolin (1963) is complicated, but at a basic level it is ironic because they were also political philosophers, and given the critique of mainstream political science or “the new science of politics” (Storing 1962), one could reasonably expect that all these authors would be on the same side of the proverbial fence. Nevertheless, the dispute between Schaar & Wolin, Strauss and the
76
political theory may have “vanished altogether,” because this practice was no longer
taken seriously. Too many have gone down the path of empirical and behavioral
science leaving too few to study the political philosophy of the ancients who began
the practice in the first place. Laslett’s (1956) proclamation attends to both sides of
the dispute over modern science; nevertheless, his central concern is to show how “for
the moment, anyway, political philosophy is dead” (vii).
Laslett’s Proclamation
Prior to the foundation of the academic journal Political Theory in 1972, the
book series Philosophy, Politics, and Society was the closest thing political theorists
had to a disciplinary journal or a “general political-theory academic periodical”
(Dryzek, Honig & Philips 2006, 12; the continuing series Nomos was also
instrumental and began in 1958).49 Peter Laslett’s (1956) “Introduction” to
Philosophy, Politics and Society is famous among political theorists and philosophers
interested in the death of political theory in the 1950s (Berlin 1962; Barry 1980;
Connolly 2001; Hauptmann 2006). By 1956, the conversation surrounding the death
of political theory had become fairly well-known. In his 1956 introduction, Laslett’s
proclamation is straightforward. He says quite firmly: “For the moment, anyway,
political philosophy is dead” (vii). Even though Laslett’s (1956) discussion of the
others was able, if only for a moment, to “set this normally fire-proof journal aflame” (Barber 2006). See the articles in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (March 1963). 49 Fifty three volumes of Nomos have been published by the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (http://www.political-theory.org/asplp.html). The seventh volume of the Philosophy, Politics, and Society series was published after Laslett’s (1915-2001) death. By 2003, the resurgence of political theory was well underway, and as James Fishkin (2003) eulogizes Laslett’s passing, he says that Laslett “was delighted by its revival … a revival in which he played an important part” (6).
77
death of political theory is (in my classification) from the European perspective, his
approach does not exactly come down on the side of the traditional philosophy. His
essay is directed to an academic British audience. The work would become famous, I
believe, because he attended to both the particular causes and the more universal
consequences of the decline of modern political theory.
Laslett’s (1956) short introduction masterfully equivocates between the
positions of those who believe the proposition that traditional or the old political
philosophy was moribund, and the viewpoint of those who would call for a
reexamination of that premise. None of the contributing authors are “political
philosophers in the old sense” (Laslett 1956, ix). “Philosophy,” Laslett (1956)
informs the reader, is “like all other abstract words, capable of a great variety of
definitions” (xii). The authors collected in this volume are considered “political
philosophers,” merely because they are “written by philosophers on political subjects”
(Laslett 1956, xii). In fact, this is a linguistic or semantic definition of political
philosophy. Laslett may be demonstrating a bit of British humor in his back-and-forth
diagnosis of the decline of political theory. Laslett’s (1956) facetiousness is evident,
given the nominal denotation of the political philosopher offered (but not explicitly
followed), when he speaks of the reasons why the “great thinkers of the past” (i.e. the
canon from Plato to Marx), no longer seem to appear in modern times (vii).50
From the geopolitical vantage point of the recent past, it appears that “the
tradition has been broken” and, moreover, “we have no political philosophy because
50 See also, Cobban 1953 (above) and Berlin 1962 (below) on the thesis of the disappearance of the “great” moral or traditional political thinker observed in the past but absent in the present.
78
politics has become too serious to be left to political philosophers” (Laslett 1956, vii).
Again, Laslett (1956) does not openly admit his alliances (fitting, I think, given the
recent demise of political or moral theory). It seems to me that he is playing with the
controversies surrounding the death of political theory but without ever explicitly
choosing or supporting a side. One reason often supplied for the decline of political
philosophy was the World Wars and the world-historic atmosphere of the Cold War
(cf. Easton 1991). The devastation of successive World Wars, the development of
nuclear weapons, and the settling of the geopolitical climate into two M.A.D. camps;
all these events and conditions could be pointed to in order to illustrated that the
traditional or the moral political philosopher was no longer able to live up to his or
her role and most significant tasks (vii). Primary among these tasks might have been
to provide adequate principles of right government that could have prevented these
modern horrors. The political philosophers in large part in the 20th century had
abandoned the old way and very few were doing political theory. Instead they were
engaged in “historicism” (Easton 1951) or empirical (“causal”) political theory (Dahl
1961). Political theorists were merely describing in nominal terms the categories of
different principles of governance as they observed them in the past. There was no
attempt at the old style of creating and recreating values for the people and their
representative to live by in the immediate future (see also, Berlin 1961 below; cf.
Easton 1951 and Cobban 1953 above). In part, the massive conflagrations
culminating in two World Wars and potential nuclear holocaust can be blamed, then,
on the political philosopher and the grand philosophies of the recent past (the
79
“historicist” in Popper 1944; and Easton’s 1951 sense). This is especially true for the
French sociologists (Comte, Durkheim, etc.) and even more so of the German idealist
or statist philosophers (Hegel, Marx, etc.) Of course, Marxist philosophy did not
“cause” the World Wars in a strict empirical-positivist sense of that term. Yet, the
inversion of the former philosophy (discussed above), opened the way for the
organization of society on, for lack of a better term, a totalitarian basis (Arendt 1951).
One sure sign that political theory was in serious trouble was the theoretical
orientation of the Marxists at the time. Says Laslett (1956), of latter day Marxist
philosophy:
Marxists are quite simply not interested in the perennial debates
which exercised the political philosophers in the past, and their
immensely successful political following in the twentieth century
has apparently found little occasion to present them with
philosophical problems of the political sort. They have got on
without it (viii).
Marx was perhaps among the last of the classical political philosophers who actively
sought to enact a radical (in the “literal sense” of going to the root of the matter – see
Arendt 1968) and social system-wide revaluation of values (cf. Strauss 1957).
A second symptom of decline pointed out by Laslett (1956), was the rise of an
academic sociology in the style of Karl Mannheim and his followers. This “sociology
of knowledge” presupposed determinism (because everything is “sociologically
determined”), and the success of this style of thought has left the “social and political
philosopher” with feelings of inhibition and temerity (Laslett 1956, viii; cf. Dahl
1961). You could say that the sociology of knowledge as practiced in the academy
80
became a corrupting influence on the idea of “knowledge” (scientia) itself. The old
way of viewing the meaning of the word “knowledge” and the new way of
understanding it were radically divergent (cf. Arendt 1958). It follows that the
political philosopher discovers that one of his or her traditional forms of their
authority – their claim to political knowledge – is no longer possible (because of
scientific value relativism and the modern condition of essential controversy or
contention). These feelings are only natural, since “the area of his activity has been
taken over by the sociologists, who do not seem to be doing anything with it, or at any
rate, nothing of philosophic interest” (Laslett 1956, vii-ix).
The final nail in the proverbial coffin of the old political philosophy was the
late twentieth century work of the logical positivists (Laslett 1956, ix). As the name
implies, the logical positivists embraced scientific positivism and then took it to its
logical extreme. 51 Laslett (1956) says flatly (before attenuating his claims a few
sentences later), “the logical positivists did it” (ix). He says:
The decline of traditional political theory was the effect of the
logical positivists on a philosopher’s understanding of their role in
the developing political theory. It was Russell and Wittgenstein,
Ayer and Ryle who convinced the philosophers that they must
withdrawal unto themselves for a time, and re-examine their logical
and linguistic apparatus (Laslett 1956, ix).
51 According to the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought (1991) logical positivism was premised on the idea that “immediate experience provided the content of all science, and logic the formal language through which to connect descriptions of experiences and so construct laws and theories” (396).
81
These “analytic” or “linguistic” philosophers attacked the massive muddle and
linguistic confusion of traditional political philosophy, created new methods or tools
of analysis, and showed a good deal of Western philosophy’s core area of operation
and concern (especially the metaphysical and theological) to be nonsense (Laslett
1956, xiv). Metaphysical questions like the nature of the good or the beautiful were
nonsense when it came to scientific endeavor, because these topics were not
amendable to the positivist formula of science. By rejecting any part of the old
philosophy which could not be verified by use of modern positive science, the future
“empirical” thinker (in Dahl 1961 sense) was freed to pursue other areas of political
philosophy that were important. Above all, this allowed them to continue debunking
of the older ways of classical philosophy. By 1956, the movement of logical
positivism had for the most part run its course (Laslett 1956). The task was then to
understand the effects or consequences of that movement, to pick up the pieces as it
were, and to discover anew the dignity and power of philosophical analysis in the
grand tradition of the past. This tradition, though perhaps no longer a “tradition” in
the sense of an unbroken chain of a dominant ideology (a hegemonic or paradigmatic
movement) has survived nonetheless (“among the debris of reason,”52 i.e. it is hidden
among “a wash” of plurality) even into our own day.
Laslett (1956) goes on to discuss a renewed hope for a “modern Stoicism,”
and a return to the belief in the universal nature of mankind that might still illuminate
52 This is Seligman’s (1992) suggestive phrase used as a “literary” or “thematic” starting point in his The Idea of Civil Society; first brought to my attention by Lichbach’s (1997) essay reviewed elsewhere.
82
a possible alternative path to justice and liberty projecting into the future (xiv).53 Says
Laslett (1956) on this point, there is a “new philosophical attitude” alive in the West
(x). Laslett (1956) is not clear, but he seems to mean what he calls the tradition of the
“philosophy of vulgar prejudice,” including, it seems what was said about modern day
Marxists above (xiii). “Vulgar,” to Laslett (1956), “means on the part of the people at
large” (xii). Where a “prejudice” is any “persistent belief in the existence of
something, whether or not there is evidence for it” (Laslett 1956, xii). Of course, the
“philosopher of vulgar prejudice never existed” in the real world – as more than an
ideal type – as in fact, perhaps, Aristotle and Hobbes had most closely championed
the idea (Laslett 1956, xiii). Given the context of this reference to “stoicism,” I
believe that this is a veiled equation with the imagined glory of the ancient “vulgar
philosophers” (cf. Cobban 1953). Those who still follow the logical positivists (and
positivism more generally) are now possessed by the “modern prejudice” of
positivism; the “vulgar philosophers” just the opposite (cf. Gunnell 2009).
“Philosophizing about politics,” in the classical sense, is no longer deemed
cutting-edge, and many theorists have turned to the study of epistemology and the
scientific method to fill the void; their world-view is positivist (xi). In general terms,
there is manifestly a fundamental conflict between “the epistemologist and the
political theorist” in general (Laslett 1956, xiii; see also Wolin 1969 below). These
observations about classical political philosophy might bring the work of Leo Strauss
53 “Stoicism” – A unified logical, physical, and moral philosophy, taking its name from the stoa poikile or painted porch of Athens were Stoic doctrine was taught (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). The call to “stoicism” is echoed by Laslett as late as the fifth series of Philosophy, Politics, and Society (1979).
83
to mind.54 As I understand Strauss’ (1964) viewpoint, political philosophy requires a
mystical element – a stiff breeze of a metaphysical nature to carry the philosopher
over the gap – a lacuna which necessarily exists between theory and practice.55 This
mystical element is found in the speculative and metaphysical researches of the
classical political philosopher (like Plato and Aristotle) who combined theory and
practice in their epistēmē politikē. The abandonment of higher order questions in
favor of what is immediately verifiable, can only leave a yawning gap in our
understanding of the world as it might be right now. Political philosophy,
traditionally and commonly conceived:
means what it meant to Aristotle and the whole succession down to
Samuel Alexander56 in our own country, a complete, coherent view
of all knowledge and experience, what used to be called a
Weltanschauung (Laslett 1956, xiii).
A weltanschauung is a world-view or ideology that helps the philosopher and
layperson navigate through the perplexities of human existence.
It is clear to Laslett (1956) that the need for answers to philosophic questions
is a part of the human condition. As such, there is at least one aspect of the old
philosophy that is saved. The new school of positive political theory, as it had
developed since the end of the wars, still knew of the moral idea of judgment (Easton
1951; this is one reason why political scientists “cannot do without political theory” –
54 See, for example, Leo Strauss (1964) The City and Man. 55 An example of what I mean, in succinct form, was found in a surprising location: “Hypothesizing requires a leap from observed particulars to abstract generalizations, which is set forth to explain the phenomena. Imagination is necessary to attain a breakthrough in scientific discoveries” (Mak, Mak & Mak 2009, 14)
84
see Dahl 1958 below). The new science of politics knew, for instance, that at some
point in any political analysis a human judgment must be made. It was this fact that
establishes, or rather requires, its own justification of said judgment, in turn, and one
in explicit ethical (moral or political) terms (Laslett 1956, x).
Laslett’s (1956) is initially pessimistic: “The intellectual light of the mid-
twentieth century is clear, cold, and hard” (xiv). This light has forsaken and tried to
bury the ancient practice handed down through the ages that could possibly save them
from the dangers of narrow mindedness and Pollyannaish attitudes. Even with a
renewed faith in “revelation” or in “natural law,” Laslett (1956) suggests, we may not
be heading to a return and reawakening of “genuine political philosophy.” Laslett
(1956) expects some of his readers (“even with the expectation of its imminent
revival”), to think his diagnosis of the death of political philosophy to be unfounded,
“an exaggeration” or “even a distortion” (xiv). Even though “the winter has set in,” it
is clear that he believes that spring will come in due course (Laslett 1956, ix).
Finally, Laslett (1956) takes care to witness to a possible “rebirth of traditional
political philosophy.” This would be a return of a form of philosophy that is based on
a growing activism among political theorists. It seems that there are “signs that our
philosophers were preparing to take up their responsibilities towards political
discussions once more” (Laslett 1956, x). This is a modest “expectation” that there
may yet be “a rebirth of traditional political philosophy” (Laslett 1956, x). Even if
political philosophy were dead, we (those present in 1956) would not know it,
56 Samuel Alexander (1859-1938): British philosopher and author of, for example, Moral Order and Progress (1889) and Space, Time, and Deity (1920).
85
because the task of certifying the proposition must be left for the future (Laslett 1956,
xii). But he is now duly optimistic, and he allows for the recognition of the (re)
emergence “abroad in the world a movement growing everyday more powerful for the
restoration of philosophy of all humanity, a philosophy on the Stoic model, which
represents not the extinction of political philosophy but its metamorphosis” (xii;
emphasis added). Of course, in my understanding, the stoic philosophers of the
classical period were the most moral of all.
All this talk of morality and the role of the political philosopher in helping to
clarify and establish principles of just or right governance may sound strange and
even “off topic” to many political scientists in America today. Surely all American
political scientists are familiar with the work of Robert Dahl. Comparing Laslett’s
(1956) proclamation to that of Dahl’s skepticism and deep pessimism about the value
of the old political theory can help bridge this gap. Returning to Dahl’s (1958)
American perspective, we can witness a good example of what the new “empirical”
political theory was trying to become, and what it ultimately wished to do with the
older political and moral philosophy.
Dahl’s Skepticism
Returning to the American context, Robert Dahl is considered to be a
contemporary democratic theorist in a modern empirical and scientific sense. Despite
contradictory opinions regarding the nature of Dahl’s work, it seems clear to me (it is
“self-evident”), that he believes himself to be a “theorist” in the new sense of that
term. His signal contributions are all works about “democracy,” and according to
86
Baer, Jewel, & Sigelman (1991), the publication of A Preface to Democratic Theory
“established Dahl as one of the leading contemporary democratic theorists” (166).
The subject matter, the problem of rule and the question of democratic rule in
particular, is clearly central to the concerns of both Dahl and political theory in
contemporary terms. In his 1958 review article called, “Political Theory: Truth and
Consequences,” Dahl is skeptical about the intellectual attainments of the older
political theory or philosophy in America.57 The old political philosophy is already
dead in Dahl’s (1958) telling. Since the behavioral revolution has established the
paradigm of good political science, it is now incumbent upon students of political
theory to fully abandon the old ways, and come to the aid of the new science of
politics (Storing 1962; see also Dahl 1961 above). Dahl’s (1958) review is nominally
about the work of Bertrand de Jouvenel (1957), titled Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the
Political Good. He takes the opportunity less to review this work, than to lash out at
the hold-outs of the old theory (cf. Gunnell 1986; Saxonhouse 2006). Accordingly, I
will focus on his comments concerning the state of modern political theory in the US
in the late 1950s. Dahl (1958) finds that the traditional political theory as it has come
down through the generations, is imminently “subversive” of any “attempt to
construct a reliable map” to valid conclusions (97). Dahl (1958) goes on to say that
political theory in modern times must be “empirical.” It must submit to “radical
demands,” if it hopes “to play a role in a world where the intellectual revolution
brought about by the development of logico-experimental reasoning has become
57 Dahl is reviewing Bertrand de Jouvenel (1957), Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good. J.F. Hunington trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
87
commonplace” (Dahl 1958, 97). By using the phrase “logico-experimental reason,”
Dahl (1958) is emphasizing what he takes to be the rightfully dominant form of
method (see Laslett 1956). This method draws heavily on the positivist epistemology
and it views the world in very narrow scientific terms of experiment and hypothesis
testing. Accordingly, says Dahl (1958), it is “reasonable to demand … a full and fair
test” of all propositions and in empirical or positive terms (97). Absent any criteria
for accepting or rejecting the propositions and conclusions of a political theorist, Dahl
(1958) says that the “interpretation” offered of various works becomes less a subject
of “scientific analysis,” and more a species of “literary criticism” (97; cf. Arendt 1961
below). This is a distasteful outcome for Dahl. The field of literary criticism, for
Dahl (1958), is the site where:
The “meaning” of a poem generally does not, even at the hands of
the new critics, lead to an agreed interpretation, and where
differences in nuance and meaning, exploited by different critiques,
are a basic part of the game of criticism (97).
In terms of modern (empirical) scientific objectivity, the “game of criticism” is not
considered rigorous nor worthy of serious consideration. Dahl does not say who he is
referring to, but given the research I have conducted, it’s a safe bet to think that he is
referring at least in part to the émigré scholars and their new ideas and their new ways
of research (see, for example, Gunnell above).
Dahl goes on to predict that ceteris paribus the “social sciences will move
haltingly on, concerned often with a meticulous observation of the trivial, and
political theory will take up permanent cohabitation with literary criticism” (1958,
88
98). The new empirical political science that has been established following the
behavioral revolution has been criticized for this triviality (e.g. Arendt 1958 above),
but Dahl (1958) doesn’t have a problem with it. It seems that as long as the
accumulation of reliable data continues, miniscule achievements will eventually lead
to great gains in the modern science of politics. Finally, Dahl (1958) attenuates his
diatribe to conclude magnanimously enough: although it “would be easy to kill off
political theory altogether in the name of empiricism and rigor … to do so would be
of no service to the intellectual community [since] we cannot afford to abandon it”
(98). These are the last words of Dahl’s (1958) review. He does not go into the
reasons why “we cannot afford to abandon” political theory (Laslett 1956). Switching
back to a European perspective, and the work of Isaiah Berlin (1962), we find more
global reasons for the timeless need for political theory.
Berlin’s Synthesis
Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was born in what was northwest Russia (today the
independent state of Latvia). In geopolitical terms, his youth was characterized by the
Bolshevik revolution; and in internal or subjective terms, by his experience of being a
Jew in a Christian land. He moved to Britain in early 1921. He received his Ph.D.
from Oxford (UK) and he would spend his entire academic career at that university.58
He is known for his ardent defense of liberalism in Two Concepts of Liberty (1957),
and for his belief in the ongoing development of “value pluralism.”59 His essay opens
58 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/24540.stm 59 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berlin/#4; see also Steven Lukes (1994) “The Singular and the Plural: on the Distinctive Liberalism of Isaiah Berlin” in Social Research Vol. 61, No. 3.
89
the second series of Philosophy, Politics, and Society (1962) and is titled, “Does
Political Theory Still Exist?” Ostensibly Berlin meant to address Laslett’s 1956
proclamation that “for the moment, anyway, political philosophy is dead” (see above).
This work is definitely a landmark work in the death discourse in the 1950s and early
1960s. According to William Connolly (2001) the word “still” in the question “does
political theory still exist?” makes all the difference (5). Although the old way has
past, the qualification signifies that there is yet hope. In Connolly’s (2001) reading,
Berlin’s essay can “tell a lot about the predicament of political theory in the early
1960s in English speaking countries” (6). Connolly (2001) believes that like many
political theorists of the time, Berlin too had “internalized several problematical
assumptions of those who pronounced the enterprise dead” (6; cf. Gunnell 1978). By
this Connolly seems to mean that there was no problem, obviously, as political theory
continued and flourishes today.
Returning to a European and more global perspective, Berlin (1962) finds the
question as to whether or not there is “such a subject as political theory?” is
forwarded “with suspicious frequency in English speaking countries” (1). He goes on
to say that this line of inquiry “questions the very credentials of the subject: it
suggests that political philosophy, whatever it may have been in the past, is today
dead or dying” (Berlin 1962, 1). As a chief symptom of the decline or death of
political theory, Berlin (1962) introduces or rather relates the thesis that “no
commanding work of political philosophy has appeared in the twentieth century” (1;
recall Cobban 1953 above). By a “commanding work” Berlin (1962) says he means
90
that there has been no such work in the “field of general ideas” which has “in a large
area converted paradoxes into platitudes or vice versa” (1; cf. Kuhn’s 1962). Yet, as
he is quick to point out, even this apparent lack of a commanding or great work is not
“conclusive evidence” for the death or “demise of a discipline” (Berlin 1962, 1). So
does political theory still exist in 1962? The answer is of course it still exists:
“political theory will not wholly perish from the earth” (Berlin 1962, 33; emphasis
added). It was never really capable of disappearing in the first place. Political
philosophy is incapable of dying so long as people disagree about the ultimate or
fundamental aims and purposes of human life. So why was there a pervasive
questioning of the very existence of political theory? What were theorists trying to
communicate to each other by stating, for example, that political philosophy was “for
the moment” deceased (Laslett 1956). What, furthermore, was implied by the clause
“for the moment” or the word “still” – other than the hope that political theory could
one day be re-born? (Connolly 2001)
Discursus: The Philosophy of Science
Berlin’s analysis is what I would call geo-historical in nature. Like Cobban’s
(1953) analysis, it is more general (externally focused on the world) and less
particular (or internally focused on the individual). The philosophy of science teaches
that over the grand scope of Western history, it is possible to identify more or less
organized bodies of knowledge or scientific disciplines. For a time these paradigms
(in a more loose sense than Kuhn meant) or intellectual frameworks served to provide
the basic knowledge for all those who were interested to study that body in detail. A
91
paradigm is a structure of thought can help us make sense of the universe. It can lay
bare to the senses the hidden forces that shape our everyday cosmic reality. Finally,
as already noted above, these mental images can provide a scientist the opportunity to
go on testing and refining hypotheses that will eventually confirm that the picture is
true (Kuhn 1962).
Today it is widely understood that we live under an Einsteinian framework (a
paradigm in Kuhn’s strong sense) of the universe. In theoretical physics, which
supplies the foundation for modern exploration of the universe, the Einsteinian
paradigm supplies theorists, scientists, and students alike with a coherent and testable
framework or picture of the universe concerning the makeup and process of the
cosmos. Physics became a modern discipline when it embraced this paradigm or
hegemonic world-view (Kuhn 1957, 1962). The paradigm determines the scope of
both the science and the theory within the discipline. Einstein’s (1879-1955)
paradigm of the universe had first to supplant the existing paradigm forwarded earlier
by Newton and then followed-up by generations of scholars afterwards.60 In our day
it may seem as though we have certain knowledge of the mechanics of the universe,
but given the past as a guide it would be imprudent to suggests that we may not again
experience dramatic and world-view altering discoveries on par or maybe greater than
even Einstein’s recent discoveries (cf. Kuhn 1962).
Disciplines, we have already noted, can be understood as organized bodies of
knowledge that are organized around certain fundamental (tacit or implicit) beliefs
92
and axioms which are necessarily taken for granted by its practitioners (Gunnell
2006). These basic beliefs or maxims enable the practitioner to refine his or her
knowledge about a subject within the discipline’s field in part because they are able to
take these basic ideas for granted. “Individual science,” for example, the study of
astronomy, requires principally that “the path to their solution must be implicit in
their very formulation” (Berlin 1962, 5-6). A key point in the decline or death of a
discipline, then, is the failure of a body of knowledge’s basic assumptions to provide
illumination for and resolution to the problems and controversies that evolves internal
to the discipline over time. When this failure is accompanied by the introduction of a
new model or paradigm that is in turn accepted by a large number of scientists, then
we can speak of the birth of a new discipline and perhaps the final death of another
(e.g. on this last point, think about the formerly “scientific” studies of alchemy or
phrenology). In Kuhn’s (1962) terms, the death of a discipline is a “scientific
revolution.” Berlin relates the matter succinctly: “This type of systematic parricide is,
in effect, the history of the natural sciences in their relation to philosophy” (1962, 2).
This line of thought is analogous to my interpretation of Strauss’ (1957) viewpoint
above. The behavioral revolt had usurped the former provinces of political
philosophy and reduced them to empirical and behavioral social sciences. In the early
1960s, the behavioral revolution had largely coalesced into a movement which was
specifically bent on disciplining political theory or philosophy. The revolutionaries
like Dahl (1958, 1961) thought they could provide the types of methodological
60 See Einstein’s (1940) short essay, “Freedom and Science:” “Inward freedom is an infrequent gift of nature … schools may interfere with the development of inner freedom through authoritarian influences
93
(empirical and behavioral) assurances that the new science of politics seemed to
require. As I have already noted in the discussion above (Laslett 1957), even in the
case of a political science emulating the natural sciences, there remain serious
questions of a philosophical nature which cannot be determined with the precision
and certainty required by modern behavioral science. Among these are of course the
fields of “ethics, aesthetics, criticism explicitly concerned with general ideas” which
all involve “value judgments” (Berlin 1962, 6).
Berlin’s Relativism
There are in general four distinct types of disciplines or bodies of knowledge
identified by Berlin. First, there is what can be called empirical science (akin to
Dahl’s “empiricism” dealing in observation, induction, and determination of fact),
secondly what he calls formal science (dealing in deduction and rules of logical
analysis like models of rational choice), third what he deems quasi-scientific (such as
ideologies), and finally the body of knowledge known as philosophy. Philosophy as a
body of knowledge or discipline is distinct for a number of reasons. At base,
however, it is distinct from the more “scientific” studies in that “we are puzzled from
the very outset” concerning how to begin and where we might find the answers to the
questions posed (Berlin 1962, 4). A philosophical question can be identified because
there “is no universally recognized expertise … once we do feel quite clear about how
we should proceed, the question no longer seems philosophical” (4). For example,
one question that has preoccupied political theorists since the beginning is the
… on the other hand schools may favor such freedom by encouraging independent thought” (383).
94
problem rule. “Why should anyone obey anyone else?” This question is not in the
same category as the question why does the moon move across the night sky.
Theories meant to answer questions about the movement of the moon can be tested
against physical data (“objective facts”) that are collected more or less rigorously as
the implements of measurement are improved upon. We have no such improving
(cognitive) implements, or at least none have thus far been developed to date, that
would allow us to discover the “right” answer to the questions of political authority
and moral obligation. Questions such as the problem of political rule are “prima facie
philosophical” (Berlin 1962, 7). This is because “there is no wide agreement [on] the
meaning of some of the concepts involved” (Berlin 1962, 7). Unlike the question
about the moon’s travel across the night sky, there are (and probably always will be) a
number of rival answers to the question of political rule and there probably always
will be (cf. Strauss 1954).
Berlin leaves the traditional idea of political theory to turn to ponder the
question of the scientific value of philosophy. As Connolly (2001) alluded to above,
Berlin is possessed by the specter of late 20th century European positivism (cf.
Steinmetz 2005). Berlin recognizes the outcome of equality of condition in a society
preoccupied with being free. This outcome is plurality of vision and so a great
diversity of legitimate answers to those “irreducibly philosophical” questions (like the
problem of rule). This faith in plurality is also manifest in Berlin’s scientific value
relativism (see Brecht 1959). It seems to me that Berlin (1962) is trying to bring
together both the old philosophy and the newer science with the result that he must
95
concede to the basic premise of scientific value relativism. Berlin’s (1962) relativism
leads him to the conclusion that there can be “no consensus” (7). He goes on to say
that, “so long as conflicting replies to such questions continue to be given by different
schools and thinkers, the prospects of establishing a science … seem remote” (Berlin
1962, 7). Questions of ultimate value have “usually and rightly been classified as
irreducibly philosophical” (Berlin 1962, 8). The fact of the matter is that people have
always disagreed about ultimate ends, for example the legitimate ends of political
rule, whether for God or Country these incompatibilities are sure signs that we deal
with philosophical questions of ends and not merely scientific (in modern terms)
questions of means:
Differences of value judgment will creep into the political sciences
as well, and inject what can only be called philosophical issues (or
issues of principle) incapable of being resolved … Differences of
interpretation of fact … can be permitted; but if political theory is to
be converted into an applied science, what is needed is a single
dominant model – like the doctor’s model of the health body –
accepted by the whole, or the greater part, of the society in question.
The model would be its ‘ideological foundation’ (Berlin 1962, 11).
Berlin (1962) has given us the example of modern medicine. A basic assumption of
modern medicine is that it is beneficial for people to be and to live healthy lives. This
assumption is not questioned because it is implicit in the very activities, aims, and
methods of modern health science or medicine. Were it not assumed that a basic
good of all people was to be healthy, and that moreover, modern medicine could help
96
to foster this universal goal, then modern health science as we know it would not exist
(Berlin 1962, 6).61
“Arguments about means are technical, that is, scientific and empirical in
character: they can be settled by experience and observation” (Berlin 1962, 8). But
this argument should not be taken too far. Only when society is not conceived in a
totalitarian sense (where there can be a “total acceptance of any single end”), nor is it
forced into such a narrow mold, only then it is possible for political philosophy to
flourish (Berlin 1962, 8; cf. Cobban 1953; Leforte 1988). For political philosophy “in
its traditional sense” is that “enquiry concerned not solely with elucidation of
concepts, but with the critical examination of presuppositions and assumptions, and
the questioning of the order of priorities and ultimate ends” (Berlin 1962, 8). Hence
it follows that unless “public” or “political philosophy is confined to the analysis of
concepts or expressions, it can be pursued consistently only in a pluralistic, or
potentially pluralistic society” (9; cf. Cobban 1953). Pluralism and scientific value
relativism are closely connected for Berlin. Political theory, for Berlin is not
“empirical” theory in the sense that is employed by Easton (1951) and Dahl (1958):
[if by] theories we mean no more than causal or functional
hypotheses and explanations designed to account only for what
happens [then political theory can be] a progressive empirical
enquiry, capable of detaching itself from its original metaphysical
or ethic foundations, and sufficiently adaptable to preserve through
61 Lippmann (1955) utilizes a similar analogy to make a related point: “The chemistry of our bodies is never mistaken. … The doctor can be mistaken about the chemistry of his patient, having failed to detect a substance which falsifies his diagnosis. But it is only the doctor who can be wrong; the chemical process cannot be” (73). The chemical process is implicit and taken for granted.
97
many changes of intellectual climate its own character and
development as an independent science” (1962, 16).
For political theory is “concerned with somewhat different fields; namely with such
questions as what is specifically human and what is not, and why … and so,
inevitably, with the source, scope and validity of certain human goals” (Berlin 1962,
17). If this is the proper portrait or idea of political theory, then it cannot “avoid
evaluation” and it must come to “conclusions about the validity of ideas” not just
analyze them (Berlin 1962, 17). This notion of value judgment returns us again to the
necessity of certain basic formulations that are beyond question or that are taken for
granted in modern science.
Berlin’s Humanism
The European philosophes and encyclopédistes of the 17th and 18th century
took the idea of scientific method and value-free science very seriously and they tried
to apply it to all things (see also Germino 1963 below). Yet when they tried to apply
the positive methods of the natural sciences to the realm of politics they largely failed
on account of their failure to see that “our political notions are part of our conception
of what it is to be human, and this is not solely a question of fact” (Berlin 1962, 22).
The social question or the question of what it means to be a person living in society is
conditioned by our sense of that life which is provided by the “basic categories in
terms of which we perceive and order and interpret data” – our world-view or how we
see the world (Berlin 1962, 23).62 Berlin (1962) notes that the “new human sciences”
62 Lippmann (1955) Ideas are “efficacious because men react to their ideas and images, to their pictures and notions of the world, treating these pictures as if they were reality. The airy nothings in the realm
98
of the 17th and 18th centuries had some success in the realms of psychology and
macro-sociological analysis, but the “efforts to solve normative problems” met with
much less success (23). These early scientists “tried to reduce questions of value to
questions of fact” and like other attempts to apply scientific method to other fields,
this procedure exemplifies a “typical misapplication” (Berlin 1962, 23). What it boils
down to, says Berlin (1962), is that there has been for some time now, a “failure to
recognize what it is to be a man, that is, failure to take into account the nature of the
framework – the basic categories – in terms of which we think and act” (23; emphasis
added). These are the categories and assumptions that animate the great philosophical
debates (and basically everything else) over the ages in Berlin’s telling (cf. Arendt
1958 above and 1961 below).
Great thinkers did not quibble over the empirical data accusing each other of
not having been up to date on the latest trends. Doubtless there was still some
pettiness, but earlier giants critiqued each other on ontological grounds viz. on the
nature of what it is to be human. When Marx disputes Bentham, or Tolstoy debates
Marx, says Berlin (1962), “their criticisms relate to the adequacy of the categories in
terms of which we discuss men’s ends or duties or interests, the permanent framework
in terms of which, not about which, ordinary empirical disagreements can arise” (24).
These sorts of questions are indubitably philosophical. The fundamental “basic
categories” by which we understand ourselves and other people are “not matters of
induction and hypothesis” and this holds for political values as well (26). These types
of essence are efficacious in the existential world when a man, believing it to be true or good, treats the idea as if it were reality” (73).
99
of categories may be less “permanent” or “stable” in the social and political realm but
they are nonetheless “indispensable to any kind of intersubjective communication”
and tend to last over time (Berlin 1962, 26). To understand these categories or
fundamental concepts it is necessary to employ the philosophical sense, because “such
questions are not answered by either empirical observation or formal deduction” (27).
This is why positivist analysis in all its forms (including empirical political science) is
not political theory (“even though they may have much to say that is crucial in the
field of political philosophy” – p. 27). This is because philosophical questions,
including questions of political philosophy, cannot be finally determined. These
categories are not “not concerned with specific facts, but with ways of looking at
them” (29). Finally, as Berlin (1962) looks forward, he sees not “the death of a great
tradition, but, if anything, new and unpredictable developments” (33).
100
CHAPTER V
THE 1960s – BLOWBACK AND REVIVAL But those who immersed themselves in the voyage experienced the thrill and vertigo
that came from streaking across the edge of a tomorrow that might bring miracles
or catastrophe in an instant – a tomorrow that still haunts us today
Kaplan (2009).
[1969 was] a banner year for reading new thoughts about old thinkers … there can
be no doubt that the history of political thought in the last quarter of the twentieth
century left the genre behind, a shadow of its former self
Farr (2006).
Kaplan’s Thesis
In his new book 1959: The Year That Changed Everything, Fred Kaplan
(2009) also begins with the amazing modern story of humanity’s first attempts to
conquer the physical universe. On January 2, 1959, the Soviet rocket Lunik was
launched. By this time, rocket launches had lost some of their novelty, but this rocket
was special. It was the first of its kind to reach what the scientists had dubbed
“escape velocity.” At this novel speed and direction it would become “the first man-
made object to revolve around the sun among the celestial bodies” (Kaplan 2009, 1).
Kaplan (2009) reports that Time magazine had printed how the successful launch
represented “a turning point,” because “one of the sun’s planets had at last evolved a
living creature that could break the chains of its gravitational field” (1). Kaplan uses
this amazing story of scientific achievement to begin to demonstrate his thesis that
1959 was “the year that everything changed.” Chapter 1 is titled “Breaking the
101
Chains” and is of course an apt metaphor for the final moments of the 1950s. “The
flight of the Lunik,” narrates Kaplan (2009), “set off a year when chains of all sorts
were broken” (1). Boundaries were transgressed or challenged for the first time –
“not just in the cosmos, but in politics, society, culture, science, and sex. A feeling
took hold that the breakdown of barriers in space, speed, and time made other barriers
ripe for transgressing” (Kaplan 2009, 1). Kaplan (2009) highlights “the thrill of the
new” as it took over the American imagination and way of life (3). The idea of a
“new frontier” in space became the guiding notion of a world that was becoming sick
of limits and eager for change.63 The space race and the last great frontier paved the
way for new markets and for new technologies to develop. Artists, musicians, film
producers and comedians all eagerly flouted their willingness to transgress boundaries
and in doing so “attracted a vast audience that was suddenly, even giddily, receptive
to their iconoclasm” (Kaplan 2009, 3). Even women were given a measure of control
over their reproductive life with the approval of “the pill” by the Food and Drug
Administration.
By the close of the 1950s the behavioral revolution had consolidated into in an
ongoing effort to increase the scientific gains made by the earlier generations.
Modern science in general had drastically altered the social and cultural landscape in
the US and abroad. Modern science had enabled a number of impressive
technological achievements that would have been impossible a generation earlier.
Yet, the picture was not all happy in 1959. True, the economy was booming. There
63 For an early example of the idea of “frontiers” in American history, see Fredrick Jackson Turner
102
remained, however, a “twin precipice – the prospect of infinite possibilities and
instant annihilation, both teetering on the edge of a new decade – that gave 1959 its
distinctive swoon and ignited its creative energy” (Kaplan 2009, 4). Both a promise,
and an “undercurrent of dread” commingled at the turn of the century (Kaplan 2009,
3). Kaplan (2009) summarizes his thesis in the following terms:
The truly pivotal moments of history are those whose legacies
endure. And, as the mid-forties recede into abstract nostalgia, and
the late sixties evoke puzzled shudders, it is the events of 1959 that
continue to resonate in our own time. The dynamics that were
unleashed fifty years ago and that continue to animate life today –
the twin prospects of infinite expansion and total destruction – seem
to be shifting to a new phase, crossing yet another new frontier (5).
Kaplan describes again and again how 1959 was the year that everything changed.
The revolution in the imagination of modern Americans was truly staggering. It was
not just in political and economic life that the feeling of change was evident but in
culture too – “the boundaries between art and life, which defined art (or literature or
jazz or any other creative genre) could and could not be” (244). The critical case that
illustrates Kaplan’s (2009) thesis was the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy
(1917-1963). Just into the New Year 1960, a young man, and a catholic by the name
of Kennedy, had won an upset victory in the Democratic primary. Kaplan’s
conclusion echoes Kennedy’s (1960) democratic nomination acceptance speech.
Kaplan (2009) concludes that the late 1950s brought simultaneously “unknown
opportunities and peril” (244). As Kennedy said so boldly in his acceptance speech,
(1883) “The Frontier in American History.”
103
“we stand today on the edge of a new frontier … a frontier of unknown opportunities
and perils” (Kennedy 1960). I can only agree with Kaplan (2009) that this dynamic of
opportunity and peril is still productive in our own day.
“Blowback” and the 1960s
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, economic growth accompanied widespread
prosperity in America and the near-West. Economic prosperity came on the heels of
the Great Depression and was only one aspect of the overall feeling of “revival” that
is evident in the early 1960s. The feeling of despair during the war years has begun to
fade. Along with low unemployment there was a massive increase in the number of
Americans going off to college (Mills 1944; Lowi 1985; Bloom 1987; Gunnell 1989;
Parsons 1973). They were earning competitive degrees and many even went on to
become incredibly wealthy over their lifetimes. During the 1950s academic life in
America continued along largely as it had during the last Great War but with
improved pace. The research funding by national government organizations
continued and grew apace. The rise of the great philanthropic foundations like
Carnegie and Ford added new impetus and provided for increasing opportunities for
research scientists in all fields whether natural or social to apply for and receive large
sums of money (grants or fellowships) to conduct their research (Hauptmann 2006).
Academic life in America, like much of the rest of the economy, was booming. Great
hope and great fear commingled and became a productive tension that we can still
appreciate today as we, in Kennedy’s 1960 terms, “strea[k] across the edge of a
104
tomorrow that might bring miracles or catastrophe” (Kennedy 1960).64 There was
still hope that the American model of political democracy and economic capitalism
could be emulated around the world. American intellectuals in the academy still
believed in the universality of the Republic’s founding and did not find its specific
mode of production problematic in this regard (cf. Johnson 2006).
The period 1950-1970 was a period of steady economic growth for the US and
our allies. One anomaly or strange occurrence, however, is that while most public
intellectuals continued the pessimistic dialogue and discourse about the “decline of
the West” and the “death” of this or that, the American academic practice of political
theory in the 1960s was beginning another discourse simultaneously filled with
promise and hope. In contradistinction to the number of pieces in the 1950s which
discuss the “decline” or “death” of this or that, the comparable discussion of the
“revival” or “re-birth” of this or that only begins in the 1960s. Regardless of the
discourse, it must be emphasized, the actual practice of political theory and political
philosophy in America never really suffered any major setback between 1950 and
1970 (see on this point, Hauptmann 2006). The death of political theory discourse
was converted into a conversation about revival as more and more people applied
their talents to the problems associated with decline. In fact there was a major
rebound in political theory in the US and in Europe in the 1960s leading into the
1970s and beyond. Whether mythical or factual, the death dialogue highlights clearly
(as Alice says of the Jabberwocky) “somebody killed something” (Carroll 134). Now,
64 Compare Wendy Brown’s (2002) imagery in her article titled, “On the Edge.”
105
in chapter 5 of this essay, we can begin to see clearly what has actually been lost.
This loss was mourned both internally – in terms of a sense of “self” or identity, and
“externally,” in terms of a balanced and stable world. Both these losses are still
mourned today and we can locate their origins in the death and revival discourses of
the 1950s and 1960s.
Before the Tradition Ended (Arendt Continued)
Originality need not and often does not consist in discovering new things, but in
enabling us to notice things that were there all the time but that we
overlooked because our attention was focused elsewhere
Canovan (1970).
Arendt’s diagnosis sought a recovery of a “lost treasure” – a world in which
human beings can be truly human (cf. Pitkin 1998; Miller 1991). Her life long effort
was to improve the conditions for human freedom (Canovan 1974). Each of us is
born into a world already made, and it seemed to her that the world had become an
alienating and reductive force (Grunenberg 2002). Before the tradition ended there
was a “home” for the new human to live in and grow to their full potential. In modern
times, it seems, this is no longer the case. As I discussed in the first half of Arendt’s
diagnosis, she believed that modern empirical or behavioral science was implicated in
what she now calls the “reduction of man” (Arendt 1961). Arendt is definitely a key
author in what, following Germino (1963), I am calling the revival of political theory.
It was a partial return to the older way of political philosophy in that it was concerned
with “man qua man,” but it was different too because it was concerned with the world
106
right now. To see what I mean by this characterization of Arendt’s political theory, I
offer the following close reading of a small portion of her work.
The final words in Arendt’s (1961) series of essays collectively titled Between
Past and Future read:
The conquest of space and the science that made it possible have
come perilously close to this point. If they [modern scientists] ever
should reach it in earnest, the stature of man would not simply be
lowered by all standards we know of, but have been destroyed
(280).
This statement is full of provocation. These words provoke the political theorist on a
number of intellectual levels (conceptual, historical, etc.). “The point of no return” is
within our reach because we may yet come to be genuinely apolitical, that is, we shall
finally have given up our creative and imaginative powers to those alienating
“automatic processes which we have begun ourselves” (Arendt 1961, 280; cf. McCoy
& Playford 1967, Wolin 1969). We shall, Arendt teaches, have lost or given up our
imaginative powers. The power of imagination is what enables each new member of
a generation to find themselves in world-historic (and political) context. This historic
and philosophical sense is characterized by this ability to place oneself imaginatively
into world-historic and geopolitical space-time. These intellectual powers supposedly
enable individuals to act into the world and to start new processes and to alter the
world for future generations (Grunenberg 2002). The connection to a common
history, it seems, has been lost to many modern democratic citizens. This loss of
sense means that (among other things), he or she will not be invested (politically or
otherwise), in the world of human affairs. Democratic citizens are left to the whims
107
of their society. Yet they do not understand nor influence, and worst of all they (and
maybe even we), do not even think about it (Arendt 1958). To be fully human, if I
interpret Arendt (1961) correctly, means that one is fully aware of the world-historic
situation, how you as a member of society came to occupy your present situation, the
history of your present class position, and what others like you have striven for in the
immediate past.
Modern industrial society and its various reductionist ideologies have
truncated the “stature of man” to the point where we could be destroyed altogether
(Arendt 1961). Our “stature” has been reduced as a consequence of modernity
(loosely following Arendt, I characterized modernity by three general conditions:
liberal economies, industrial society, and reductionist ideologies). The point is that
what has been lost in the social transition to modern living is (or was) the very
essence of what it means (or meant) to be human. In other words, the faith in
individual human reason and the concomitant belief in the superiority of liberal
economies have together produced modern society. This form of society treats each
individual in an atomist fashion and produces a way of life (scientific, cultural, etc.)
which is anathema to the older ways of life and forms of society. This is not to say
that the older ways of life or forms of society (such as feudalism) were better or more
desirable than modern society, but that these former ways are instructive as known
historical alternatives.
Arendt’s contribution to the revival of political theory is in part due to her
ability to help us recognize our assumptions, so that when one is “confronted with
108
two alternative conventions, one can no longer mistake one of them for simple
reality” (Canovan 1974, 7). To counter the forces of modernity, then, Arendt’s essays
teach us how to think politically in modern times. This is done principally by
showing that the way people live today is not the way it has always been, and then
theorizing that we can do better. As I interpret her thought, Arendt’s manner of
theorizing is empirical and theoretical; simultaneously reductive and expansive. You
see that’s the nature of the modern theoretical enterprise. Both the inside and the
outside of things must be considered simultaneously. Internally, political theory
studies the nature of “man,” and externally it studies the nature of “society.” Political
theory, moreover, is at once philosophical and political. It is historical, moral,
theoretical and scientific.
By my lights, Arendt’s thought teaches that philosophy and an updated theory
of politics are needed for the reconstruction of a common world of human affairs.
The goal is not to rebuild what once was, but to build something of lasting importance
out of the rubble of the modern catastrophe.65 In Arendt’s (1961) terms, the modern
catastrophe is the reduction of “the stature of man.” As a political theorist, Arendt
helps others “see” (she is a thēoros because she is more “objective” as a spectator
than a participant in an event) the wreckage of the modern condition as she turns to
the past to rebuild a future suitable to the ever potential flowering of the “stature of
man.” Ah what a world it would be, but I digress, utopia makes for good science
fiction, but perhaps we must seek less lofty guidance. I argue that the “blowback”
65 This rebuilding effort is akin to a “critical reconstruction” or “critical transference” (Kielmansagg 1995); or Perestroika as “restructuring” (see for example, Rudolph 2005).
109
mentioned in the title of chapter 5, is closely linked to the political theorists’ striking
against, as Arendt (1961) puts the matter, the attempted reduction of the “stature of
man.” Dante Germino (1932-2002) was intimately aware of the death of political
theory and he thought the revival had already begun.
Germino Strikes Back
Political theorists should undertake ‘imaginative moral architecture,’
and indulge their creative imaginations in utopia building …
whose function is it, if not the political theorist’s, to project
ways of organizing the political aspects of our lives?
(Dwight Waldo, cited in Germino 1963)
Dante Germino was born in North Carolina and received his Ph.D. from
Harvard in 1956. He began his career at Wellesley University teaching political
theory. In 1968 he accepted a position at the University of Virginia where he would
remain for 29 years, retiring in 1997. Germino is not a well known political theorist
in America today. I base this fact in part on the difficulty I encountered trying to find
this basic biographical information (Germino doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry). I
gleaned this information from two web pages that took some time to discover. Both
these documents are obituaries commemorating his life’s work and his untimely
demise (he died in a train accident in Europe in 200266).
By the early 1960s, the prime symptoms of political theory’s decline were
becoming clearly perceived. In Germino’s (1963) telling these were the importation
66 http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/2002/21/germino.html; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evforum/message/910?var=1&l=1
110
of the positivist assumption of value-free science, and the widespread adaptation of
the natural sciences version of the scientific method. At this time, Germino (1963)
dares to declare the end of the death discourse and the onset of a period of revival of
political theory. A key aspect of this rebirth and renewal of political theory in
America would be an understanding of value-free science and the positivist version of
the scientific method as a prerequisite to moving beyond them. Germino’s 1963
article “The Revival of Political Theory,” became the basis for his 1967 book-long
treatment of the same subject matter (Beyond Ideology: The Revival of Political
Theory). In this book Germino defines political theory in the following terms:
“political theory is neither reductionist, behavioral science nor opinionated ideology;
it is the critical study of the principles of right order in human social existence”
(Germino 1967, 6). This vision of political theory is one of the first that inspired me,
and Germino’s (1967) book gave me a personal idea of the range of problems that
confronted the contemporary political theorist.
In general terms, Germino’s thought relies heavily on the political theory of
Eric Voegelin (1907-1985).67 In Germino’s telling, the “movement to restore
political theory” is given a great hero in Eric Voegelin (454). Germino quotes from
The New Science of Politics, where Voegelin (1952) locates the beginnings of the
fact-value distinction after 1850. According to Voegelin, this distinction arose in
Europe because:
67 Says Germino on Voegelin – “… it is possible that in time Voegelin will emerge as the greatest political theorist of this century and one of the greatest of all time” (456).
111
The positivist conceit that only propositions concerning facts of the
phenomenal world were “objective,” while judgments concerning
the right order of the soul and society were “subjective.” This
classification made sense only if the positivistic dogma was
accepted on principle (Voegelin p. 11; Germino p. 454).
Germino forwards the same point in his own words on the next page:
When the theorist offered their propositions about the good or
‘natural’ life for man in society, they were, it is true, speaking about
what he ‘ought’ to do, but this ‘ought’ was not regarded as a
subjective preference or ‘value judgment’ but as an experiential
fact; the ‘ought’ is the ‘experienced tension between the order of
being and the conduct of man’” (455).68
Germino acknowledges that since World War II some serious efforts have been
devoted to the restoration of political theory in the old style (moral or political) of the
past. In spite of the “decline of political theory” thesis, Germino relates the existence
of a strong “movement of resistance” and “countervailing trend” that seeks to upset
and to displace the “dominant positivist orientation” (456). He identifies thinkers
such as Voegelin, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, C.J. Friedrich, Karl Jaspers, Bertrand
de Jouvenel, and Michael Oakshott as members of this diverse and accomplished
resistance movement. Germino (1963) says of these men and women, “although
adhering to different philosophical perspectives, [they] are united in their dedication
to restore political theory in its traditional range and depth” (456). Of course these
authors did not all see the world in the same way, nor did they all agree on what
political theory was or was becoming.
112
In Europe too , reports Germino (1963), the so-called neo-Kantians stressed
the inherent value-ladenness of all theory, while in the United States authors like
Easton began a “rescue operation from within positivism itself” (452). Yet this latter
effort is criticized by Germino (1963). Easton’s (1953) attempt at unification from
within positivism is characterized as “the axiological-positivist position,” because it
still recognizes a strict “fact-value distinction,” and consequently comes to believe
that the role of the political theorist must not include the value-laden exposition of
moral and ethical guidelines (Germino 1963, 453). 69 The problem with the
“axiological revisionism” of thinkers like Easton, says Germino (1963), is that the
standpoint mostly misses the crux of what political theory is all about. To begin with,
political theory traditionally conceived has everything to do with “value-judgments”
(Germino 1963, 454). Germino (1962) describes political theory as an “experiential
science” (in the old sense of “empirical” as derived from experience) where the task is
to:
discover the place of political activity in the structure of reality as a
whole. Like his behaviorist counterpart, the theorist must ‘test’ his
propositions by recourse to ‘experience,’ only the range of
experience which he regards as suitable for control is broader than
the single plane of physical sensation and tactile visibility (454).
The behavioral scientists reduces “experience” to the observable and the empirical (in
the new sense as employed for instance by Dahl) occurrences in the world right now.
Germino (1963) finds that the axiological position cannot save political theory
68 The quotation is from Voegelin “The Nature of Law.” 69 According to the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, “axiology” is the study of values.
113
as the classic study of the “right order in society and psyche” (455). It seems that this
study of the “right order in society and psyche” is what Germino (1963) means by
political theory. The axiological position, on the other hand, accepts the positivist
dogma of facts and values, and as a consequence, the theorist is left with no real
foundation or justification for their own prescriptions which become little more than
ideological presuppositions and arbitrary (tacit or implicit) expressions of preference
(Germino 1963, 455). As such, many axiological positivists tend to “leave most of
what used to be the field of political theory to demagogic exhibitionists, and
concentrate on a topic for investigation that will be sanctioned by the profession as a
scientific endeavor” (455). In other words, genuine moral and political theory is not
attempted in the academy and as such is left, by default (Laslett 1957), to those who
are not (perhaps) qualified to tackle such serious matters.70 Moreover, says Germino
(1963), the “bankruptcy of the positivist teaching” became painfully evident
following the Second World War (458). Faced with “the rise of totalitarianism,” and
despite the impressive “accumulation of factual information,” it was now clear that
“positivist political science was helpless when it came to the crucial matter of
providing standards for distinguishing between just and tyrannical regimes” (458; cf.
Cobban 1953).
Germino (1963) is sure that the remedy to political theory’s apparent demise is
not to be found in the misleading premises of axiological or positivist science. In
fact, the key to the revival of political theory in the style of the past lies in the
70 Surely, implores Germino, this predicament parallels the main reason that Weber, “in the emotion-drenched university atmosphere in Munich after 1918,” called for a “value-free” social science in the
114
questioning of the “positivist dogma,” because it is now clear that it is precisely that
dogma and its “experiential reductionism” that is causing so many modern troubles,
for example, the “reduction of man” (Arendt 1962). Germino (1963) believes that
despite the evident resurgence of political philosophy, the new political theorists are
also to blame for not recognizing the work of their comrades (459). There may be no
discernable community and no disciplinary “home” for theory in the modern world.
Maybe the revival can help alleviate the damage that has been done to political theory.
If not, Germino (1963) warns:
The alternative to political theory is a decapitated science of politics
– a science that knows means and methods but is ignorant of ends.
Without true theory, the elaboration and justification of the right
order of society and psyche, humanity may once again be thrown to
the mercy of the ideologists (460).
Surly nothing can be worse for the bios theōretikos than that (460; Wolin 1969
below).
It does not seem like the state of affairs has changed much since 1962. In my
experience as a student of politics, the positive and behavioral or “empirical” (not
“normative”) methodus or accepted ways of practice has always been the sine qua non
of “good” political science.71 As an undergraduate this was the case, even as I had yet
to develop the idea that there was an alternative way to practice political science. I
first place (455). 71 For more on the meaning of a methodus or the “methodist” see my discussion on Wolin (1969) below. As I use the term here it roughly corresponds to the idea of a methodology, or ideology in terms of epistemology. This idea is a lot like K. Burke’s (1989) description of an “ideology” which he says, is “like a god coming down to earth … [it] is like a spirit taking up its abode in a body: it makes that body hop around in certain ways, and that same body would have hopped around in a different way had a different ideology happened to inhabit it (59).
115
took every political theory class that was available to me, but not because I saw it as
an alternative methodology or methodus. To the contrary, I thought that political
theory with its focus on history and political philosophy was a nice break from the
rigors of regular political science classes. As a graduate student, I began with the idea
that I would be a comparativist, because I was interested in “the state” and “social
revolutions” (I still am). Later, I took graduate seminars in political theory, and it
seemed to me that the earlier state of affairs had not changed. Yet a lot has changed --
just not in political science. American Political theory as an academic discipline has
changed dramatically since the 1950s. By the end of the 1960s the revival of political
theory was in full swing. Wolin’s work is a case in point.
Wolin’s Vision
Because the curiosity of man’s wit doth times with peril
wade further in the search of things than were convenient…
So as following the rules and precepts therof, we may define it to be,
an Art which teacheth the way of speedy discourse, and restraineth
the mind of man that it may not wax over-wise
Richard Hooker (1885), quoted in Wolin (1969 1066).
Sheldon Wolin received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1950, and he went on
teach and write at the University of California, Berkeley (1954-1970), and at
Princeton University (1973-1987). In 1969, Wolin thought he could define this new
theory vis-á-vis the new science. Wolin’s (1969) article “Political Theory as a
Vocation” sets out to show what political theory is and what it is not (1063). He sets
out to “compare and contrast the vocations of the theorist (the bios theōretikos) and
116
the “methodist” (the vita methodica). The “methodist” is defined Wolin (1969) by
reference to the Oxford Universal Dictionary denotation: “one who is skilled in, or
attaches great importance to method; one who follows a specified method” (1062).
Wolin wants to help his readers identify the differences between the theoretical and
the scientific study of politics. He means to counter the dominance of behavioralism
in American political science. He believes that “empirical” or “behavioral” political
science in the late 1960s had largely adapted a notion of theory that was “unpolitical”
(Wolin 1969, 1063; cf. McCoy & Playford 1967). By “unpolitical” he means that the
“varieties of theories” which “exist for the political scientist to choose among” are not
properly or “appropriately” understood as theories of a political type (1063). They are
not political because they are not engaged with the events in the arena of human
affairs (see Arendt 1961). This apolitical idea of “theory” (or this idea of “method”)
is prevalent among Wolin’s contemporaries, and is a direct consequence of a
“behavioral revolution” (1062).
Wolin discusses the Kuhnian fashion of his day, and he relates how it had
become fashionable among his colleagues to speak in Kuhnian terms when they
talked about the behavioral revolution and its effects on the discipline. Wolin is not
so impressed (see also, Wolin 1960). He demurs, that while the revolution
characterized by behavioral methods transformed the discipline, it is rather doubtful
whether this change can rightly be described in terms of a “scientific revolution” ala
Thomas Kuhn (1962); “what counts is the enforcement of by the scientific community
of one theory to the exclusion of its rivals” (1062; cf. Wolin 1960). Since there are a
117
number of rival theories to choose among, the scientific revolution culminating in one
dominant paradigm and “normal” science has not materialized in political science
(Wolin 1969, see also Wolin 1960). Contemporary practices in methodological
political science are, however, “essentially history-less” (1077; compare Dahl 1961 or
Easton 1951 above). Again, since “empirical” political theory (in Dahl’s sense) is not
focused on events and conditions in the political world they are by definition
apolitical (Wolin 1969; Arendt 1962).
Political theory, in the sense advocated by Wolin, reminds the theorist of the
past, and seeks to help preserve our historical understanding and professional
memory. This historical and philosophical outlook can sharpen our senses of who we
are and where we are located in space and time (see Arendt 1961). Political theory in
Wolin’s (1969) sense is principally a historically orientated endeavor. “To know how
to make one’s way about the subject-field,” the “connotative context of actions and
events” are needed to recognize the outlines of any “subject matter” (Wolin 1969,
1071). Yet is far too convenient, says Wolin (1969), to “impoverish the past by
making it appear like the present” (1077; i.e. “presentism”). Wolin (1969) reminds us
that “one reads past theories, not because they are familiar and therefore confirmative,
but because they are strange and therefore provocative” (1077). Theories from the
past illuminate older ways of thinking and living and allow contemporary theorist to
“think outside the box” and contribute to new ways of thinking and acting (cf. Arendt
1961).
118
To deny that there has been a scientific revolution in the spirit of Kuhn, is not
to fail to see that there has been instead “a certain revolution” in political science
(1063; cf. Laswell and Kaplan 1950; Wolin 1960; Pool 1967). A revolutionary
change in the way political science and theory are understood by their practitioners;
one that “reflects a tradition of political science which has prided itself on being
pragmatic and concerned mainly with workable techniques” (1063). It is on this point
that the thrust of Wolin’s argument against “the prevalence of method” can be clearly
perceived. The behavioral revolution established the behavioral method. The
behavioral method is described by Wolin as the vita methodica – or the “ethic of
science” – where “objectivity, detachment, fidelity to fact, and deference to
intersubjective verification by a community of practitioners” is the guiding idea (of
method) in political science (1063).72 This idea of method becomes, for the
behavioralist (presumably the majority of political scientists at the time – and possible
even today) the sin qua non of their idea of good theory: viz. “the idea of method is
the central fact of the behavioral revolution” (1063). There are real consequences for
the discipline and on the world of human affairs that flow rather unproblematically for
Wolin from the “prevalence of method.”
The study of methodology, in the political science sense of a means or a way
(a vita or aporie) to “valid and reliable” information; is focused on itself, and as a
self-defined subject-matter (i.e. as a “discipline” – recall Berlin 1962). As a
consequence their focus is not political. For that, honest and truly self-conscious
72 Consider the Wittgensteinian euphemism concerning “science” (paraphrasing) – “That’s not an agreement in terms, but a way of life!”
119
critique and engagement with the world of human affairs would be necessary. Epic
theory, in contrast, is “preoccupied with a particular magnitude of problems created
by actual events or states of affairs in the world rather than with problems related to
deficiencies in theoretical knowledge” (1079; Arendt 1961). No doubt, as Wolin
(1969) concedes, some will be inclined to object that he is “reading too much” into
the new idea of method (recall Schaar and Wolin 1963 on Strauss in Storing 1962).
They will argue that their methods and theories are “value-neutral” and
“instrumental,” and so they do not necessarily require or contain any “philosophical
view of things” (Wolin 1969, 1064). Wolin (1969) contends, however, that the vita
methodica already contains within it “a specified set of skills, a mode of practice, and
an informing ethic,” and as a consequence, “methodism is ultimately a proposal for
shaping the mind” (1064; cf. Berlin 1962). Says Wolin (1969) on this dominant
epistemology:
It reinforces and operates according to a notion of alternatives
tightly restricted by these same purposes and arrangements …
pressupos[ing] a viewpoint which has profound implications for the
empirical [material] world … [including] the resources which
nourish the theoretical imagination (1063; emphasis added).
Wolin reiterates on the next page – “the methodist share[s] the same outlook
regarding education, philosophical assumptions, and political ideology,” and in this
light, the vita methodica can be “understood as constituting an alternative to the bios
theōretikos, and, as such, is one of the major achievements of the behavioral
revolution” (1065). In other words, the behavioral revolution and the death of
120
political theory can be understood in terms of the appropriation of the older political
theory and its radical replacement by “empirical” (in Dahl’s sense) theory. In the
American context, the behavioral revolution was responsible for the death of the older
and truly political theory.
In contrast, Wolin’s vision extols the twin virtues of the “epic” political
theorist. He agrees that the term “epic” may sound “pretentious or precious,” but he
believes it is both necessary and apt to recall the primary determinants of this long-
standing approach to theory. In the first place, the epic theorist is committed to the
res publica or commonweal. In the second place, the epic theorist is inclined to
explore grand “magnitudes” and to “grasp present structures and interrelationships,
and to re-present them in a new way” (1078). Again, the point of political theory as
interpreted by Arendt (1961) and Wolin (1969) is that there must be a place for
historical survey in which alternatives to present understanding are presented and new
proposals for living are found in the critical exchange (this is not to say that Arendt
and Wolin understood political theory in the same way).
The greatest difference between modern epic theorists and modern-day
scientists in 1969, is that the latter would dare to declare (or leave implicit in their
work), the belief that “they are not responsible for the political and social
consequences of their inquiries” (1079). There are not responsible because the
political and social uses of their work have not been considered. These matters might
be considered normative (moral and political) and so are invariably left implicit in
their work. This means that the behavioral theorist’s preoccupation with problems of
121
method is tantamount to escape from the harsh realities of the world of human affairs
(Easton 1991 says as much; see also Almond 1988; Isaac 1995). To counter this
apolitical science, it is only a matter of course before one repeats the famous epigram
of Marx. To paraphrase: “Up until the modern age, philosophers have sought to
understand the world; the point today is to change it.” Wolin (1969) says as much
when he says rather pointedly that the “major difference between the epic political
theorist and the scientific theorist [is that] although each attempts to change men’s
views of the world, only the former attempts to change the world itself” (1080).
Political theory of an epic magnitude is a response to modern real world problems and
political crises.
Epic theory is event driven and seeks to make sense of the world and what is
happening to us (cf. Arendt 1954, 1958). In Wolin’s view the world of 1969 is in
chaos. The cities are crumbling, the schools are in revolt, and the nation is losing its
young to a war (Vietnam) no one rightfully understands (1081). Despite the tragedy,
the political scientist of this era was quite confident in their own little world and,
speaking in the terms of the era, to be complacent when it came to truly political
matters. As one APSA newsletter proudly proclaimed: “Our discipline is enjoying a
new coherence, a pleasant sense of unity, and self-confident identity that fits its rapid
growth and health mien” (Wolin 1969, 1081; quote is from Pool 1967). In the end, it
is evident that Wolin (1969) believes that the consequences for the choice between
the bios theōretikos and the vita methodica is clear. The first leads to critique and
challenges to the status quo, while the second leads to repetition and maintenance of
122
the world as it is found and experienced right now. In the end, finally, it is the
vocation of the epic theorist to recover the political in “political theory” and
regenerate what has been “lost.”
After the 1950s, the new science of politics in the American academy would
for the foreseeable future strive to emulate the methodology of the modern natural and
positive sciences. The scientific method as it had been practiced in the natural
sciences had been quite successful. The newer sciences of physics, chemistry, and
astronomy made impressive and beneficial advances in knowledge, while the human
sciences had little positive to show for their efforts. The new “methodists” (Wolin
1969) took the positivist method from the natural sciences and reformulated it into a
form that they called “the scientific method.” We still feel the effects of the
behavioral revolution in contemporary political science. To be sure, the behavioral or
empirical methodus is among the dominant paradigms alive today.
123
CONCLUSION
One trait in the philosopher’s character we can assume is his love of any
branch of learning that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected
by the vicissitudes of change and decay
Socrates (via Plato Republic, Book VI, 485b).
That the question proposed here makes no sense to the scientist qua scientist is no
argument against it. The question challenges the layman and the humanist to
judge what the scientist is doing because it concerns all men, and this
debate must of course be joined by the scientists themselves
Arendt (1961, 267).
The whole overall ‘picture’ is but a construct of our symbol systems.
To meditate on this fact until one sees its full implications is much
like peering over the edge of things into an ultimate abyss
K. Burke (1989, 58).
The Ongoing Revolution American Political Science
The thing about revolutions is that they tend to have lasting effects. This
master’s thesis has uncovered three primary roots contributing to the discourse about
the death of political theory. Each root is related to the main body but each also has
its own unique character. The first root contributing to the death of political theory
was the disciplining of American political science over time. American political
science became disciplined and was able to insulate itself by embracing normal
science. As far as this finding is accepted, it follows that the behavioral revolution
continues today. The second root is the European contribution to the death of
political theory discourse. Their discussions on the topic brought in the historic and
124
philosophic sense of the older theory and made the final root apparent. The third root
of the problem is the idea that political theory can never die. The Europeans made it
possible to remember what I have characterized as the loss of the philosophic and
historical sense; or the ability to judge truth and consequence and to establish,
evaluate, and recreate lasting principles of the good and right order of society.
The Disciplining of American Political Science
In the American context, I have argued that the death of political theory should
be reinterpreted as an outcome of the behavioral revolution. I argued that one effect
of the behavioral revolution was all the talk about the death or demise of political
theory. One consequence of the ongoing revolution is that political science and
political theory have drifted further and further apart. I should like to remedy is the
division between American political science and political theory. Political scientists
and political theorists are separated by institutional and cultural boundaries in the US
today. I argue that the source of the division can be traced back to the behavioral
revolution and the death of political theory discourse. It seems to me that empirical
political science is now thoroughly walled-off from American political theory. I hope
my efforts will clarify the way that this divide came to be, and suggest ways that the
rift may be repaired.
This essay began by pointing out how a crisis in knowledge (or epistemology
or what it means to know what we think we know) had fed on the inadequacies of the
“historicist” method (Popper 1945, 1962; Easton 1951, 1953; Laslett 1956; Adcock,
Bevir, & Stimson 2007). This failure of knowledge originally provided the
125
opportunity for the behavioral revolution to take root in the discipline (Easton 1951;
Dahl 1958; Germino 1963; Gunnell 1987; 2009). I progressed to assert that modern
American political science has perhaps approached something of a scientific
“paradigm” in the strong sense that Kuhn meant it (see Kuhn 1962 above; cf. Wolin
1960). As we saw above, Wolin (1969) is not willing to admit the extension of
Kuhn’s (1962) thesis to modern American political science, even if he does recognize
that another kind of revolution did occur.73 It is clear to me, however, that the
behavioral revolution did in fact succeed in hoisting a scientific paradigm upon the
now disciplined science of politics in America. As a consequence, or so I argue, the
modern political scientist need not consider the underlying principles (e.g. “value-free
science”) of their practice (Berlin 1962). To make matters worse, it seems the
consensus is to avoid evaluating these presuppositions altogether. If this is true, then
Easton’s (1951) critique of his contemporaries is perhaps even more relevant for us
today.
A rational student need not worry themselves with the deep-diving work of
understanding the history and the controversies that underpinned the growth of the
scientific method in their discipline in the first place. Following an imagined division
of labor, he or she is freed up to study other subjects in their approved program of
study (Kuhn 1962; Berlin 1962 above; see also Popper 1970 on “specialization”). In
more general terms, the student of politics today can ignore controversies in
73 The idea that political science has achieved the status of paradigm is of course controversial. Compare the viewpoints on the concept of “paradigm” expressed in Wolin’s (1960) contrariwise standpoint, along with Almond’s (1966) easy acceptance of Kuhn’s (1962) concept of a scientific “paradigm.”
126
epistemology and method, because there is widespread agreement among practicing
scientists that these matters are already sufficiently settled (again, following Kuhn
1962; see Gunnell 1987, 1993, and Wolin 1969). I find the conclusion inescapable
that there is a scientific paradigm in American political science today. The scientific
approach (in terms of empirical methods) to political science is now the dominant
methodus in use by the majority of social and political scientists in America today
(Wolin 1969, 1986; Steinmetz 2005). This form of method is modeled on the natural
or physical sciences and is informed by a species of a positivist epistemology that
made modern Western (physical) science so successful. In a nutshell, the majority of
scholars in the American academy today view the behavioral, empirical, or
“scientific” paradigm, as both the way of proper understanding (epistemology) and
the means (method) to adequate practice. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Some readers of this thesis may have found themselves asking the question ‘so
what?’ If the behavioral revolution ended over forty years ago, then what relevance is
this discourse to us today? Anticipating this objection, I argue that far from being of
merely antiquarian interest, to study of the death of political theory as a consequence
of the behavioral revolution, reveals that the movement’s effects are still with us
today. If it does not seem this way, I argue, it is because these effects have merely
become obscured by the passage of time. Adding the second element or root of the
problem will enhance my argument.
127
The European Perspective
In this master’s thesis, I have tried to describe in detail the effects of an
epistemology and the methodological consequences that followed in the wake of the
American behavioral revolution. In particular, I have tried to describe the impact of
the behavioral revolution and the discourse concerning the death of political theory in
the 1950s. My thesis was that the behavioral revolution was responsible for the death
of political theory discourse. The consequences of pursuing this argument have been
multiple and not always congruent. One such incongruent finding was that the
European authors (Cobban 1953, Arendt 1958, Berlin 1962 etc.) were not necessarily
discussing the behavioral revolution or its effect on American political theory. Each
of these authors were discussing the death of political theory, but their thoughts were
in relation to a more global or world-historic context than on the more narrow
American context. There perspective was more holistic in that they considered
matters of the world and humanity in general. This humanist element is perhaps the
single most common characteristic that is lacking (although not completely absent) in
the American authors discussed above. The European authors (Cobban 1953, Arendt
1958, Berlin 1962 etc.) are not primarily responding to the behavioral revolution in
American social science. There works are directed to what they thought were the
larger or more global issues that were driving the death of political theory. They
thought something had been lost in the transition to modern living. As Arendt (1961)
thought, the modern condition had reduced the stature of human beings living in the
world. The academic embrace of behavioralism was merely a symptom for her of an
128
even larger crisis in the modern world. Strauss too thought the modern world had
stripped important elements of the primordial condition leaving only, as he says of
political philosophy, a “pitiable rump” (1954).
Or take another example of the global European perspective, Berlin (1962)
thought the whole question of death was preposterous as “political theory will not
wholly perish from the earth” (33). Even if the behavioral revolution was not
necessarily on his mind, Berlin’s (1962) reasons for the longevity of political theory
can perhaps shed light on the American scene. The eternal nature of the philosophical
and historical sense provides one powerful reason why political science and political
theory have not parted company for good. As Berlin (1962) taught, the fact is that the
problems of political science and the knowledge (scientia) about politics seem to
invariably lead back to the longue durée political philosophy. Placing the European
authors on the death of political theory in proper context we can see, finally, why I am
so confident that political theory can never die.
Political Theory Can Never Die
I conclude that despite the death thesis of the 1950s, political theory can never
die (see also Dahl 1958; Berlin 1961; Laslett 1962; Hauptmann 2006). Of course, in
our contemporary environment, it is conceivable that political theory might still be
exiled from political science departments in American and Europe today. Yet, I
argue, that even if political theory were removed as an institutional entity it would
continue to live on nevertheless. This is the lesson that Cobban (1953) and Arendt
(1958) demonstrated so well. Following an action-oriented understanding of the
129
political, free people engaged in the world of human affairs will invariably consider
matters (explicitly and implicitly) of political theory (Berlin 1962). As long as there
is a political realm in which democratic citizens can participate, there will always be
political theory (Cobban 1953).
From a less global perspective, the method I allude to is political to a fault.
The theory that issues from the political theorist is by its nature – that is inherently –
political, rebellious, evolutionary and radically subversive. All apology is pseudo-
theory. Political science to be a relevant body of knowledge in America today must
seek to better inform the greater American polity. Political theorists must also do a
better job of reaching out to their “scientific” counterparts. I believe that we must all
work, each in our own way, to find a bridge over the modern impasse (between
science and theory). The best of political science will be informed by both political
theory and science proper. We must discover the ways appropriate to the modern use
of both value theory and empirical fact. The science of politics can do this by
becoming more aware of the developments in its robust to a fault sibling known as
political theory. Political theory for its part must reciprocate. Only through the
dialogue of modern science and contemporary theory will we be able to constitute the
now unthinkable – unimaginable by modern eyes – but not impossible way of living,
understanding and imagination.
130
REFERENCES
Adcock, Robert, Mark Bevir & Shannon Stimson (2007) Modern Political Science:
Anglo-American Exchanges since 1880. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Almond, Gabriel (1966) “Political Theory and Political Science” in The American
Political Science Review. Vol. 60, No. 4.
──. 1988. “Separate Tables: Schools and Sects in Political Science” in PS: Political
Science and Politics.
Ardrey, Robert (1966) The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the
Animal Origins of Property and Nations. Drawings by Berdine Ardrey. NY:
Atheneum.
Arendt, Hannah (1954) “Tradition and the Modern Age” in Partisan Review, vol. 1,
no.1.
──. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
──. 1959. “Reflections on Little Rock” in Dissent Vol. VI, No. 1.
──. 1963 “Man’s Conquest of Space” in The American Scholar, vol. 32, no. 4.
──. 2006. “Preface: The Gap Between Past and Future” in Between Past and Future:
Eight Exercises in Political Thought. Jerome Kohn ed. NY: Penguin Books.
Baer, Michael, Malcolm Jewell & Lee Sigelman eds. (1991) Political Science in
America: Oral Histories of a Discipline. The University of Kentucky Press.
Barber, Benjamin (2006) “The Politics of Political Science: ‘Value-free Theory’ and
the Wolin-Strauss Dust-up of 1963” in APSR Vol. 100, No. 4.
Barry, Brian (1980) “The Strange Death of Political Theory” in Government and
Opposition. Vol. 15, No. 3/4.
Berlin, Isaiah (1962) “Does Political Theory Still Exist?” in Philosophy, Politics, and
Society (Second Series). Peter Laslett & W.G. Runciman eds. NY: Barnes &
Noble, Inc.
Blackburn, Simon (2005) The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. NY: Oxford
University Press.
131
Brady, Henry & David Collier eds. (2004) Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools,
Shared Standards. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Brecht, Arnold (1959) Political Theory: The Foundations of Twentieth-Century
Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Brown, Wendy (2002) “At the Edge” in Political Theory, Vol. 30, No. 4.
Burke, Kenneth (1989) On Symbols and Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Bush, Vannevar (1945) “Science: The Endless Frontier.” http://www.nsf.gov/about/
history/vbush1945.htm.
Canovan, Margaret (1974) The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt. NY: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.
Carroll, Lewis (1998) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking
Glass. NY: Penguin Books.
Cobban, Alfred (1939) Dictatorship: Its History and Theory. NY: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.
──. 1953. “The Decline of Political Theory” in Political Science Quarterly,
Vol. 68, No. 3.
Connolly, William (2001) “Politics and Vision” in Democracy and Vision: Sheldon
Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political. Aryeh Botwinick & William
Connolly, eds. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
──. 2008. “Then and Now: Participant-Observation in Political Theory” in The
Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, &
Anne Phillips eds. NY: Oxford University Press.
Crick, Bernard (1954) “The Science of Politics in the United States” in The Canadian
Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol. 20, No. 3.
Crick, Bernard (1964) The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dahl, Robert (1956) A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
──. 1958. “Political Theory: Truth and Consequences” in World Politics, Vol. 11,
132
No.1.
──. 1961. “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument
to a Successful Protest” in APSR Vol. 55, No. 4 (Dec.), pp. 763-772.
Dante (1971) The Devine Comedy: The Inferno. Mark Musa trans. NY: Penguin
Classics.
Davis, Peter (1974) “Hearts & Minds.” A documentary film.
Dryzek, John, Bonnie Honig, & Anne Phillips (2008) “Introduction” to The Oxford
Handbook of Political Thoery. John Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, & Anne Phillips
eds. NY: Oxford University Press.
Easton, David (1951) “The Decline of Modern Political Theory” in The Journal of
Politics, Vol. 25, No. 3.
──. 1953. The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science. NY:
Alfred Knoph.
──. 1966. “Alternative Strategies in Theoretical Research” in Varieties of
Political Theory. David Easton ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
──. 1970. “Classical Theory” in Approaches to the Study of Political Science.
Michael Hass and Henry Kariel eds. Scranton, PN: Chandler Publishing.
──. 1993. “Political Science in the United States: Past and Present” in Discipline and
History: Political Science in the United States. James Farr & Raymond
Seidelman, eds. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993.
Easton, David, John G. Gunnell, & Luigi Graziano eds. (1991) The Development of
Political Science: A Comparative Survey. NY: Routledge.
Einstein, Albert (1940) “Freedom and Science” in Freedom and its Meaning. Ruth
Anshen ed. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Eckstein, Harry (1956) “Political Theory and the Study of Politics: A Report of a
Conference” in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 50. No. 2.
Eisenhower, Dwight (1953) “The Chance for Peace.” http://www.edchange.org/
multicultural/speeches/ike_chance_for_peace.html.
──. 1961. “Farewell Address.” http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/
dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html.
133
Euben, Roxanne (2006) Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers
in Search of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Farr, James (2008) “The History of Political Thought as Disciplinary Genre” in The
Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. John Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, & Anne
Phillips eds. NY: Oxford University Press.
──. 2009. “Locke, ‘Some Americans,’ and the Discourse on ‘Carolina.’” Paper
presented at The Political Theory Workshop, Chicago.
Farr, James & Raymond Seidelman, eds. (1993) Discipline and History: Political
Science in theUnited States. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
1993.
Ferris, Timothy (1988) Coming of Age in the Milky Way. NY: Perennial.
Fishkin, James & Peter Laslett eds. (2003) “Introduction” in Debating Deliberative
Democracy. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Foucault, Michel (1984) “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” in The Foucault Reader.
Paul Rainbow ed. NY: Pantheon Books.
Fromm, Erich (1941) Escape from Freedom. NY: Henry Holt and Company.
──. 1955. The Sane Society. NY: Henry Holt and Company.
Germino, Dante (1963) “The Revival of Political Theory” in The Journal of Politics,
Vol. 25, No. 3.
──. 1967. Beyond Ideology: The Revival of Political Theory. NY: Harper & Row
Publishers.
Gunnell, John (1978) “The Myth of the Tradition” in The American Political Science
Review. Vol. 72, No. 1.
──. 1991. “Political Theory and Political Science” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of
Political Thought. David Miller ed. Oxford, UK: Butler and Tanner Ltd.
──. 1993. The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American
Vocation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
──. 2006. “The Founding of the American Political Science Association: Discipline,
Profession, Political Theory, and Politics” in APSR Vol. 100, No. 4.
──. 2009 “Stalking the Origins of the Image by which we were once Possessed.”
134
Paper Presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science
Association, Chicago.
Grunenberg, A. (2001) “Hannah Arendt” in the International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences. Accessed online, August 2009.
Habermas, Jürgen (2003) “Interpreting the Fall of a Monument” in Constellations.
Vol. 10, No. 3.
Hass, Michael & Henry Kariel (1970) “Preface” in Approaches to the Study of
Political Science. Michael Hass and Henry Kariel eds. Scranton, PN:
Chandler Publishing.
Hauptmann, Emily (2005) “Defining ‘Theory’ in Postwar Political Science” in
Steinmetz, George ed. (2005) The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences:
Positivism and Its Epistemological Others. Durham: Duke University Press.
──. 2006. “From Opposition to Accommodation: How Rockefeller Foundation
Grants Redefined Relations between Political Theory and Social Science in
the 1950s” in The American Political Science Review. Vol. 100, No. 4.
Hoffman, David (2007) “Sputnik Mania.” A documentary film released by The
History Channel.
Issac, Jeffrey (1995) “The Strange Silence of Political Theory” in Political Theory,
Vol. 23, No. 4.
Jarecki, Eugene (2006) “Why We Fight.” Film. Sony Pictures Classics.
──. 2008. The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a
Republic in Peril. NY: Free Press.
Johnson, Chalmers (2006) Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. NY:
Metropolitan Books.
Jones, H.S. (1998) Auguste Comte: Early Political Writings. NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Kafka, Franz (1946) The Great Wall of China: Stories and Reflections. Willa &
Edwin Muir trans. NY: Albert Martin.
Kennedy, John F. (1960) “Nomination Speech.” http://www.jfklibrary.org/
135
Asset+Tree/Asset+Viewers/Audio+Video+Asset+Viewer.htm?guid={B9D972
1F-64AB-4624-800D-C38EFE69241B}&type=Audio.
Kielmansegg, Peter, Horst Mewes, & Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt eds. (1995) Hannah
Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Émigrés and American Political Thought
After World War II. NY: Cambridge University Press.
King, Gary, Robert Keohane, & Sidney Verba (2004) “The Importance of Research
Design” in Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards.
Brady, Henry & David Collier eds. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Kuhn, Thomas (1957), The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the
Development of Western Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
──. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
──. 1969. “The New Reality in Art and Science: Comment” in Comparative Studies
in Society and History. Vol. 11, No. 4.
Laslett, Peter (1956) Philosophy, Politics and Society. London: Oxford Basil
Blackwell Press.
Laswell, Harold & Abraham Kaplan (1950) Power and Society: A Framework for
Political Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Leforte, Claude (1988) Democratic and Political Theory. David Macey trans.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Lichbach, Mark (1997) “Social Theory and Comparative Politics” in Comparative
Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure. Mark Lichbach & Alan
Zuckerman eds. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Lippmann, Walter (1955) Essays in the Public Philosophy. NY: Mentor Books.
Lowi, Theodore (1985) “Realistic Disenchantment: Political Science Discovers the
State” in Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis,
1884-1984. Raymond Seidelman. Albany, NY: State University of New
1884-1985. York.
Lukes, Steven (1994) “The Singular and the Plural: on the Distinctive Liberalism of
Isaiah Berlin” in Social Research Vol. 61, No. 3.
136
Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984) “Adrift” in Driftworks. Roger McKeon ed. NY:
Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series.
Mak, Don, Angela Mak & Anthony Mak (2009) Solving Everyday Problems with the
Scientific Method: Thinking like a Scientist. Hackensack, NJ: World
Scientific
Publishing.
Marx, Karl (1848) The Communist Manifesto. In The Marx-Engels Reader. Robert
Tucker ed. NY: W.W. Norton, 1978.
McCoy, Charles & John Playford eds. (1967) Apolitical Politics: A Critique of
Behavioralism. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
Mill, J.S. (1991) On Liberty. John Gray ed. NY: Oxford University Press.
Miller, David ed. (1991) The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought.
Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Mills, C. Wright (1944) “The Powerless People: The Role of the Intellectual in
Society” in Politics (April).
──. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. NY: Oxford University Press.
Neurath, Otto, Rudolf Carnap, & Charles Morris (1955) Foundations of the Unity of
Science: Toward an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
Oakeshott, Michael (1956) “Political Education” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society.
Peter Laslett ed. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
Orwell, George (1946) “Politics and the English Language” in Shooting an Elephant
and other Essays. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Parsons, Talcott & Gerald Platt (1973) The American University. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Pitkin, Hanna (1998) The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Plumb, J.H. (1970) The Death of the Past. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Polanyi, Michael (1955) “From Copernicus to Einstein” in Encounter Vol. 5, No. 3.
──. 1958a. Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-critical Philosophy. Chicago: The
137
University of Chicago Press.
──. 1958b. The Study of Man. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
──. 1983. The Tacit Dimension. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith Publishing.
Popper, Karl (1944a) “The Poverty of Historicism, I” in Economica, Vol. 11, No. 42.
──. 1944b. “The Poverty of Historicism, II” in Economica, Vol. 11, No. 43.
──. 1945. “The Poverty of Historicism, III” in Economica, Vol.12, No. 46.
──. 1962a. The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
──. 1962b. The Open Society and Its Enemies: Hegel and Marx. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
──. 1970. “Reason or Revolution?” in The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology.
Theodor Adorno et al. eds. Glyn Adey & David Frisby trans. London:
Heinemann Educational Books.
Pool, Ithiel de Sola ed. (1967) Contemporary Political Science: Toward Empirical
Theory. NY: McGraw-Hill Books.
Poulantzas, Nicos (1968) Political Power & Social Classes. NY: Verso.
Rainbow, Paul & William Sullivan (1979) Interpretive Social Science: A Reader.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Rudolph, Susanne (2005) “Perestroika and its Other” in Perestroika! The Raucous
Rebellion in Political Science. Kristen Monroe ed. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Saxonhouse, Arlene (2008) “Exile and Re-entry: Political Theory Yesterday and
Tomorrow” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. NY: Oxford
University Press.
──. 2009. “The Socratic Narrative: A Democratic Reading of Plato’s Dialogue” in
Political Theory, Vol. 37, No. 6.
Schumacher, E.F. (1977) A Guide for the Perplexed. NY: Harper Perennial.
Seligman, Adam (1992) The Idea of Civil Society. NY: The Free Press.
Schaar, John & Sheldon Wolin (1963) “Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics: A
Critique” in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 57, No.1.
138
Simien, Evelyn (2002) “On the Market: Strategies for the Successful Job Candidate”
in PS: Political Science & Politics (September).
Skinner, B.F. (1971) Beyond Freedom and Dignity. NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Smith, Munroe (1886) “The Domain of Political Science” in Political Science
Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1.
Steinmetz, George (2005) “Introduction: Positivism and Its Others in the Social
Sciences” in The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and Its
Epistemological Others. Durham: Duke University Press.
Strauss, Leo (1945) “On Classical Political Philosophy” in Social Research, Vol. 12,
No. 1.
──. 1957 [1954]. “What is Political Philosophy?” in The Journal of Politics. Vol. 19,
No. 3.
──. 1962. “An Epilogue” in Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics. Herbert
Storing ed. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
──. 1964. The City and Man. Chicago: Rand McNally
Storing, Herbert ed. (1962) Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics. NY: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Strong, Tracy (1995) “Editors Introduction” in Political Theory. Vol. 23, No. 4.
Surkin, Marvin & Alan Wolfe eds. (1970) An End to Political Science: The Caucus
Papers. NY: Basic Books.
Tepperman, Jonathan (2009) “Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb”
Newsweek September 7, 2009.
Tocqueville, Alexis (1947) Democracy in America. Henry Reeve trans. NY: Oxford
University Press.
Truman, David (1951) “The Implications of Political Behavior Research” in Items,
Vol. 5, No. 4.
Turner, Fredrick Jackson (1893) “The Frontier in American History.” http://xroads.
virginia.edu~HYPER/TURNER/.
Voegelin, Eric (1952) The New Science of Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
139
Waldo, Dwight (1956) Political Science in the United States of America: A Trend
Report. Paris, France: United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization.
Wolin, Sheldon (1960) Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western
Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
──. 1969. “Political Theory as a Vocation” in The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 63, No. 4.
──. 1986. “History and Theory: Methodism Redivivus” in Tradition,Interpretation,
and Science: Political Theory in the American Academy. John Nelson ed.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
──. 1989. The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution.
Baltimore, MA: The John Hopkins University Press.
──. 1992. “What Revolutionary Action Means Today” in Dimensions of
Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community. Chantal Mouffe ed.
NY: Verso.
Zuckert, Catherine & Michael Zuckert (2006) The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political
Philosophy and American Democracy. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
top related