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

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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).

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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

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[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

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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

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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).

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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.”

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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).

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“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

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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

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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:

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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

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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).

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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.

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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

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“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

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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).

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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.

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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).

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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)

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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).

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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

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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(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).

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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).

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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).

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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

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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

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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.”

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“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

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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.”

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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

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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

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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

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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).

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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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

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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).

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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

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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

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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).

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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!”

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.”

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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REFERENCES

Adcock, Robert, Mark Bevir & Shannon Stimson (2007) Modern Political Science:

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