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Political Theory and Political Science: The Theological Development of the Science of Politics |
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Abstract:
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Almost forty years ago, David Easton’s APSA Presidential Address, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” called for what Easton believed would be a major change of focus in political science. He argued that the discipline’s focus on pure theory had distracted it from many of the political and social problems facing the United States, and the world as well, for that matter. With an unpopular war conducted in Vietnam, continued racism, racial violence and segregation, the rapid decay of urban areas, to mention only some of the problems Easton identified, the urgency of America’s political situation called for social scientists to focus on examining policy alternatives that would address these issues. This “post-behavorial revolution” would not, however, abandon the methodological foundations of empirical political science, but would simply turn the study of politics to practical, urgent issues. Moreover, this was not a call to abandon the pure science that behavioralism pursued, but rather a call for a new balance between the two foci.
Ironically, the article that immediately followed Easton’s in that issue of the APSR was Sheldon Wolin’s “Political Theory as a Vocation.” There, Wolin argued that as long as methodism, i.e. the unquestioning faith in the ability of a narrow range of methods, was allowed to define what counted as theory, the study of politics would produce a distorted understanding of political life while assuming an evaluative stance that it refused to recognize. Wolin’s argument was not so much a call to reject empirical methods completely as it was an appeal to the importance of traditional political theory in informing political science and in offering an alternative account of social and political life.
Unfortunately, forty years later, the problem that Wolin identified with the positivist approach to political science remains. In this paper, I argue that the reason for this is that positivist political science, in its empiricist and rationalist versions, draws on a philosophy of language and epistemology that were refuted almost as soon as they began to attain currency in American intellectual life. Specifically, the analytic-synthetic dichotomy that is the basis of the distinction between facts and values and the correspondence theory of truth both came under heavy criticism beginning with W. V. O. Quine and Wilfred Sellars in the early fifties and continues through the work of Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, and analytic philosophy in general, not to mention the traditions of what is referred to as Continental philosophy. The result is that in its unjustified faith in its delegitimized (and often unacknowledged) philosophical foundations, political science has come to resemble a theological enterprise more than a scientific one. |
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Association:
Name: Southern Political Science Association
URL: http://www.spsa.net
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Citation:
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MLA Citation:
| Gibbons, Michael. "Political Theory and Political Science: The Theological Development of the Science of Politics" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Hotel Intercontinental, New Orleans, LA, Jan 07, 2009 <Not Available>. 2010-03-11 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p282812_index.html> |
APA Citation:
| Gibbons, M. T. , 2009-01-07 "Political Theory and Political Science: The Theological Development of the Science of Politics" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Hotel Intercontinental, New Orleans, LA Online <PDF>. 2010-03-11 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p282812_index.html |
Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Almost forty years ago, David Easton’s APSA Presidential Address, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” called for what Easton believed would be a major change of focus in political science. He argued that the discipline’s focus on pure theory had distracted it from many of the political and social problems facing the United States, and the world as well, for that matter. With an unpopular war conducted in Vietnam, continued racism, racial violence and segregation, the rapid decay of urban areas, to mention only some of the problems Easton identified, the urgency of America’s political situation called for social scientists to focus on examining policy alternatives that would address these issues. This “post-behavorial revolution” would not, however, abandon the methodological foundations of empirical political science, but would simply turn the study of politics to practical, urgent issues. Moreover, this was not a call to abandon the pure science that behavioralism pursued, but rather a call for a new balance between the two foci.
Ironically, the article that immediately followed Easton’s in that issue of the APSR was Sheldon Wolin’s “Political Theory as a Vocation.” There, Wolin argued that as long as methodism, i.e. the unquestioning faith in the ability of a narrow range of methods, was allowed to define what counted as theory, the study of politics would produce a distorted understanding of political life while assuming an evaluative stance that it refused to recognize. Wolin’s argument was not so much a call to reject empirical methods completely as it was an appeal to the importance of traditional political theory in informing political science and in offering an alternative account of social and political life.
Unfortunately, forty years later, the problem that Wolin identified with the positivist approach to political science remains. In this paper, I argue that the reason for this is that positivist political science, in its empiricist and rationalist versions, draws on a philosophy of language and epistemology that were refuted almost as soon as they began to attain currency in American intellectual life. Specifically, the analytic-synthetic dichotomy that is the basis of the distinction between facts and values and the correspondence theory of truth both came under heavy criticism beginning with W. V. O. Quine and Wilfred Sellars in the early fifties and continues through the work of Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, and analytic philosophy in general, not to mention the traditions of what is referred to as Continental philosophy. The result is that in its unjustified faith in its delegitimized (and often unacknowledged) philosophical foundations, political science has come to resemble a theological enterprise more than a scientific one. |
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| Political Theory and Political Science: The Theological Development of the Science of Politics Michael T. Gibbons Department of Government and International Affairs University of South Florida Almost forty years ago David Easton’s APSA Presidential Address “The New Revolution in Political Science ” called for what Easton believed would be a major change of focus in political science. He argued that the discipline’s focus on pure theory had distracted it from many of the political and social problems facing the |
| draws on a philosophy of language and epistemology that were refuted almost as soon as they began to attain currency in American intellectual life. Specifically the analytic-synthetic dichotomy that is the basis of the distinction between facts and values and the correspondence theory of truth both came under heavy criticism beginning with W. V. O. Quine and Wilfred Sellars in the early fifties and continues through the work of Donald Davidson Richard Rorty and analytic philosophy in general not |
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