Character of Political Theory

Abstract

Now that we have some understanding of state and politics, we are better placed to deal with the character of political theory. I have chosen ‘political theory’ in preference to ‘political thought’, which seems far too broad in meaning; and to ‘political philosophy’ as too narrow in scope. ‘Political thought’ is so general as to include anything from a party election manifesto or an official governmental report or the impressions of a newspaper columnist to a learned treatise. ‘Political philosophy’, on the other hand appears to be too systematic, holistic, and conceptually technical — the archetypal figures being Plato, Aristotle, St Thomas, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Hegel — to include many of the authors of paramount importance in our genre. What do we do with Cicero, not as much of a philosopher as he claimed, whose primary political works — De re publica and De legibus, and even De officiis — are not technically philosophic; or likewise with Locke’s Two Treatises, philosophic only rather loosely speaking, and whose great philosophic work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is usually unexamined by students of his political ideas? Moreover, it might be possible to write a history of political theory without detailed discussion of Spinoza, Hume, and Kant.