The Classical Method of Political Science, and its Relation to the Study of Contemporary Politics

Abstract

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN CLASSICAL POLITICAL SCIENCE AND its modern counterpart may help to illuminate certain serious deficiencies in the contemporar study of politics. It will wide diversity of research under the rubric of ‘contemporary political science’; nonetheless, it is possible to delineate a characteristic set of features inherent in a prevailing understanding of politics that is indeed recognizable, and is deserving of deep critical scrutiny. Futhermore, these features may be effectively exposed by a systematic contrast with the very different procedure of the classical study of politics. In particular, the latter poses major challenges to contemporary modes of political inquiry at the following critical points. First, political science must abandon claims to approximating natural science, though not necessarily ceasing to aspire to comprehensive knowledge. Second, an instrumentalist conception of political community should not be considered in any way primary or paradigmatic; the question of the nature of the association must be guided by the question of the ends for which it exists. Third, social theory operates by searching for principles of coherence, and analyses social relationships in terms of their coherence or incoherence. Fourth, the decisive basis of political science is not the distinction between fact and value, or between means and ends, but the distinction between part and whole.