Values and the Methodology of Political Science: A Comment

Abstract

Readers of Thomas H. Greene's article, “Values and the Methodology of Political Science,” may have detected a theme of importance to political philosophy, a theme which, however, the author did not explicitly identify. Greene divided his essay into five parts: the first, third, and fifth parts contain what I believe to be an argument in favour of the reconciliation of social science and political philosophy; the second and fourth parts are devoted, in some measure, to a criticism of two contemporary political philosophers, Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss. Greene argues, in effect, that the reconciliation of political philosophy with social science will have taken place when political philosophy is understood within the categories of social science, specifically within “Robert Merton's categories of theoretical range” (p. 274). The truth of Greene's argument depends, in part at least, upon the correctness of his understanding of Voegelin and Strauss. Correlatively, his argument is vitiated to the extent that he has not understood what Voegelin and Strauss have written about politics and theory and why, on the basis of such writings, they object to social science. What the author does not consider, but which ought to be considered, is the possibility that if social scientists and political philosophers have little of creative import to say to each other, it may be for sound reasons.