Political Theory
Students of political theory made it a point to distinguish this field form the study of political theories. This created a renewed interest in ideology in general. Political theory referred either to ideas used by states or political actors to justify programs of reform or revolution or to a variety of isms that ran from right to left but were to be studied as persuasive ideas without serious analytical content. To legitimate the field of political theory as an interpretive and analytic enterprise, academics in the field found it necessary to ensure that it could not be reduced to the study of ideology, which was seen as an inferior form of political knowing. This represents a missed opportunity to discover another tradition of political science that connected political theory to ideology. This tradition saw political theories as the testing of political ideas by placing them in the sociological context of political conflict in which these ideas are fought out.
Recently there has been a revival of this project. To lay out what this project entails, I suggest three ways of conceptualizing this field of political struggle: the existential, the political sociological, and the reflexive understanding of the political sociological context as itself part of political theories. I argue this last approach is the most promising. This made it easy , by opening, to contesting the political world in which we place our political theories. It also promises to provide a way to reconnect political theory to a broadly conceived empirical political science without assuming political science has some unique purchase on the political world.
Aristotle, was a Greek philosopher, logician, and scientist. Along with his teacher Plato, Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory. Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece, and his father was a court physician to the king of Macedon. As a young man he studied in Plato’s Academy in Athens. After Plato’s death he left Athens to conduct philosophical and biological research in Asia Minor and Lesbos, and he was then invited by King Philip II of Macedon to tutor his young son, Alexander the Great. Soon after Alexander succeeded his father, consolidated the conquest of the Greek city-states, and launched the invasion of the Persian Empire. Aristotle returned as a resident alien to Athens, and was close friend of Antipater the Macedonian viceroy. At this time he wrote some of his major treatises, including the Politics which laid out political theory. When Alexander died suddenly, Aristotle had to flee from Athens because of his Macedonian connections, and he died soon after. Aristotle’s life seems to have influenced his political theories in various ways: his interest in biology seems to be expressed in the naturalism of his politics; his interest in comparative politics and his sympathies for democracy as well as monarchy may have been encouraged by his travels and experience of diverse political systems; he criticizes harshly, while borrowing extensively, from Plato’s Republic, Statesman, and Laws; and his own Politics is use a guide when evaluating political theories.
