The History of Ideas and the Study of Politics
LJN RECENT YEARS, a cloud of methodological confusion has been cast over the study of politics. The traditional procedure, studying political institutions and selected texts from the classics of political philosophy, had previously existed in uneasy compromise in most politics departments. The application of sociological techniques to the study of politics has made that compromise even more difficult to maintain, and many observers have argued that politics, far from being a unified discipline, is simply a naive application of different disciplines to a loosely defined and notoriously ambiguous subject-matter. Politics, in short, is seen to possess no more unity than such a subject as European studies. A voice from America, perceiving the difficulties of the old world, has attempted to unify the study of politics by the application of new methods. Closely adhering to the methods of the natural sciences, strongly influenced by the techniques developed in cultural anthropology, the voice has called us to follow along the road to positivism to a haven of rigorously empirical political science. But if we are of a historical frame of mind, we will appreciate that revolutionary apostles have been quite a normal feature in the history of political thought. We need only recall the claims made by Hobbes about his science of politics. And the claim to base the study of politics upon the natural sciences is not itself a new phenomenon. It has been made with monotonous regularity since the