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Rethinking The Nature of Political Theory: A Single-handed Defense of A DialogueAuthor(s): Richard AshcraftSource: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 44, No. 2 (May, 1982), pp. 577-585Published by: on behalf of theThe University of Chicago Press Southern Political ScienceAssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2130602Accessed: 28-06-2015 17:18 UTC

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Rethinking

The

Nature

of

Political Theory:

A

Single-handed

Defense

of

A

Dialogue

RICHARD

SHCRAFT

WISH

TO THANK

R. Bruce Douglass and Gary Marfin both for

their cogent and fair presentation

of

my views and

for

providing the

opportunity

to

clarify some aspects

of

my argument. Let me begin,

therefore, by referring

to

a major point raised

in the

article

to

which

none of my critics has yet responded. My aims in writing the essay

were

really quite modest; certainly,

far less than an

expectation

that

a mass conversion

of

contemporary political

theorists

to

my

view-

point would occur, or that, within its spatial limits,

I

could hope

to

provide a viable alternative (P. 571)

to

orthodox political theory,

for some indication of which, however, I might refer the reader to

other writings.' Rather,

I

argued that a number

of

intellectually

undefended

-

and,

in

my view,

indefensible

-

assumptions

for

many

years

have

dominated

the

study and interpretation

of

political

I

See especially the work of Quentin Skinner, History and Ideology in the English

Revolution, The Historical

Journal, 8 (1965); Conquest and Consent: Thomas

Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy, in The Interregnum: The Quest for Settle-

ment, ed.

G.

E. Aylmer (London, 1972); The Foundations of Modern Political

Thought, 2 vols.

(Cambridge, 1978). For my views, see Hobbes' Natural Man: A

Study

of

Ideological Formation, Journal of Politics,

33

(November 1971); Ideology

and Class in Hobbes' Political

Theory,

Political

Theory (February 1978);

The Two

Treatises and the Exclusion

Crisis: The Problem of Lockean Political Theory as

Bourgeois Ideology (William

Andrews Clark Library Seminar Series, 1980); and

Revolutionary Politics and

Locke's Two Treatises of Government, Political Theory

(November 1980).






578

THE

JOURNAL

OF POLITICS,

VOL. 44,

1982

theory,

and

I hoped, provocatively,

as

Douglass

and

Marfin

rightly

observe,

to expose

the intellectual

barrenness

as

well as

the

practical

inutility

of these

assumptions,

and, perhaps,

to stimulate a

debate

and

some

more serious

thinking

about

the

nature

of

political

theory.

Instead

of a response

which

directs

our attention

to an

examina-

tion

of the

evidence

upon

which

such assumptions

are based

and

how

one

could

apply

them

in a specific

historical

instance,

however,

critics

of

my

challenge

thus

far

have

been

content

to

assume

that

these assumptions

are simply

self-evident

and

obvious,

thus

perpetuating

the tendency

to

rely upon

habit, authority,

and

tradi-

tion rather than upon argument and evidence as a basis for their ac-

ceptance.

Douglas

and

Marfin say

the

distinction

between

ideology

and

philosophy

.

. .

corresponds

to

an empirical

difference

that

is

readily

perceptible

in

the

literature

of the

Western

tradition

(P.

572)

Readily

perceptible ?,

I

thought

that

might

be one

of

the

issues

worth

discussing,

but

no, Douglass

and

Marfin

assure

us

that

there are

no

problems

here.

There

may

be

minor

difficulties

since

the distinction

is a

matter

of degree

and

is not

absolute.

We

could debate as

to

exactly

how

the distinction

should

be drawn

and

how it

should

be

applied,

but

why

should

we

when

we

already

know that

Plato's

Republic

is

a different

kind

of work

from

Lenin's

What is

to be

Done?

(P.

572)

Pardon

me,

I thought

we

were

debating

that

issue

in

order

to find out precisely

how

and

why

such

distinctions

need

to be made.

Need

I remind

the authors

that

Capital

is

not What

is

to be

Done?

either,

but

that

in itself

hardly

makes

Marx

less

of an

ideologue

than

Lenin,

only,

perhaps,

a

more

profound

thinker.

But

the

more obvious

fact

is

that

Douglass

and

Marfin, like most traditional interpreters, do not explain either the

reasoning

upon

which

their

conclusions

are

based

or

the

epistemological

grounds

of

their

interpretive

approach

to the

texts;

they

neither

reveal

the

criteria

for making

this readily

perceptible

distinction,

nor

do they

show

us

how,

in

practice,

the distinction

can

be

applied.

Indeed,

even

to debate

such

points

seems

to them

not

a

particularly

worthwhile undertaking.

Even

those who

do not

share

my

viewpoint

might

be

inclined

to feel that

J.

S. Mill's admonition

ought to be invoked,

namely,

that basic

and popularly

accepted

principles

need

to be debated

if they are

to avoid

sinking

into the

sterility

of scholasticism.

However seriously

we take

the

text

of

Plato's

Republic,

there

are

not many

interpreters

who

would

now

undertake

a defense

of

the

truth

of his epistemological

position

as

he presents

it, or

his

view






REJOINDER

FROM

RICHARD

ASHCRAFT

579

that

political

leaders

should

engage

in

communal

living, or

his

quasi-mystical

interest in

numerology,

et

cetera.

Perhaps

we

could

'be told why these are not

timeless

truths

for

the

long

run,

and

how

they

come to

be

sifted

out

so

easily

from

those

which

are? If,

in

reading

the

Politics,

we

are

told

that

Aristotle's

defense

of

private

property

is

justified

by

his

realistic

understanding of

human

nature,

then,

perhaps,

we

ought

to

accept

his

realistic

analysis

of

society

in

terms of

class

conflict with

the

same

degree

of

conviction.

If

we do

not

accept

his

views

on

slavery,

Machiavelli's

cyclic

inter-

pretation

of

history,

the

argument for

the

divine

right of

kings,

and

many other precepts held by past political theorists because we have

good

reasons for

not

doing

so,

reasons

which

are not

unrelated to

a

whole

complex set of

beliefs

we

hold

as well

as to

the

nature

of

our

social

institutions

which

embody and

support

those

beliefs,

then

the

same

criteria

must be

employed

in

a

defense of

those

precepts from

past

political

theories

which

we

do

accept.

It

is,

in

short,

we

who

decide

which

propositions to

extract

as

truths

from

a

particular

text,

and

which

beliefs to

reject, how

to

distribute

the

emphasis in

our

reconstructed

version

of

what

the

theorist

said

or

intended

to

say, et cetera.

The

so-called

tradition

of

political

theory

itself

as we

have

come

to

regard it

is, as

John

Gunnell

has

shown, a

recent

construction

for-

mulated

within

a

specific

historical

context.2

Political

theory has

not

always

been

viewed as

it

is

by

contemporary

theorists.

Before

we

ascribe

eternal

essences to

various

concepts

within

political

theory,

there

are

more

than

a few

questions to

be

raised

about the

assumed

eternal

essence

of

political

theory. It

is

therefore

somewhat surprising that Douglass and Marfin seem willing to stake

so

much

upon

the

changing

whims of

popularity

as

a

guide

to

the

nature of

political

theory,

since

how

and

why

beliefs

gain

a

wide

following

(P.

572) and

undergo

changes

is

certainly

a

subject

of

great

interest

to

the

sociology of

knowledge.

Of

course, if

all

of

our

widely held

beliefs

could

so

simply

be

equated with

the

intellectual

merits

of

the

case

or

with

making

sense, as

the

authors

assume in

this

instance,

sociologists

of

knowledge-and

philosophers-would

have

precious

little

to

do.

There

might

indeed

be

good

reasons for

preferring

Hobbes's

Leviathan

to

Paine's

Common

Sense as

a

work

of

political

theory,

2

John

G.

Gunnell,

Political

Theory:

Tradition

and

Interpretation,

(Cambridge,

Mass.:

Winthrop,

1979).






580

THE

JOURNAL

OF

POLITICS,

VOL.

44, 1982

but before we

accept

the

proposition

as self-evident and pass on to

something

else, perhaps

we could explore a bit further a few dimen-

sions

of the

problem

of

making

such

judgments.

We might

wonder

why

we do not see

the truth or

significance

of

such

great political

theorists as Aquinas

or Augustine, as our predecessors

three or four

centuries

ago

did, why Cicero has

fallen

from his

place as a major

political theorist for the seventeenth

century

to

his status as a

minor theorist for

us,

if he is read at

all, why

Calvin

is

generally

not even included on our list of

political

theorists, and why,

even in

those works which

are carried forward,

what we emphasize as being

important in them is quite often very different from the way in

which individuals

in

previous

centuries read

those works.

Taking

the texts seriously

involves some

self-critical

reflections upon

these

changes

in status, importance,

and meaning

of

works

of

political

theory.

A

view which pretends that

such

changes have

nothing

whatsoever

to do with

the

relationship

of

political

theory, past and

present, to a specific historical

context is not one

which, in my view,

takes either

the text

or

the theorist

seriously.

For

years,

we were

told

that

Hobbes's political theory should

be

read as the unique product of a genius isolated from the merely

pragmatically

directed efforts

of lesser contemporary political

writers. This

view

of

Hobbes's argument

is

historically

false.

We

now

have

evidence

and good

reasons for believing

that

Hobbes's

in-

tentions in

writing the Leviathan were no

less pragmatically

directed than

those of

lesser writers,

that his ideas were shared by

a

specific group

of

theorists,

that what his theory meant to

his

con-

temporaries

is quite different

from the meanings several modern

in-

terpreters attribute to it, and so on. We were told that Locke's use

of

concepts

such

as

the

state

of

nature,

natural law,

his

notion of

equality,

et

cetera, gave an abstract quality

to

his

political

theory,

of

the

kind

that elevated

it into a realm transcending

the level of

writings

of

those

who

seek to have an immediate practical

effect.

This, too, is historically false.

Dozens

of

pamphlets

published

in

the

1680s

employ all of these

Lockean concepts in their political

arguments.

Indeed,

most contemporary interpreters would

in most

instances be

mistaken if they were

asked to name what concepts

or

arguments in the Two Treatises are peculiar or unique to Locke.

Many

other

examples

from

the

history

of

political

thought

could be

cited,

but the

point

is

that much

of

what

we

assume

to

be true as

part

of

our philosophical interpretation

of

a

particular

work

of

political theory turns out

to be historically false.

The degree

to






REJOINDER FROM

RICHARD ASHCRAFT

581

which

any

single instance

of this

nature

affects

the

overall status of

a

specific

interpretation

is,

of

course,

dependent

upon

the

details

of

the

historical

evidence

and the

structure

of

the

interpretation,

but it

hardly can

be a

philosophically unimportant

question in

general to

ask,

how

much

of

what

we

believe

and take

for

granted

about

a

par-

ticular

work of

political

theory is

dependent upon

our

historical ig-

norance,

and

how much is

based

upon the best

available evidence?

If

empirical

evidence

of

this

type is

to

be

allowed to

have

no

effect

in

changing the

meaning

of

the

great

works of

political

theory,

or

rather, our

interpretations

of

them,

it

is difficult to

see why we

should take seriously any interpretation with which we happen to

disagree,

for

what kind

of

evidence

and

argument could

possibly

in-

duce

an

interpreter

to

change

his

or

her

mind?

(The

text, after all,

is itself

only a

piece

of

empirical

evidence,

along

with

diaries, let-

ters,

eyewitness

accounts, et

cetera.)

If

appeals to

evidence are

presumed

to

have some

effect

-

and

this point

relates to

the

general

question raised

by

Douglass

and Marfin as to

why cultures and

societies

do

change

their

worldviews over

time -then I

do not

see

how it can

be

denied a priori

that

appeals to

historical evidence

relating

to

the theorist,

his

situation,

intentions,

audience,

political

purposes,

et

cetera indeed

may have

the

effect of

changing

the

meaning

of

a

particular work in

political

theory,

or

may

play a

decisive

role in

our decision to

accept

the

validity

of

one

interpreta-

tion of

that work

over its

contemporary rival

interpretations.3

In

my article, I

maintained that

contemporary

political

theorists

premise their

characterization of

the

crisis

or

decline of

political

theory upon all

kinds

of

historical/sociological

assumptions

for

which they provide inadequate arguments and evidence. This

point,

too, is

not

addressed

by my

critics.

Strauss,

for

example,

premises his

conclusion

that political

philosophy has

declined

upon

his

assertion that

a belief in

the

relativism

of

values, or the

rise

of

historicism, or the

politicization of

philosophy,

et cetera

spread

throughout

society

between

the sixteenth

and twentieth

centuries.

Now, these

appear

to

be

historical

suppositions about

changes

in

3

This is

a more

important

point than it

might at

first appear to be,

since it

would

mean that a particular historically grounded interpretation would have to be con-

sidered

on

the

merits

of

its

arguments,

the

specific

evidence it

presented

would have to

be

examined,

other factual

material could be

introduced

into the

discussion

bv its

critics, and so

forth;

in other

words,

the

whole

form and

structure of the

debate

regarding

various interpretations of

a

specific

theorist's political

thought

would be

significantly

changed.






582

THE JOURNAL

OF POLITICS, VOL. 44,

1982

social

consciousness

in Western societies. But

what

historical

evidence

is actually presented

in

support

of such global

assertions,

and

what

theory

of social change or cultural transformation

is of-

fered to guide us

through

these shifts

in world-historical thought

spread

over four

centuries? In some

simple

but

unexplained

man-

ner we are

left to assume

that the ideas of Machiavelli

and

Hobbes

(as interpreted

by Strauss,

but not necessarily

as they were actually

read by

anyone else, since

this

point

is

not

demonstrated)

merely

flowed

into the

mainstream

of

social

consciousness

for the West.

Similarly,

Wolin

writes

of the

decline

of the

political

and

its

replacement by the social and other theorists tell us of the

secularization

of

political

thought, and

so forth, as

if the

historical/sociological

evidence

in

support

of such sweeping

generalizations

was

perfectly self-evident,

or could be deduced

easily

from the

citations

from the

writings

of

a

few

philosophically

oriented

thinkers. Such a way

of

presenting

an argument

about

historical and social

change is,

in plain terms, nonsensical;

yet,

unless

the

historical

plausibility

of the

presuppositions

held

by

Strauss,

Wolin, Germino, and

others

is

accepted,

their

theoretical

conclusions and

arguments

would lose both

their

internal-logical

and

their

social-practical significance.

Nevertheless,

it is

far

from

clear

why

we should take

seriously

these assertions

about historical

and social

changes

when

so

little evidence is

presented

relating

to the

structure

of

society;

viz., the interrelations

between

various

social

groups,

the relationship between

the

political

theorists discussed and

these

social groups,

the extent

to

which

their ideas

were

accepted

by particular groups

and for what

purposes, the place of

political

ideas in relation to other religious, philosophical, aesthetic beliefs,

the

reasons

for

changes

in

these

patterns and

relationships, and

many more such questions,

to which we would certainly

require

some concrete answers

in

order

to

assess

the

intellectual

merits of the

grandiose assertions

made by some

contemporary political theorists.

(Nor need anyone suppose

that

we need philosophers who

make such

wild and

unsupported

statements

in the

guise

of

critical analysis

in

order to set lesser

minds rummaging for grubby

facts; there

is a

sufficient

surplus

of such broad-gauged

theories among

contem-

porary

historians and

sociologists.)

When,

in their

remarks, Douglass and Marfin consider

these

issues, they too, combine

great conviction

about cultural

change

with

a

paucity

of evidence. We

are

advised that somehow,

through

some

unexplained

mechanism,

the ideas of a great philosopher

flow






REJOINDER FROM RICHARD

ASHCRAFT 583

into the collective social

consciousness, through

a kind of mystical

mental osmosis. Cultures

and societies change,

the authors write,

and

the

course

of

change can

be

and

is affected by philosophical

ideas. This piece

of historical news is followed by the assurance

that philosophers have played a key role in effecting

the change

(P. 575) but precisely

how such vague generalities could find

their

meaning

in

any specific

social/historical

context

is not

even

hinted

at. The reason

for this

seems

to be

that Douglass

and Marfin have

no ideas at all about

how cultural or social changes occur, since they

write . . . Short of

totalitarian control,

there

really

is

no

program

for the transformation of a culture; and, regarding the relationship

between philosophy and political action, they

declare,

. . . there is

not a great deal

to be said (P. 575).

I

appreciate

these

admissions

of

honesty

on their

part,

but

perhaps

the rest of us will be

forgiven

if

we

attempt

to

push

on

a bit

further

past

these frontiers

of

ignorance

in the

search

for

an answer

to

these problems.

Douglass and Marfin

are quite right

to

say

that what it means to

be

political and

to

have

a political effect is a centrally important

issue (P. 574). But

elusive references to cultural transformations

or to

philosophical

ideas exercising

some

profound

effect

upon

politics

in the

long run

no more

constitute a

theory of politics than

they

do

a theory

of

history

or

social change.

They do

not

add up

to

a

theory

of

anything, only

a

string

of

vacuous

phrases.

When the

authors

attempt

to

provide

us

with some definite statements about

some

particular political

theorist

effecting

some specific change

in

some

concrete society,

then

I

shall consider

with

great

interest

what

kind of evidence they choose

to

present

in

support

of such assertions,

and what it means to be political in light of their answers to those

specific questions.

In view of

their failure

to

bring politics

down

from the

airy

heights

to

which they

have banished it,

I think it is possible to see

why Douglass

and

Marfin misunderstand

my

point

about Strauss

and

others.

I

did

not-and

would

not-deny

that Strauss's

ideas

have practical effects

or

political consequences,

or

that he

himself

had political aims which

he sought to achieve through his writing

and

teaching.

Indeed,

if

I

had

not believed

this,

I

would not

have

written the

essay

in the first

place. However,

one

does

not

have

to

be

totally enveloped

in the literature

of

political

sociology

and

behavioral science

to know

that apathy,

counsels

of

withdrawal,

or

what

I

called

a retreat

to

philosophy

do have

political consequences.

But, having political consequences and political

purposes

are

not

the






584

THE

JOURNAL

OF

POLITICS,

VOL. 44,

1982

same

thing, as

I

have

tried to show,

as having

a theory

of political

action whose meaning

is

dependent

upon

an

analysis

of

political

relationships

between

existing

social

groups.

In my

article,

I cited

Strauss's

statements

extolling

a

life devoted

to contemplation

as

being

the highest

subject

of political philosophy

as a

misdirection

of others

as to

an understanding

of

the

nature of political

theory.4

That

such a

view of political

theory

nevertheless

has

definite

political

consequences,

and especially

with

reference

to political

in-

volvement,

is true

enough;

that

it

is

the most important

definition

of political

theory available

and that

it

has

established

that claim

to

importance, in part, through the significant role it has played in the

process

of

historical

and

social

change

is

a point we

would

all like

very much

to see demonstrated.

Finally,

in their reply,

Douglass

and

Marfin manifest precisely

the

level

of understanding

of

ideology

which is generally

prevalent

in

the literature

on

political

theory

when they

say

that what

is

involved

is simply

the attempt

to

look beyond the substance

of

theories

to

their social

sources

and

function

and

to demonstrate

that

class

in-

terest

played

a

role in

determining

the character

of the political

thought

of

a

particular

theorist

(P.

572).

One

aim

of

my

article,

indirectly

stated,

I

admit,

was

to

encourage

political

theorists

to

think through

the issues

beyond

the

simplistic

characterizations

of

ideology

in

terms

of

reductionism

or social

function

and

other

equally

superficial

pronouncements

by

contemporary

political

scientists.

The latter

seem

unable

to

grasp

the

possibility

that

ideology might

be something

more than a

blunt instrument

with

which

to

bludgeon

ideas

to

death.

How much

longer,

one

wonders,

will all the issues and problems raised by the view of political theory

as

ideology

be treated

as

though

Kautsky

were

the

only

Marxist

who

ever lived and

his ideas

had gained

universal

acceptance?

I do

not

suggest

that

recent

writings

by

Marxist

theorists and

scholars have

solved all

the

problems

associated

with such a position,

nor would

I

deny that

some

of

these

writers have

carried

forward

what are,

in

my

view, ill-grounded

assumptions

held by earlier

thinkers. Never-

theless,

it

does seem

reasonable

to expect some

of

my

non-Marxist

colleagues

to

update

their

reading

and

improve

upon

their

4 Political Theory and

the Problem of

Ideology, Journal

of Politics,

42 (August

1980), 703, note

51.

I

also

take Professor

Germino's

statements about

the meditative

life and the

bios theoretikos

to be a confirmation

of this viewpoint.

Comment

on

Ashcraft's 'Political

Theory

and the Problem

of Ideology,'

707-708 in

the same

jour-

nal.






REJOINDER

FROM

RICHARD

ASHCRAFT

585

understanding

of

what

is actually

being said

by

their contem-

poraries,

from time

to

time.

I am sure

that Douglass

and

Marfin

will

understand,

therefore,

if I

do

not

recognize

anything

they said

about

ideology

as having any

relationship

to

or

bearing

upon what

I

believe

or

have

written.

In these

brief

comments,

I have

tried to develop

further

some of

the

general points

I

made in my article,

as

well as to

respond

to the

criticisms

of Douglass and

Marfin.

In

attempting

to fulfil both ob-

jectives,

I

hope

that

I

have

made

it clear why the

view of political

theory as

ideology

requires

a

rethinking of

many of

the notions

about political theory we have inherited and which are still prom-

ulgated

by

contemporary political

theorists.

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