7 - Conclusion: intellectual history and the idolatry of conceptual dichotomies

Summary

FORGETTING AND REDISCOVERY

Every intellectual history is a narrative. Insofar as this study is part intellectual history, it is no exception. My narrative approach to nineteenth- and twentieth-century English political theory privileges liberal utilitarianism and the new liberalism because I firmly believe that both constitute English political theory's most significant contribution to modern Anglo-American political theory as well as to modern political theory in general. In my view, contemporary American political theorists, for whom Anglo-American political theory begins with Rawls, haven't taken either seriously enough. But those who fetishize Rawls should at least read Sidgwick, since A Theory of Justice was written largely in response to him.

Contemporary English political theory is less historically myopic, not only because liberal utilitarianism has long been an English preoccupation, but also because English political theory largely avoided falling under the ideological spell of German émigré intellectuals, like Arendt, Strauss and Voegelin, who found refuge in the US academy in the 1930s and 1940s, and who read their anxieties about fascism into their depictions of liberalism, infusing American political theory with intoxicating fevers and fascinations. No wonder Rawls's analytical liberalism seemed so bracing and therefore proved so historically numbing in turn. And no wonder American political theory unwittingly reinvented communitarianism since it knew next to nothing about the new liberalism. English political theory has fared somewhat better. From Bentham on, it has simultaneously maintained its analytical rigor without losing quite so much of its historical memory.