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Reflections on the State of Political Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Hans J. Morgenthau
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Extract

In plato's Theaetetus Socrates develops the character of the philosopher, the man of knowledge, in contrast to the atheoretical, practical man.* He endeavors to demonstrate the distinctive qualities of the philosopher by emphasizing his peculiar attitude towards the political sphere.

First, the philosopher has no political ambitions, and he does not care about what is going on in the political sphere.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 1955 , pp. 431 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1955

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References

* Part of this paper was originally prepared for a conference held at Northwestern University in June, 1954

1 The Relations of Political Science to National Prosperity (Ann Arbor, 1881).Google Scholar

2 Hoxie, R. Gordon and others, A History of the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), p. 13.Google Scholar

3 “The Study of the Political Sciences in Columbia College,” International Review, XII (1882), p. 348.Google Scholar

4 Hoxie, R. Gordon and others, loc. cit., pp. 305–6.Google Scholar

5 Haddow, Anna, Political Science in American Colleges and Universities, 1636–1900 (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1939), p. 175.Google Scholar

6 Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946).Google Scholar

7 Moore, Barrington Jr., “The New Scholasticism and the Study of Politics,” World Politics, VI (1953), pp. 122–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The Study of Political Science and Its Relation to Cognate Studies, (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1929), pp. 25–6.Google Scholar

9 Cf. below, pp. 453 ff, the comment on the changing perspectives of political science. The views, expressed here necessarily in an aphoristic form, develop further what was said in Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, pp. 166, 167.Google Scholar

10 For an elaboration of this theme, see Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, pp. 155 ff.Google Scholar; Politics Among Nations, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), pp. 80 ff.Google Scholar

11 Cf. on this general problem the discussion on values in the social sciences in America, Vol. 92, 10 9 and 30, 1954.Google Scholar

12 Cf. my “Area Studies and the Study of International Relations,” International Social Science Bulletin, IV (1952), pp. 654–5.Google Scholar

13 Cf. Robson, W. A., The University Teaching of Social Sciences. Political Science (Paris: Unesco, 1954), pp. 17, 63.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Cobban, Alfred's important article, “The Decline of Political Theory,” Political Science Quarterly, LXVIII (1953), pp. 321–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Cf. the important, but largely neglected monograph by Watkins, Frederick, The State as a Concept of Political Science (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1934), especially pp. 81 ff.Google Scholar