Ideas and politics: the American experience

This book grew out of the conviction that there is a serious place for the study of political thought in a systematic political science. Sometimes analysis of the ideas of the past is treated, even by its devotees, as though it were a kind of aesthetic criticism whose purpose is to expound questions of beauty and points of form. There is, to be sure, nothing wrong with criticism for its own sake. But insofar as political ideas are handled exclusively in this fashion, the entire enterprise of political science is the poorer. For, as the first chapter tries to show, there are uses to which contemporary political science, including those parts with positive or quantitative orientations, should be putting yesterday's political thought. Political ideas are themselves variables in the working out of political relationships, and they are also heuristic tools for the analyst. It seems important that students of political theory take these potentials seriously.