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75 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1960)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry75 and id is 1 raw text is: Volume LXXV POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY POLITICAL THEORY TODAY* JUSTIFIED or not, it is certainly a current view that there have recently been no significant contributions to political theory either in England or in America. Thus, Noel Annan: What has characterised Western political thought since 1945? The almost total collapse of political philosophy- in the sense that Mill or Green or Marx wrote it.' Or, in a review of Hans J. Morgenthau's Dilemmas of Politics: He insists that the empirical study of politics requires a philosophic framework, and that generally it doesn't exist. Admittedly theory holds its place in the curriculum, but it is historical and traditional with little meaning for our time.2 The political theory here referred to is, of course, what used to be understood by that term. That is something which is morally and philo- sophically oriented and useful for guiding social action. It is something concerned with values, that leads to beliefs, that seeks a rational and empirical structure from which to recom- mend. It is not that new and negative kind of political theory which takes the form of arguing that nothing can usefully be said about values, for they are just what is accepted in the society in which we live; that nothing can be prescribed or recom- mended, save acquiescence. Yet this rejection of rationalism- for that is surely what it is-by this kind of political theory is both symptom and cause of an attitude spreading beyond it. Instances are all around us today. Thus Mr. Justice Devlin lately asserted, in his Maccabaean lecture, that society should not be expected to give its reasons for condemning some prac- *This article is a revised version of an address given at Columbia Uni- versity in October 1959 at the invitation of the Faculty of Philosophy. At the time the address was delivered, the author was Visiting Professor of Government in Columbia University. 1 The Listener, February 19, 1959, p. 323. 2 By M. R. Merrill, in Western Political Quarterly, vol. X1I, No. 2, p. 617. I March 1960 Number 1

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