Others simply saw Socrates as a bit of a pest, who would not or could not leave well enough
alone. His persistent questioning made them feel uncomfortable, even angry; no one, after all, likes
having their ignorance exposed or their principles questioned. Not that this would have deterred
Socrates. For him, to reflect on the things that mattered was itself a virtue, even if this virtue was not
practiced by many of his contemporaries. If the questions he posed should make people think a little
more about what they value, and why they value it, he would have accomplished his calling.“The
unexamined life,”he informed the jury that would convict him,“is not worth living.”And is not the
habit of thinking deeply and expressing ideas clearly what we hope our students will acquire from
the study of political thought?
As the astute reader will detect, I adopt the framework outlined above as part of an analytical
teaching tool, one that raises questions along lines similar to those Socrates employs. In examining
canonical texts, it requires students to consider: 1) what they value (justice-seeking); 2) what they
know (knowledge-seeking); 3) and how they go about justifying or defending the answers they give
to the first two questions (critical analysis). Whereas Socrates is neither a creator nor a constructor
of a“grand”political philosophy, his method ofelenchuscan be used to make students aware of
how different approaches to the study of politics influence the questions theorists raise and the
answers they give. The Socratic method, which I regard as synonymous with an analytical
approach, insists that we critically examine society and ourselves for the purpose of gaining, above
all, self-knowledge.^32 What I hope to offer students is a lens that may enable them to examine the
complex relationship between value, fact, and reason, but also one that can shed light on the
strengths and weaknesses of the political views and values that they, often unwittingly, espouse.
Finally with regard to what should be the purpose of studying political theory, this analytical
framework encourages students (and ourselves) to reflect on which approach they (and we) find
most interesting, and why. Some students will, undoubtedly, embrace a justice-seeking approach,
others a knowledge-seeking approach, focusing on the biographies and historical periods of par-
ticular theorists (sometimes as a shortcut for understanding the thinker’s ideas), and still others will
gravitate toward an analytical approach. Regardless of the approach they prefer, ideally all students
of political theory should consider what consequences follow from emphasizing one approach
to the exclusion of the other two. In fact, the more a thinker confines his or her inquiry to one
approach–a descriptive“scientific”and/or historical analysis of human behavior, a vision of ideal
justice, or a critical analysis of the premises and assertions of others–arguably, the less political
becomes his or her theory. For this reason, most thinkers rarely adopt one single approach to
political theory–normative, empirical, or analytical–entirely at the exclusion of the others. And
this is because no single approach to political inquiry would be adequate without the other two.
Political theorists have, and will remain, fascinated by questions that cannot be reduced to scientific
or historical questions, or, despite efforts of some analytic thinkers, be reduced to philosophical
questions of linguistics because, such questions, e.g., what is justice or freedom?, require normative
judgments. After all, the more interesting and perhaps significant political theorists are those
who adeptly blend all three approaches. This certainly is true of the first political theorist:
Plato’sSocrates.
Notes
1 Peter Laslett,Philosophy, Politics and Society(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), 24.
2 For more on the debate about the purpose of theorizing about politics see Marc Stears,“The Vocation of
Political Theory: Principles, Empirical Inquiry, and the Politics of Opportunity,”European Journal of
Political Theory4 (October 2005): 325–50.
3JohnGunnell,Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation(Cambridge: Winthrop Press, 1979), 70, who
argues that these“traditions”in political theory are“in fact basically a retrospective analytical construction.”
4 Gunnell,Political Theory, 136.The Socratic Method’s Search for Standards 161