theory,’’ of which the subject-matter and the method were practically indis-
tinguishable. By ‘‘political thought’’ (and therefore ‘‘theory’’) were meant a
number of intellectual disciplines—or alternatively, modes of rhetoric—which
had from time to time been applied to a subject or subjects which it was agreed
formed that of ‘‘politics.’’ The ‘‘history’’ of these modes of discourse was
agreed to form the ‘‘history of political thought’’ or ‘‘theory.’’ They contained
much that amounted to a ‘‘theoretical’’ treatment of an abstract concept of
‘‘politics,’’ and each of them—at least in principle—had generated a second-
order discourse which critically examined its conduct, and so amounted to
‘‘theory’’ in a further sense of that term.
These ‘‘histories’’ of political thought/theory were canonically constructed;
that is, they arranged modes of discourse—and above all, the major texts that
had acquired classical status and authority in each—in an order which it had
come to be agreed formed the ‘‘history’’ being presented. Classically—and, it
should be emphasized, for historical reasons, many of which were good—they
began with the invention in fourth-century Athens of what was termed
‘‘political philosophy,’’ so that ‘‘political philosophy’’ became a term of equal
status (and imprecision) with ‘‘political thought’’ and ‘‘theory.’’ A historical
grand narrative emerged, in which ‘‘the history of political thought,’’ ‘‘theory,’’
or ‘‘philosophy’’ moved from Platonic or Aristotelian beginnings through a
medieval period in which ‘‘philosophy’’ encountered Christian theology, into
one in which this encounter was liquidated and replaced by modes of thought,
theory, and philosophy it was agreed to term ‘‘modern.’’
It was a further characteristic of these ‘‘histories’’ that they were not written
by historians so much as by ‘‘political theorists’’ and ‘‘philosophers’’ who held
that the study of this ‘‘history’’ was in some way conducive to the enterprise or
enquiry in which they were themselves engaged. To study ‘‘the history of
political theory’’ was helpful to the practice of ‘‘political theory.’’ This assump-
tion came, at and after the middle of the twentieth century, to be attacked in two
ways. There arose ways of conducting both the empirical and the normative
study of politics which claimed to have no need of historical knowledge—still
described in its canonical form—because they possessed means of validating,
criticizing, verifying or falsifying, the statements that they made, which
depended upon the method that they practiced and not upon historical cir-
cumstance or character. This may be considered one of the moments at which
the term ‘‘political science’’ made its appearance. Concurrently—and in some
ways in response to this development—historians appeared who proposed
(often aggressively) to reduce ‘‘the history of political thought’’ to a rigorously
164 j. g. a. pocock