We Have a Firm Foundation 27theory. Political theorists now largely address other political theorists. Not many
think, except in rare or apologetic moments, of addressing themselves to a reader-
ship outside of this setting. What might unselfconsciously be called political theory,
before this institutionalization and professionalization process, often addressed itself,
if not directly to the populous, then often to more immediate perceptions of political
urgency. This is by no means a hard and fast distinction, however; it is clear that
political theory now is not so crucially motivated by any sense of external political
urgency, as by the endemic problems of highly-specialized languages and the intrinsic
pressures of an institutionalized profession in the modern, highly competitive, uni-
versity profession measured by research output. The problems of political theory
now are often the problems of artifice, internal to the discipline. The world is filtered
through highly-specialized languages. In fact, the way in which we usually provide a
balm to this potential irritant is by assuming that the actual world is really a problem
of adequate theory. We do politics as a practice through theory. Politics is what goes
on in the distillations of books and academic journals. Theorists occasionally imagine
themselves as philosopher kings or advisers to politicians, but it is usually illusion.
In summary, what perpetuates political theory now is not the sense of social or
political malaise or crisis (except as ritually recreated in rhetoric) so much as the
immensely powerful institutional, career, and professional interests of the academic
discipline in universities, coupled with another important factor. Political theory still
attracts interest and generates excitement, because it still glows with the dubious
patina of political engagement. Political theory can still fascinate by allowing politics
to appear in the form of masque. Those who are repelled by this masque or shadow-
boxing have also oddly given their imprimatur to the disengagement of political
theory from practical politics, which only adds to the lustre of the discipline for
votaries of a different intellectual persuasion. Followers of Michael Oakeshott, Leo
Strauss, and even Michel Foucault have often made this claim. If politics is affected,
it is usually by chance.
Political theory, however, does still admittedly occasionally allow itself to be carried
directly into the political arena—kicking and screaming for the sake of the audience—
by political ideology. Yet, the relation between political theory and political ideology
still remains deeply ambiguous and unsettled. There is a Mannheimian point here
(see Mannheim 1966). Political theory was originally in a similar position to that
of ideology, qua Mannheim. Political theory was thus not far off political preach-
ing at times. Saint Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, de Tocqueville, Bentham, Comte,
or Fichte saw little distinction between social science, political theory, and political
action. Ideas were seen to have influence and power in the world. A revolutionary
idea could potentially revolutionize society. However, by the end of the nineteenth
century, social science and political theory were progressively being absorbed into the
burgeoning universities. In the same manner that Mannheim saw ideology becoming
progressively transformedfroman active revolutionary practiceintoa new academic
discipline—the sociology of knowledge—so political theory was also transformed
within a sanitized academic disciplinary frame. As ideology was in a sense deideolo-
gized, so political theory was depoliticized. As some have seen the end of ideology,