The Nature of Political Theory

88 The Nature of Political Theory

much a philosophical doctrine, as a ladder, which once one has ascended and realized
what has been argued, can be cast aside as no longer useful or meaningful. In other
words, it is the end of philosophy.
There were though certain implications from this whole logical positivist perspect-
ive for political theory. First, it gave far more credence to the role of empirical political
theory and behavioural claims. Verification, in the 1950s, became a significant term
for political science and empirical political theory. The second important implication
was that logical positivism established an altogether more constrained second order
role for political theory. Third, it raised very serious doubts about normative, histor-
ical, and ideological conceptions of theory. In one reading it could be said to have
completelybankrupted them.

Ordinary Language

There is one further development which in many ways blends with aspects of logical
positivism—namely, ordinary language philosophy. We should not imagine that
ordinary language philosophy simply supplanted logical positivism. Conversely, there
was an integration of sorts, particularly in political theory writers like T. D. Weldon.
This idiosyncratic combination of ideas formed much of the standard fare of political
theory textbooks up to the 1970s.
Language became a general foundational preoccupation of philosophers in the
twentieth century. Heidegger, Ryle, Austin, Foucault, Derrida, Wittgenstein, and
Rorty all focused on it. Many of these approaches to language will be touched upon
in this book. In the early phase, in the 1940s and 1950s, two dominant Anglophone
approaches to language can be identified in terms of political theory: first, there
was the demand to correct and tidy careless and misleading ordinary language. The
second approach adopts a more descriptive attitude to ordinary language, accept-
ing the different and frequently messy nature of conceptual usage. The first figures
more in the domain of logical positivism, although it still underpins some ordinary
language theory. Essentially it sought to correct language through the verification
principle. The second dimension is most closely associated with the work of the later
Wittgenstein and Austin. Wittgenstein’s later influence stems from the publication of
hisPhilosophical Investigations. The discussion of the latter book will be postponed
for a moment in order to render its fuller impact.
The second reading saw a range of philosophical problems endemic to logical
positivism, not least the difficulties of making out an acceptable argument for the
verification principle.^6 Further, the hard-nosed logical positivist distinction between
analytic and empirical propositions was also seen as unhelpful with regard to ordin-
ary speech. Conversely, the task of philosophy was perceived to be the close attention
to theordinaryuses of words and concepts. ‘Ordinary language’ became a phrase
to conjure with. The analyst was seen to be engaged in the neutral description and
elucidation of concepts. Philosophical problems were seen to be a combination of syn-
tactics and semantics. Whereas logical positivism saw meaning as dependent upon the