5 See Hannah Arendt,The Human Condition(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958); Leo Strauss,
Natural Right and History(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Michael Sandel,Liberalism
and the Limits of Justice(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Brian Barry,Why Social
Justice Matters(Cambridge: Polity, 2005).
6 Karl Marx,“Capital,”inThe Marx and Engels Reader, Robert Tucker, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton,
1972), 401.
7 Gunnell refers to“family resemblances”among canonical thinkers inPolitical Theory, 136.
8 See Ernest Barker,Reflections on Government(London: Oxford University Press, 1942), 227, who
attributes this sentiment to Kant.
9 All political thought (and action), Strauss declared, has“in itself a directedness toward knowledge of the
good: of the good life, or the good society,”and to find either requires being reacquainted with“natural
right”or a higher morality; See Strauss,What is the Purpose of Political Philosophy(Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1959), 10.
10 See Michael Oakeshott,“Introduction,”Leviathan(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), x.
11 Gunnell,Political Theory, 142.
12 George Sabine,“What is a Political Theory?,”The Journal of Politics(February 1939): 1–16, 11.
13 See C.D.C. Reeve,“Introduction,”Plato’s Republic(Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2004), xv, who finds
that the best works of political theory are those that not only sharply scrutinize the present political
landscape, but also speculate on future possibilities.
14 See J.S. Mill,Considerations on Representative Government(London: Longman, Green and Company,
1926), 1. Italics added.
15 Carl Sagan,Cosmos(New York: Random House, 1980), 193.
16 Karl Marx,“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,”inMarx-Engels Reader, Robert Tucker,
ed., 595.
17 Michael Oakeshott,“Scientific Politics,”inMichael Oakeshott: Religion, Politics, and The Moral Life,
Thomas Fuller, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993): 97–110. Italics added.
18 Thomas Thorson,Logic of Democracy,(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962), 81.
19 David Spitz,“Introduction,”inPoliticalTheoryand Social Change, David Spitz, ed. (New York: Atherton
Press, 1967): ix–xii, xi.
20 Stears,“The Vocation of Political Theory: Principles, Empirical Inquiry, and the Politics of Opportunity,”326.
21 Some analytic thinkers, like Gunnell and Vincent, seek to expose the many layers of preconceived and tacit
assumptions about what many call the vocation of political theory that generations of academics take for
granted. See Gunnell,Political Theoryand Andrew Vincent,The Nature of Political Theory(Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004).
22 Isaiah Berlin,Concepts and Categories, Henry Hardy, ed.(New Jersey: PrincetonUniversity Press,1978), 5.
23 Bertrand Russell,The Problems of Philosophy(London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 167.
24 John Gunnell,Political Philosophy and Time(Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), 10.
25 Vincent,The Nature of Political Theory, 322.
26 John Gunnell,“Desperately Seeking Wittgenstein,”European Journal of Political Theory3 (January
2004): 77–98, 78.
27 Michael Oakeshott,Experience and Its Modes(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 3.
28 Gunnell,“Desperately Seeking Wittgenstein,”96.
29 Pascal quoted by Carl Becker,Modern Democracy(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), 100. Italics
added.
30 For more on the structure of the Socratic method, see Hugh Benson,“Socratic Method,”inThe Cambridge
Companion To Socrates, Donald R. Morrison, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011): 179–
200; and George Klosko,“Rational Persuasion in Plato’s Political Theory,”History of Political Thought 7
(1986): 15–31. However, Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith,Plato’sSocrates(Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996): 147, insist“that there is no such thing as‘the Socratic (method).’”
31 Socrates never attempted to instill knowledge, says Ernest Barker, after all, he had always disclaimed its
possession.“He desired to awaken thought. He was the gadfly who stung men into a sense of truth:::he
practiced the art of midwifery, and brought thought to birth,”see Ernest Barker,The Political Thought of
Plato and Aristotle(New York: Dover Publications, 1959), 64.
32 My preference notwithstanding, one finds little consensus (suggested by the essays in this volume) on what
exactly is, or should be the purpose of Socratic inquiry and its application in the contemporary classroom,
which is not surprising. I view Socrates’method as an analytical tool for interrogating arguments as an end
or value in itself; however, others may view hiselenchusasa means or pathway to achieving higher ends,
e.g.,true justice, an engaged citizenry, a moral character, etc.
162 Ramona June Grey