We Have a Firm Foundation 39the accepted currency. Thus, the fundamental point is that the distinction between
political theory and history, which became central to later self-conceptions of political
theory in the century, did not really exist in the political vocabulary of the earlier part
of the twentieth century.
The more stark separation between the history of political theory and political
science was not made, at the earliest, until the late 1920s, and even then not very
decisively until the 1950s. It is also important to be clear here that this separation
between political science and the history of political theory wasalsoa separation
from normative political theory. Political science, by the 1950s, categorized normat-
ive political philosophy as blandly synonymous with the historical dimension. The
subsequent internal distinctions between the history of political theory, normative
and analytical political philosophy was a later phenomenon again. This latter phe-
nomenon only began, in a somewhat half-hearted form, with the hegemony of the
early analytic conceptualist movement in Anglophone philosophy, which had a char-
acteristically ahistorical ontology.^19 The inaptly named ‘return to grand normative
theory’ was not, in fact, a ‘return’ at all, but rather somethingde novo. There were
definitely traces of a past manner of theoretical activity, but this form of political
theory was indelibly marked by its time and intellectual circumstances.
A third internal reason for the relation of history to theory, relates to one import-
ant philosophical current of the early twentieth century, manifest in the underlying
influence of both Idealism and hermeneutics. In the early twentieth century, the work
of writers such as Dilthey, Collingwood, and Croce was deeply significant. In these
philosophers, history was viewed as thehistory of thought. Although there were vari-
ations, within the Idealist and hermeneutic framework, as to exactly how history was
regarded, one very general point was common to them all, namely, that the history
of theory was profoundly important. For some thinkers, such as Hegel, the history
of philosophy was viewed as speculative teleological development of ideas focused
on ideas such as freedom. History embodied a rational teleology. For others, such as
Collingwood, the speculative dimension was rejected. History was, however, still the
history of thought, but it was regarded as an independent mode of understanding with
its own unique requirements and perspective. Thus, the history of political theory—
as either the teleology of reason or an independent mode of understanding—was seen
as crucial. The Idealists and hermeneuticists therefore gave an implicit philosophical
imprimatur to the role of history within the human and social sciences.
In terms ofexternalcontextual reasons for the development of the history of polit-
ical theory, it is worth noting briefly why academic history itself developed. It grew,
as a self-conscious discipline, during the nineteenth century.^20 What united the dis-
cipline of history, from the 1860s, and in fact well into the 1930s, was the view that
it was focused on national civic education and the grooming of individual moral
character (see Soffer 1994: 33). A similar process took place in North American and
European universities.^21 There is therefore a more than fortuitous relation between,
on the one hand, the rise of universities and the development of historical, literary,
legal, and political curricula, and, on the other hand, the rise and consolidation
of nation states during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.^22 History