We Have a Firm Foundation 67for behaviouralists, ‘endlessly reinterpreting the great books of dead men and tire-
lessly disputing the meaning of the good life had nothing to do with science’ (see
Farr in Farr, Dryzek and Leonard (eds.) 1995: 204; also Heinz Eulau 1963: 8–10).
Ideologies and political theories, in the older sense, could serve cohesive functions (as
social objects to be studied) in developing societies, however, in large industrialized
democratic societies they were largely redundant or decorative. Consensus on basic
social and political aims had been agreed. All the rest was froth.^54
Moving to the second thesis ofpositive integration. In this context, the integration
of political theory and political ideology should not be a matter of concern. There are,
again, however, different perspectives. Many adhere, unwittingly, to the integration of
the terms, that is, where ideology becomes an unwitting synonym for political theory.
Thus, one often encounters quite unselfconscious references to ‘liberal ideology’, and
the like, in discussions, which otherwise appear to be exclusively focused on the
category political philosophy.
Even more ironically, this unwitting use appears within the ‘second wave’ of history
of political theory writings (outlined earlier). This is, in fact, doubly ironic given the
overtly close attention to language, and the avoidance of anachronism, characteristic
of the second wave theories (see Leslie 1970). If we bear in mind that the term ‘ideo-
logy’ is a neologism from the nineteenth century, carrying a baggage of uses, it is,
to say the least, strange to find Quentin Skinner, in a number of writings, referring
to, for example, ‘History and Ideology in the English Revolution’ or ‘The Ideolo-
gical Context of Hobbes’ Political Thought’ (see Skinner 1965, 1966). James Tully,
explicating Skinner’s method, also reflects this usage. Thus, for Tully, the new method
demands we place all texts in an ‘ideological context’. Tully continues, that an ideology
for Skinner, ‘is a language of politics defined by its conventions and employed by a
number of writers. Thus, scholasticism, humanism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism are
ideologies and both scholasticism and humanism comprise the general ideological
context of the Italian city-states during the Renaissance’ (Tully 1988: 9). Luther and
Calvin thus become political ideologists!^55 Placing an idea or text in context—the
sacred mantra of second wave theory—makes ‘political theory,...a part of politics,
and the questions it treats are the effects of political action’. Tully continues, that ‘since
a political ideology represents a political action...to change some of the conventions
of the ideology is to change the way in which some of that political action is represen-
ted’ (Tully 1988: 10–11). Consequently, Tully describes Skinner’s whole substantive
two-volume opus,The Foundations of Modern Political Thought(1976), as ‘a map of
the great political ideologies of early modern Europe’ (Tully 1988: 12). Thus, political
theory and ideology becomeone. One searches in vain, in such contextualist writ-
ings, for a glimmering of recognition that the concept of ideology itself, is a deeply
troubled, comparatively quite new, idea containing deep unresolved tensions.
Another semi-conscious response on this same issue is provided by the communit-
arian movement of the 1980s and 1990s (who will be examined in more detail in Part
Three). One of the hallmarks of their arguments is the association of theory with
situated communal practices. Thus, ideas cannot be defined independently of the
human relationships, which constitute them. Communitarianism argues, therefore,