We Have a Firm Foundation 75- The nature of the non-political (e.g. the realm of the family or the economy) tends to
mutate between various classical theories. - As Strauss (with Joseph Cropsey) remarked in an introduction to a standard textbook ‘The
kind of political philosophy, which was originated by Socrates is called classical political
philosophy until the emergence of modern political philosophy in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. Modern political philosophy came into being through the conscious break
with principles established by Socrates’, (Cropsey and Strauss (ed.) 1987: 2). For Strauss,
classical political philosophy included the teaching of the Stoics and medieval scholastics. - This classification is adapted from the much more detailed work of Oakeshott (1991),
Greenleaf (1964), and Boucher (1998). - He also distinguishes between three sub-forms of political theory. These are contractarian
thinking, concerned with ‘what arrangements are eligible, what arrangements would prop-
erly be chosen if people were contracting into society’; value centred analysis, which asks
‘what arrangements are valuable, what arrangements best answer the currently recognised
political values’; and the institutional-centred approach, which ‘explores the matter of what
political values can be reliably institutionalised by government, what values are feasibly
values’, see Pettit (1993b). - However, it reached its academic zenith in nineteenth century juristically inclined writers,
particularly in Germany, such as Lorenz von Stein, Carl von Gerber, Paul Laband, Otto
von Gierke, Georg Jellinek, and Johann Caspar Bluntschli. - The term institution can imply something, which is wholly legalistic, structural, and form-
alized, as against something, which is informal and more dynamic, in terms of political
behaviour. This point is the backdrop to a standard criticism of state or institutionally
orientated theory in the twentieth century. For many, it was also one reason to give up the
state-based focus. - The first politics chair in Britain was created in the 1920s in Cambridge University. The
first sociology chair in Britain was created in the University of London in 1907. However,
no more chairs in sociology were created until 1945. - This theme of citizenship education has, for example, been resurrected once again and
legislated on by the New Labour administration in Britain in 2002. - Gunnell remarks on this theme that Charles Merriam, amongst others, inspired by the
German example ‘remained constant in his belief that social control exercised through
general civic education and intercourse between academic and political elites was the solu-
tion to the problem of how to bring knowledge to bear upon politics’, Gunnell in Monroe
(ed.) 1997: 52. - For Gunnell, the state ‘defined the domain of political science as an autonomous field,
and, as a supervenient vision of political reality, it served to underwrite the legitimacy and
authority of political science vis-á-vis politics. It was, for many, a secular substitute for the
mystery and social bond of religion. It offered a way for political science to talk about its
subject matter’ (Gunnell 1993: 58) - In addition, severe doubts about the role of the normative theory of the state were rife,
especially after the First World War. L. T. Hobhouse’s violent polemic in 1918 onThe
Metaphysical Theory of the State, was not untypical of this negative assessment. Hobhouse’s
preface links the German Gothas bombing London with Hegel’sPhilosophy of Right, which
he was annotating in his back garden during the raid, see Hobhouse (1918: 5–6). - In the British political studies, the state focus was much more equivocal. Constitu-
tions and institutions were still seen to embody a range of important theoretical ideas.
This would particularly be the case in British writers such as W. H. Greenleaf or