76 The Nature of Political Theory
A. H. Birch. However, this particular view was also resisted vigorously by both Marxist and
realist-inclined theorists, who saw empirical institutional factors and economic power as
the key determinants of politics.
- It would also be true that certain forms of thought such as environmentalism and feminism
have also refocused attention on the state, however, the upshot of these are slightly less clear.
- That is the study of the principles, theories, and methodology of scholarly historical
research and presentation.
- Thus, as one scholar has remarked, ‘To speak of the history of political thought as if it were
a distinct and easily identifiable discipline with sets of procedures and definite aim would
be to misunderstand the business of studying past political thinkers. Just as there is no
agreement among historians in other fields about the exact nature of their specializations,
there is very little consensus on the nature and purposes of studying the history of political
thought’, (Boucher 1985: 74).
- On one hand, history can be viewed as parasitic upon classical theory itself. The history
needsclassical theory to subsist. Thus, classical theory might be viewed, in one sense, as
a kind of first-order activity. The history is a second-order activity. However, this makes
the relation too one-sided. On the other hand, the history of political theory is that which
makes classical normative political theory possible. Wittingly or not, the historical dimen-
sion can be said to bring classical theories together as sequences, united by abstract themes
or traditions. In this sense, the very existence of classical normative political theory is
parasitic upon the history of theory. The history of political theory can thus be said to
make the conception of classical normative political theory possible.
- Laski adds, a few pages later, ‘Political philosophy is never separable from the general
body of ideas in a generation...We need, in a word, so to write the history of political
ideas that they fall naturally into their place as the expression of one aspect of a process of
thought that is not neatly divisible into two separate categories. We must seek to project
our narrative on to a plane where the relation of a whole to its parts is capable of being
seized in its full significance’, Laski in King (ed.) (1978: 6).
- However even this phrasing is ambiguous, given the predisposition of the analytic move-
ment (specifically in its logical positivism format) to despise ‘normative’ theory. It would
be more correct to say that the analytic style (and positivism in general) led to a virtual
dismissal of both the history of political thought and normative theory.
- It first became an honours degree in Britain in Oxford in 1872 and Cambridge in 1873.
The first chair of history—although set up in 1724, was first filled by a committed historian
in 1866. The Chichele Chair of Modern History in Oxford was created in 1862.
- ‘The satisfaction of national pride and culture, and the rendezvous with destiny that it
often implied, whether in England, Germany, or America, reflected the distinctive mean-
ing of government education, and history in each country’, Soffer 1994: 6. For German
historiography, university history and the nation state, see Georg Iggers, ‘Nationalism
and Historiography 1789–1996: The German example in historical perspective’ in Berger,
Donovan, and Passmore (eds.) 1999: 15–29. This edited book includes other examples of
such practices across Europe.
- See S. Berger, M. Donovan, and K. Passmore (eds.) 1999. The final concluding chapter of
this book, entitled ‘Historians and the nation-state: some conclusions’ is a good survey of
this issue.
- As Soffer comments on the development of the discipline in Britain: ‘The acceptance
or rejection of new disciplines was part of a larger debate about the relative merits of
continuity and change within an expanding society...Among these contending fields,
