3 Foundations Shaken but Not Stirred
Part One outlined the basic foundational components of the discipline of political
theory during the twentieth century. There have been considerable overlaps and
cross-fertilizations between these ways of conceiving theory. All, with the exception
of institutional political theory, have remained important foundational elements,
even if coming under assault and being subject to quite radical internal modifica-
tion. One looks in vain for any overarching coherence. Many of these foundational
components remain mutually hostile, often claiming for themselves the ‘true title’
of political theory—a process that continues throughout the century. However, one
theme is common to them all and that is that there is a perception of a more or less
distinct core or settled foundation to the discipline in practice. There is, in other
words, a fundamental importance to the discipline of theory and a foundational
core to the approach can be formally identified, whether it is in the roots of human
nature, reason or the search for the good life, the teleological development of the
state, the ground of historical understanding, empirically-tested assumptions, or the
ideological platforms of political action.
In Part Two the discussion focuses on a sequence of changes in the perception of
political theory dating largely from the 1940s and culminating in the late 1970s.^1
Given that a lot of the discussion so far has been involved with the first four decades
of the twentieth century, it could look as though there is some kind of underlying
narrative sequence at work in the discussion. There is a minor chronological element
here, although it is not very significant. As mentioned, all of the previous components
in Part One, continued to underpin conceptions of theory throughout the twenti-
eth century. In some areas, such as the empirical, historical, and ideological, the
discussion scans across the whole century.
The present chapter is entitled ‘Foundations Shaken but Not Stirred’ because each
of the ways of conceiving the theory to be discussed, retained a sense of a core founda-
tion, even if, in some cases, it was a remarkably thin foundation. The foundations were
so thin at times that there was serious speculation, in some quarters, that the whole
enterprise of political theory appeared to have expired. This present chapter will thus
cover the advent of logical positivism, the development of conceptual analysis, lin-
guistic philosophy, and the impact of Wittgenstein’s thought, particularly on the idea
of ‘essential contestability’. The second chapter of Part Two concentrates on the 1970s
developments focused originally on John Rawls’Theory of Justice.
However, there are three important qualifications to be made here. The first is that
there was still never any doubt in any of these developments, about the foundational