The Future of Political Theory

There was another Georgetown talk last night on the future of political theory (the last one was by Arlene Saxonhouse); this one was given by a UVA professor, who is a good friend to the political theory department at Georgetown. He gave a rather gutsy talk, given the audience, in which he expressed his opinion that the great texts were exhaustible. Despite this heresy, he made a lot of wonderful points. He challenged the tendency to make political theory arguments in terms of neat categorical dichotomies (such as liberal v. communitarian, foundationalist v. anti-foundationalist, etc.), which he maintained is egged on by the peer-review process. He critiqued, similarly, the use of ideological labels such as liberal or feminist, which he claimed are practically meaningless.

As part of pointing the way forward for a revitalized political theory, he urged a phenomenological openness to and willingness to learn from political reality (this sounds like Voegelin, oddly). In addition, he advocated a turn to realism through non-ideal theory. (My real point of difference with him is that I think that the great texts are one avenue through which we can consider political reality.)

(picture--prettier without the library, no?)