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OFFICE, POLITICAL THEORY, AND THE POLITICAL THEORIST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2019

DAVID KEARNS  and
RYAN WALTER
DAVID KEARNS*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
RYAN WALTER*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
*
Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006david.kearns@sydney.edu.au
School of Political Science and International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, 4072r.walter1@uq.edu.au
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Abstract

‘Theory’ is taken for granted as an object of historical study, especially in relation to the history of political thought, and most historiography proceeds as if little were lost by construing authors such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Smith as ‘theorists’. This article argues that the costs are likely to be high, and that in consequence ‘theory’ ought not to be considered a generic category capable of neutrally describing a given piece of thinking from the past. On the one hand, ascribing theoretical argument can obscure the nature of rival idioms for making claims regarding political life, such as biblical criticism, the common law, and ‘office talk’. On the other hand, the evidence suggests that the ‘political theorist’, as an avowed identity, only emerged in Britain late in the eighteenth century, tentatively and under the force of peculiar pressures. It follows that it will rarely be appropriate to use the term before c. 1800, and considerable caution will still be necessary when using the label in the post-1800 period. Abiding by this discipline is likely to lead to new discoveries in what has been a flat terrain of ‘political theory’.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , March 2020 , pp. 317 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

We are grateful to the anonymous referees for valuable comments and suggestions, and to Richard Devetak and Ian Hunter for encouragement and numerous discussions regarding office.

References

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47 Ibid., pp. 287–8. In MS 3479, Hale claimed that ‘reason modifyed’ to its ‘spetiall object’ underwrote each office, ‘not indeterminate reason or reason at large’ (Matthew Hale, MS 3479, Lambeth Palace Library, p. 5).

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52 Ibid. Though, as we have seen, Hobbes had also approached the issue in terms of office, yet his attempt to define justice had left him vulnerable to the accusation of engaging in ‘Speculacons Theoryes and distinctions’.

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94 Ibid., pp. 230–2.

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