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Political Science, Social Organization, and Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Franco P. Rota
Franco P. Rota*
Affiliation:
Hesstrasse 50, 8000 München 40, Federal Republic of Germany
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Extract

In Western Europe and especially West Germany, introducing a new approach in political science, biopolitics, is not an easy task. German political science has a very strong and effective philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber), which separates it from the life sciences. Traditionally, political science is a theoretical branch of study, and politics is regarded principally as a rational process. Based on well-known historical experiences, German social scientists raise ideological objections to biology, and, with some exceptions (Flohr, 1979, 1983; Buhl, 1981, 1982), they neglect the findings of the life sciences. Political science mainly operates in a vacuum, adhering to the discipline's traditional monistic conceptions of what politics ought to be. Thus, in Germany the first problem is how to change monistic approaches and create a new kind of scientific conception of the world, one that is open and dynamic (Radnitzky, 1971) and able to integrate findings from the life sciences. Only then can biopolitical perspectives become anchored in the discipline. Thus, introducing biopolitics in Germany depends on a mental change, from traditional monistic conceptions to an open conception.

Type
Research in Progress
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , August 1984 , pp. 87 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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