The desire to produce theory that affects practice makes political philosophy self-reflective. What kinds of insights do political philosophers aim to communicate, and to whom? What kinds of work should we do? What can we sensibly hope to achieve? Or, in short, what sort of vocation is political philosophy? Answers vary enormously. They include one derived from Max Weber (the political philosopher as “guidance counselor”); a Platonic one (“guide to knowledge”); a Marxist one (“obstetrician of the revolution”); a Habermasian view (“conservator of the discourse”); the view of the later Rawls (“theory-providing citizen-discussant”); the realist view developed by Raymond Guess (“historically-minded Ideologiekritiker”); as well as another type of realist view according to which the political philosopher (“seeker for moral truth”) plainly searches for the moral truth in their domain. This chapter discusses the first four of these conceptions.