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Beyond Relativism in Political Theory1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Arnold Brecht
Arnold Brecht*
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research
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Extract

Modern science and modern scientific methods, with all their splendor of achievement, have led to an ethical vacuum, a religious vacuum, and a philosophical vacuum—so it has been said. For they have offered little or nothing to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. All social sciences are involved in this calamity, but none has been so deeply affected as political science, which had to face the new creeds of Communism, Fascism, and Nazism as political phenomena of tremendous power. They settled down in the area abandoned by science, taking full advantage of the fact that, scientifically speaking, there was a vacuum.

No political theorist can honestly avoid the issue, and certainly every scholar worthy of the name gives it serious thought. While each may publish his own ideas freely, there is one thing which we cannot do individually, but which we may do collectively—take stock of the various opinions that prevail among us, and clarify their meaning by question and answer. This the members of a round-table tried to do at the last meeting of the American Political Science Association, in two sessions held jointly with the Research Panel on Political Theory, represented by its chairman, Francis G. Wilson of the University of Illinois.

Type
Political Theory
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , June 1947 , pp. 470 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1947

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Footnotes

1

Analytical report on the round-table “Beyond Relativism in Political Theory” at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Cleveland, Ohio, December 27–28, 1946. Professors Francis W. Coker, J. Roland Pennock, and Francis G. Wilson read the draft and made valuable suggestions.

References

2 Hans Kelsen, University of California, who originally had planned to attend, was unable to appear. In a letter to the chairman, he stressed that, despite the unpopularity of relativism in the United States, he still is a relativist.

3 This section contains an extract of the chairman's introductory remarks, which had been circulated among the panel members and were read to the group.

4 The following references to the literature on the problem may be helpful:

Recent volumes of the Review contain: Whyte, William F., “A Challenge to Political Scientists” (Vol. 37, Aug., 1943, pp. 792–797)Google Scholar; Hallowell, John H., “Politics and Ethics” (Vol. 38, Aug., 1944, pp. 639–655)Google Scholar; Francis G. Wilson, Benjamin F. Wright, Ernest S. Griffith, and Eric Voegelin, “Research in Political Theory—A Symposium” (ibid., pp. 726–754); Pennock, J. Roland, “Reason, Value Theory, and the Theory of Democracy” (Vol. 38, Oct., 1944, pp. 855–875)Google Scholar; and Almond, Gabriel A., Dexter, Lewis A., Whyte, W. F., and Hallowell, J. H., “Politics and Ethics—A Symposium” (Vol. 40, Apr., 1946, pp. 283–312)Google Scholar.

The international literature on relativism and beyond in political science and jurisprudence is traced in the following articles by Brecht, Arnold: “Relative and Absolute Justice,” Social Research, Vol. 6 (Feb., 1939), pp. 58–87Google Scholar; “The Rise of Relativism in Political and Legal Philosophy,” ibid., Vol. 6 (Sept., 1939), pp. 392–414; “The Search for Absolutes in Political and Legal Philosophy,” ibid., Vol. 7 (May and Sept., 1940), pp. 201–228 and p. 385 (erratum); “The Myth of Is and Ought,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 54 (Mar., 1941), pp. 811–831CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “The Impossible in Political and Legal Philosophy,” California Law Review, Vol. 29 (Mar., 1941), pp. 312–331CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also, “Democracy—Challenge to Theory,” Social Research, Vol. 13 (June, 1946), pp. 195–224Google Scholar.

Max Weber's basic essays, “Die ‘Objektivität’ in sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis” (first published in 1904) and “Der Sinn der Wertfreiheit der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften” (first published in 1917), will be found in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen, 1922), pp. 146, 451Google Scholar.

5 The term “intersubjective proof” is used, as explained in the previous section, to distinguish communicable, or interpersonal, proof from man to man, from onesided “intuition,” which by some writers is called proof too, but which is not “intersubjective” proof unless supported conclusively by data available also to others.

6 Professor Hans J. Morgenthau (University of Chicago) suggested that in the course of most controversies on values it is possible to state agreement on some points.

7 “In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.” Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, I, 21Google Scholar.

8 Mr. Coker, after seeing the draft of this report, refrained from formulating any comment of his own in writing, because, as he expressed it with typical modesty, “I cannot think of anything to say that doesn't seem too obvious. I think the quotations from Wright are pretty close to my own reactions to the whole situation.”

9 Points three and four of the agenda.

10 This was point five of the agenda.

11 See next section.

12 See next section.

13 This was point six of the agenda.

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