I am never precisely sure where I am going or whether I will ever arrive. I write from the midst of things and I cannot see their order as yet. … I want to run but I can only drag along slowly.

Why is it that philosophy departments with some range of ages among the faculty can look like a historical zoo of some sort, with “species” from various periods locked into programs that have long since ceased to generate articles, books, dissertations? The ordinary language species here, the Rawls-Nozick person there, the deontic logic type here, the Kuhnean there, the intentional inexistence specialist laboring away in this corner, the transcendental arguments skepticism-refuter over there? … [F]or the most part traditional philosophy aspires not to have a history like that of literature or art (where times and places seem profoundly relevant) but a history like chemistry (where they do not; no serious working chemist worries about the history of chemistry). But the … labels stick nonetheless and have become part of the daily discourse of philosophy.

Political theory is an unapologetically mongrel sub-discipline, with no dominant methodology or approach. When asked to describe themselves, theorists will sometimes employ the shorthand of a key formative influence – as in “I'm a Deleuzean,” or Rawlsian, or Habermasian, or Arendtian – although it is probably more common to be labeled in this way by others than to claim the description oneself. […]