Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- PROLOGUE: The governing science: things political and the intellectual historian
- I The system of the North: Dugald Stewart and his pupils
- II Higher maxims: happiness versus wealth in Malthus and Ricardo
- III The cause of good government: Philosophic Whigs versus Philosophic Radicals
- IV The tendencies of things: John Stuart Mill and the philosophic method
- V Sense and circumstances: Bagehot and the nature of political understanding
- VI All that glitters: political science and the lessons of history
- VII The clue to the maze: the appeal of the Comparative Method
- VIII Particular polities: political economy and the historical method
- IX The ordinary experience of civilised life: Sidgwick and the method of reflective analysis
- X A separate science: polity and society in Marshall's economics
- XI A place in the syllabus: political science at Cambridge
- EPILOGUE: A nebulous province: the science of politics in the early twentieth century
- Index
IX - The ordinary experience of civilised life: Sidgwick and the method of reflective analysis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- PROLOGUE: The governing science: things political and the intellectual historian
- I The system of the North: Dugald Stewart and his pupils
- II Higher maxims: happiness versus wealth in Malthus and Ricardo
- III The cause of good government: Philosophic Whigs versus Philosophic Radicals
- IV The tendencies of things: John Stuart Mill and the philosophic method
- V Sense and circumstances: Bagehot and the nature of political understanding
- VI All that glitters: political science and the lessons of history
- VII The clue to the maze: the appeal of the Comparative Method
- VIII Particular polities: political economy and the historical method
- IX The ordinary experience of civilised life: Sidgwick and the method of reflective analysis
- X A separate science: polity and society in Marshall's economics
- XI A place in the syllabus: political science at Cambridge
- EPILOGUE: A nebulous province: the science of politics in the early twentieth century
- Index
Summary
Politics is not based primarily upon History but on Psychology: the fundamental assumptions in our political reasonings consist of certain propositions as to human motives and tendencies, which are derived primarily from the ordinary experience of civilized life, though they find adequate confirmation in the facts of the current and recent history of our own and other civilized countries.
henry sidgwick, The Elements of Politics (1891)The only general criticism that occurs to me is that the discussion in these chapters tends to be rather a discussion of English methods of government, with occasional references to American methods. If it be possible to generalize the treatment rather more, not making it seem to flow from or follow the arrangements of England, this would better accord with the scientific character of the book as a general treatise on politics. But perhaps it is impossible … perhaps there is no writing profitably on τὰ πολιτικὰ except on the basis of experiments of concrete πολιτεία.
james bryce (1889)in writing in 1887 to a friend living abroad, Sidgwick followed his characteristic survey of the state of national politics – ‘the outlook is not promising; the sky full of clouds, though none very black just at present’ – with this report on his own activities:
Personally, I am trying to absorb myself in my Opus Magnum on Politics. […]
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- That Noble Science of PoliticsA Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History, pp. 277 - 308Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983
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