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The Nature and Status of the Study Of Politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
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What kind of subject is Politics? Is it a science, an art, a religion or a philosophy? Is the study of politics an independent subject—a subject in its own right—or is it simply a branch of some other and, presumably, superior subject?
These questions require to be answered because there is obvious uncertainty at the moment about the nature and status of the study of politics. The uncertainty is shown by the fact that Politics goes under different names and is associated with different subjects in different universities. Politics is sometimes called Political Philosophy and sometimes Political Science. Some universities confine the study of politics to History. Others make it a branch of Ethics. The latest tendency is to associate Politics and Economics and regard the economic as the most important of the relations of politics.
Among the objections to the independence of Politics, one deserves to be noted. Politics, it is said, is an aspect of a total social situation which it shares with Ethics and Economics. Thus it is a mistake to try to disentangle the political factor and view it in itself.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1950
References
page 292 note 1 Students of Politics may think it strange that power or the will to power has not been included among the main facts of politics. But power is not a pure political concept. Properly speaking it belongs to Economics. Like material goods, power is a scarce commodity. The demand for it at any particular time is greater than the supply.
page 293 note 1 It is impossible here to discuss the sense in which political objects can be said to be independent or intrinsically valuable. It is enough to note that there is nothing mystical about them. If they are mainly super-personal, they are not superhuman.
page 293 note 2 Bosanquet, : The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 240Google Scholar.
page 294 note 1 If socialistic and communistic forms of society seem to deny this individualistic account of the economic motive and of economic relationships, one must remember that political considerations dominate economic considerations under socialism and communism.
page 295 note 1 The over-politicized totalitarian states of our own day have afforded ample proof of this political tendency when it is given free rein.
page 298 note 1 It will be obvious to the reader that in introducing the private person we are now dealing with Politics in the broad sense or in combination with Ethics and Economics. This has been done in order to bring out the full strength of the antimony between the scientific and the “subjective” features of political conduct although the antimony is also present in a more modified form in Politics as such or Politics, strictly speaking, e.g. in the relation of government and people.