The standard approach to teaching political philosophy involves the transmission of a given body of information, organized either historically (Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Nietzsche, etc.) or topically (the state, freedom, equality, human rights, authority, etc.). The aim is to transfer a core of knowledge to the students, whose responsibility is to comprehend the factual material much as they would material in any other course.

The historical and topical approaches to political philosophy are useful in that they allow the student to familiarize himself with the great themes of western (or world) civilization, but they have their limitations. The problem of these approaches, to use an expression of Edmund Husserl's is “sedimentation.” The tradition of philosophy is so covered with generations of silt that it is almost impossible to uncover the original experiences that led to the development of philosophy in the first place. To understand Nietzsche you have to understand Marx; to understand Marx you have to understand Hegel; to understand Hegel you have to understand Kant; to understand Kant you have to understand … ad infinitum until we reach … to understand Aristotle you have to understand Plato, and to understand Plato you have to understand Socrates.

A second approach to political philosophy is more concerned with encouraging students to engage in philosophical reflection than it is in developing the mastery of scholarship encouraged by the first approach. This second approach returns us to the origins of political philosophy.