The Function of Political Science

• Published date: 01 December 1956
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295600900401
• Date: 01 December 1956
• Author: George E.G. Catlin
• Subject Matter: Articles

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THE FUNCTION OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
GEORGE E. G. CATLIN
McGill University
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RECENTLY the head of an eminent Oxford College, in an
~ ~ after-dinner speech, remarked that he had delivered a course of
lectures in the History School in Oxford. He subsequently, being
a lawyer, delivered the identical course, on the State, Sovereignty and the
rest, in the Law School. There was then a shortage of teachers in the
School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and he was invited to deliver
a course. &dquo;But on what?&dquo; he asked. &dquo;Just deliver your old course over
again,&dquo; was the answer, &dquo;it will do.&dquo; This easy and, in my opinion, slightly
unprofessional attitude is encouraged by the view of the late Oxford
historian and philosopher, Professor Collingwood, that there is something
to be called &dquo;classical political theory,&dquo; beginning oddly with Machiavelli
and ending with Rousseau, and that what the students needed was to be
taught &dquo;gobbets&dquo; of that. If there is at the present time a lethargy of
responsible political thought, not least in Britain, the cause may perhaps be
found in this vicious doctrine, which indicates that all the major issues
have already been stated and the lucid answers given in the past; and that
all that is required now is endless academic gnawing of the small bones of
Kant. Coupled with this retrospectiveness in theory is a tendency, en-
couraged by Professor Denis Brogan, to confound political science with
history. In Canada it seems also, miscalled political economy, to have
fallen into the claws of the economists, and to be put into the pot to make
a Marxian stew.
Further, we all know of the endless and wearisome discussion among
the historians about whether history is a branch of literature, with some
of the imagination knocked out, and whether the job of Clio is to be a Muse
that amuses. We can insist, as does Dr. David Smith of Stanford, that
political theory should be &dquo;literary in form&dquo; and even provide a unified
philosophical picture. I would add that there sometimes seems, in the joint
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816
attack on political science, to be a certain unwarranted fusion or confusion
between history and philosophy. As I hope to explain elsewhere, I am
personally extremely skeptical about any one public philosophy emerging
or being able to emerge. Again, rather changing our emphasis, we can say
with Mr. Harry Truman that (as he learned long ago in Kansas City)
&dquo;politics is only an art,&dquo; if not a craft; and hence political theory is merely
the literature of it. In reply I would not only admit, but stress, that the
approaches to, and presentation of, the problems of politics and sociology
do and should change. The notion that there is one &dquo;classical&dquo; political
theory or philosophy of history, even that of Kant or Windelband, not to
speak of Locke and Rousseau, which we must hash over again and again,
is false and dangerous. I tried to make this clear in my Principles. Indeed
I cannot see that Windelband or Rickert has contributed much that is
useful to social theory, but rather tief obscurity; and Max Weber seems to
have contributed most when he departed from this theme and approached
the precise analysis, e.g., of power. But this welcome to new approaches
can assume a goal in a unified scheme or general theory of the subject, and
is not at all the same thing as suggesting that the best kind of political
theory, with most &dquo;insight,&dquo; will be just a collection of apothegms and
rags from the rag-bags of politicians’ memoirs. The idea is that good
political theory should be a kind of Book of Wisdom written by Roche-
foucauld, a variant of The Political and Miscellaneous Thoughts o Lord
Halif ax, &dquo;the Trimmer.&dquo; I have perhaps spent as much time in direct
touch with political goings-on as have most. Art and aphorisms have
indeed their place. I will suggest two. &dquo;The other name for an aphorism
is a half-truth.&dquo; And &dquo;Wit is the joy of the intellectual, the ruin of the
politician and the harlot of science.&dquo; Nevertheless, do not let us, I beg,
ever imagine - let us be too good Platonists to imagine -
that the archi-
tectonic theme of political theory should ever be reduced to the level of an
art or of apothegms and anecdote or of a good Tolstoian novel....
As against all this I want to put in a claim that we treat political science
seriously. It is admirable to bear in mind what we can learn from anthro-
pology, as well as from history. I hold that there is no intellectually
defensible distinction to be made from sociology. I applaud and celebrate
the tradition of Graham Wallas and the thesis of Bryce that the founda-
tion of political science is to be found in psychology, although the eminent
professor of political science, Dr. Herbert Marcuse, at Brandeis University,
may here go perhaps a shade too far, away from the academic waste land,
into the Freudian dark forest, and forecast a day when, as Shakespeare says
in The Tempest, all will be idle and (as Shakespeare adds in Anglo-Saxon
monosyllables) their morals but so-so. But our first duty is to attend to the
maturing of our own professional subject, which I like to call Pure Politics.

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817
In part indeed I am making a plea for the revival of the fruitful approaches
of the great Utilitarian School (not to speak of earlier authentic scientific
explorations that stretch back to Aristotle himself, in his theory of revolu-
tions) which was smothered, on the one hand, by the historians and, on
the other, by the neo-Hegelians, to whom, in reaction, the Vienna Circle
and Empirical Analysis have succeeded. But, in another sense, there has
here on this continent within the last thirty years been a new beginning, with
which the name of Harold Lasswell, President of the American Political
Science Association in 1956, is not disconnected. Although he and I may
have our differences in small matters, of the validity of that approach, once
so criticized and now increasingly accepted, I have no doubt.
When I use the words &dquo;Pure Politics&dquo; I do not wish to be misunder-
stood. Some appropriate this phrase for what is otherwise called pseph-
ology, very much a subdivision. Others may assume that I want to set up
some kind of ivory mathematical tower, apart from the world of practice.
Quite the contrary is the case. The Historical...