A HISTORY OF
POLITICAL THEORY
Fourth edition
Revised by Thomas Landon Thorson
(Indiana Universty, South Bend)
Preface to the fourth edition
Presenting a revision of a book which has been not only a standard text for more than three decades, but also a widely recognized classic in its field is, needless to say, somewhat intimidating. I have understood my task as one of enhanching professor Sabine’s great enterprise, of continuing it, of developing it, rather than one of substantially altering its intent or content.
Perhaps the greatest sourse of potential difficulty involved in reopening the work of another writer is the matter of compatibility of intellectual perspective. Professor Sabine observed in his original preface of 1937 that his own views were subtantilly similar to those of David hume, particularly with respect to Hume’s logical critique of the foundations of natural law: My own The Logic of Democracy (new York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962) present a perspective on political philosophy very much in the tradition of Hume. Thus I hope it is fair to say that I understand and appreciate the force of Hume’s argument, its skepticism, its empiricism.
Like Hume, however, and of course like Sabine as well, I am persuaded of the fundamental importance to politics and political understanding of culture tradition and intellectual history. My Biopolitics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) makes a case for a theory of culture evolution as an extension of biological perspective just mentioned would I suspect make both Hume and Sabine a bit uncomfortable. While this is surely not the place for an extensive discussion of such matters, let me only suggest that the considerable research in a variety of field done in the past few decades on the origin and nature of the human animal has made possible an understanding of man and nature against which Hume’s logical stricture are not nearly so devastating.
What all of this comes to is that I find myself rather more sympathetic to the natural law tradition and to the evolutionary perspective of Hegel and Marx than Professor Sabine was, and this inclination has conditioned my work in this book. A new first chapter has been added
which attempts to put the history of political theory in a context both of the evolution of man and of pre-Creek, pre-philosophic thought. I have for the moment limited what might have been an extensive discussion of the penetration of the non-Western world by Western political theory to the addition of a section on China and Mao Tse-tung in the chapter on communism. A variety of judgments scattered throughout the discussion have been softened, generally by omitting words or sentences, most notably in the chapter on Hegel where several pages are omitted.
For the Third Edition (1961) Sabine rewrote and considerably shortened, his discussion of fascism and national socialism. Because interest in this subject matter has, over the past twelve years, been rekindled Ln a variety of quarters for a variety of reasons, the original discussion has been restored. Bibliographies have been updated throughout and in a number of places new footnotes or new references in already existing footnotes have been added.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the volume has been entirely redesigned and reset in a format and typeface which hopefully will provide much easier access to George Sabine's great learning and great wisdom.
T. L. T.
Preface to the first edition
This history of political theory is written in the light of the hypothesis that theories of politics are themselves a part of politics. In other words, they do not refer to an external reality but are produced as a normal part of the social milieu in which politics itself has its being. Reflection upon the ends of political action, upon the means of achieving them, upon the possibilities and necessities of political situations, and upon the obligations that political purposes impose is an intrinsic element of the whole political process. Such thought evolves along with the institutions, the agencies of government, the moral and physical stresses to which it refers and which, one likes at least to believe, it in some degree controls.
Thus conceived, the theory of politics no more reaches an end than politics itself, and its history has no concluding chapter. If there is a divine, far-off event toward which human history moves, the author of this book makes no pretense of knowing what it is. Taken as a whole a political theory can hardly be said to be true. It contains among its elements certain judgments of fact, or estimates of probability, which time proves perhaps to be objectively right or wrong. It involves also certain questions of logical compatibility respecting the elements which it tries to combine. Invariably, however, it includes valuations and predilections, personal or collective, which distort the perception of fact, the estimate of probability, and the weighing of compatibilities. The most that criticism can do is to keep these three factors as much as possible distinct: to prevent preferences from claiming the inevitableness of logic or the certainty of fact.
It cannot be supposed that any political philosophy of the present time, more than those of the past, can step out of the relationships in which it stands to the problems, the valuations, the habits, or even the prejudices of its own time. A writer of history, at least, ought to avoid the egoism that makes every generation fancy that it is the heir of all the ages. On the other hand, he can make no profession of impartiality beyond that fidelity to sources which is the obligation of every serious historian, or beyond that avowal of conscious preferences which
should be expected of every honest man. In any other sense the claim of detachment is a superficiality or a pretense.
A reader is entitled, if he is interested, to an avowal of an historian's own philosophical preferences. Those of the author are in general agreement with the results of Hume's criticism of natural law described in the first part of Chapter XXIX. So far as he can see, it is impossible by any logical operation to excogitate the truth of any allegation of fact, and neither logic nor fact implies a value. Consequently he believes that the attempt to fuse these three operations, whether in Hegelian idealism or in its Marxian variant, merely perpetuated an intellectual confusion inherent in the system of natural law. The substitution of the belief that there is a determinate order of evolution or historical progress for the belief .in rational self-evidence displaced an unverifiable idea with one still less verifiable. So far as there is any such thing as historical "necessity," it seems to belong to the calculation of probabilitres, and in application this calculation is usually impossible and always highly uncertain. As for values, they appear to the author to be always the reaction of human preference to some state of social and physical fact; in the concrete they are too complicated to be generally described even with so loose a word as utility. Nevertheless, the idea of economic causation was probably the most fertile suggestion added to social studies in the nineteenth century.
To write the whole history of Western political theory from the point of view of this sort of social relativism is probably a greater task than a careful scholar ought to have attempted. It implies a range of knowledge which the author is painfully aware that he does not possess. For, on the one hand, political theory has always been a part of philosophy and science, an application to politics of the relevant intellectual and critical apparatus which is at the moment available. And, on the other hand, it is a reflection upon morals, economics, government, religion, and law—whatever there may be in the historical and institutional situation that sets a problem to be solved. It is of the essence of the point of view here adopted that neither factor should be neglected. The intellectual apparatus is important, at least for political theory, only in so far as it is really applied to some state of the facts, and the institutional realties are important only so far as they evoke and control reflection. Ideally both should be conceived and presented by a historian with equal clearness; political theory in action ought to receive equal treatment with political theory in books. The demand thus made on the historian's scholarship is impossibly heavy.
In dealing with the large mass of literature that makes up the sources for a history of political theory, the author has tried to avoid so
tar as possible the mere mention of men and books that for lack of space could not be described in their setting. The fact that a man existed or that a book was written is, in itself, no part of the history of political theory as it is here conceived. In many cases it has been necessary frankly to select a specimen to stand for a considerable group, omitting other possible representatives. After a selection has been made the preserving of reasonable proportions between the subjects included presents the greatest difficulties. Especially as one approaches the present time the problem of knowing what to include and what to omit, and of deciding upon the relative importance of the items selected for inclusion, becomes nearly insoluble in view of the space at one's disposal. To be specific, the author is gravely in doubt whether the chapters following that on Hegel do not omit much that ought to have been included, if a proportion consonant with that observed in the earlier chapters were to be maintained. If the author were to offer an excuse, it would be that a friend, Professor Francis W. Coker, has recently done this task better than he in any case could have done it.
The author owes a heavy debt to the many scholars who have dealt, more adequately than he could do, with specific phases or limited parts of the subject.
G. H. S.
Ithaca, New York April 10,1937
preface to the third edition
In this edition as in the preceding the changes are chiefly in the last three chapters; the pagination remains the same down to page 740. Again, however, the bibliographies have been revised throughout and a few new publications have been added to the footnotes. Several minor changes have been made in the text of the chapter on Locke to take some account of the work of Mr. Peter Laslett. Perhaps it would have been better to rewrite the chapter in order to make full use of Mr. W. von Leyden's edition of Locke's Essays on the Law of Nature, but this would probably have called for other changes beyond the plan of this revision.
Following page 740 the final section of the chapter on Liberalism Modernized has been rewritten in the hope of clarifying its exposition of the assumptions of liberal politics. The chapter on Marx has been pretty completely rewritten, mainly with the purpose of improving the presentation but partly to make the transition to the chapter on Communism clearer. The exposition of the theory of surplus value has been omitted, partly because it seemed inadequate to the controversy over the theory but chiefly because it seemed that the technicalities of the argument have no important place in the political theory of Marxism.
The chapter on Communism has been completely rewritten and recast. For this there were several reasons. First, the amount of significant publication on the subject in the last ten years has been enormous and it seems possible to give a better account of the history of Leninism than the author could write in 1950. Second, the author was convinced that in the preceding edition he had made too much of the formal inconsistencies between Lenin and Marx. Marxism now seems to him less tightly knit than he then supposed, so that what Lenin got out of Marx was in fact there, even though it was widely different from what Marx had seemed to be to expositors in Western Europe. In short, there were two Marxian traditions, that which culminated in the socialist parties of the West and that which culminated in Communism. The two traditions were not consistent but they were both in Marx. Third, the author now feels that his account of Communism ran too much in
terms of generalities, that he represented Lenin's theory of the party, for example, as if it had merely unfolded the implications of its first statement in 1902. He still believes that the principles were there and that these have indeed remained unchanged. The fact remains that every application of the principles was a matter of controversy between men who understood the principles perfectly well. The author now thinks his own belief, that political theories develop as part of politics, should have prevented him from treating Lenin's theories as quite so rigidly deductive. He has accordingly rewritten the chapter following an order more nearly chronological, to suggest the way in which Lenin's principles were reduced under stress of circumstances to something like procedural rules.
Finally, the last chapter on National Socialism has been largely rewritten, mainly with the purpose of shortening it. In the last ten years the world has been glad—perhaps too glad—to forget Hitler. There seems little point in now reciting at length alleged "theories" that were often meretricious and always hysterical. This is not because the author supposes that politics has become immune to hysteria, but rather because he is confident that a new attack will find new and different credulities to exploit.
The author takes this opportunity to express his indebtedness to Mr. Christopher Breiseth, now of LincolnCollege, Oxford, for his very efficient help in preparing this revision for the press.
G. H. S.
Ithaca, New York
January, 1961
contents
PART I. THE THEORY OF THE CITY-STATE
1. The Context of Political Theory -3
Political Theory and the Evolution of Man — Political Theory and Political Institutions — Political Theory as an Attribute of the Western Cultural Tradition — The Development of Civilization Before the Greeks — The Invention of Political Philosophy
2. The City-State-19
Social Classes - Political Institutions — Political Ideals
3.Political Thought Before Plato - 35
Popular Political Discussion — Order in Nature and Society —
Nature and Convention — Socrates
4.Plato, the Republic - 48
The Need for Political Science — Virtue is Knowledge — The Incompetence of Opinion — The State as a Type — Reciprocal Needs and Division of Labor — Classes and Souls — Justice— Property and the Family — Education — The Omission of Law
5.Plato, the Statesman and the Laws - 76
The Readmission of Law — The Golden Cord of the Law — The Mixed State — Social and Political Institutions — Educational and Religious Institutions — The Republic and the Laws
6.Aristotle, Political Ideals
The New Science of Politics — The Kinds of Rule — The Rule of Law — Conflict of the Ideal and the Actual — Conflicting Claims to Power
7.Aristotle: Political Actualities - 110
The Political and Ethical Constitutions — The Democratic and Oligarchic Principles — The Best Practicable State — The New Art of the Statesman — Nature as Development
8. The Twilight of the City-State - 125
The Failure of the City-State Epicureans — The Cynics
PART II. THE THEORY OF THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
9. The Law of Nature - 141
The Individual and Humanity — Concord and Monarchy — The City of the World — The Revision of Stoicism — The Scipionic Circle
10. Cicero and the Roman Lawyers - 157
Cicero — The Roman Lawyers
11. Seneca and the Fathers of the Church - 171
Seneca — Christian Obedience — Divided Loyalty Augustine, and Gregory — The Two Swords
12. The Folk and its Law - 192
The Omnipresent Law — Finding and Declaring Law — The King under the Law — The Choice of a King — Lord and Vassal
— The Feudal Court— Feudalism and the Commonwealth
13. The Investiture Controversy - 215
The Medieval Church-State — The Independence of the Church
— Gregory VII and the Papalists — Henry IV and the Imperialists
14. Universitas Hominum - 233
John of Salisbury — St. Thomas: Nature and Society — The Nature of Law — Dante: The Idealized Empire
15. Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII - 250
The Publicists — The Relative Position of the Two Parties — The Papal Claims — Egidius Colonna — Roman Law and Royal Power — John of Paris
16. Marsilio of Padua and William of Occam - 271
Marsilio: Averroist Aristotelianism — The State — Law and the Legislator — The Church and the Clergy — The General Council — William: The Freedom of the Church — The Conciliar Theory
17. The Cancilir Theory of Church Government – 294
The Reform of the church – The Self – sufficing Community –Harmony and Consent – The Power of the Council – The Importance of the conciliar Theory
PART III. THE THEORY OF THE NATIONALSTATE
18.Machiavelli- 311
Modern Absolutism — Italy and the Pope — Machiavelli's Interest — Moral Indifference — Universal Egoism — The Omnipotent Legislator -— Republicanism and Nationalism — Insight and Deficiencies
19.The Early Protestant Reformers - 332
Passive Obedience and the Right to Resist — Martin Luther — Calvinism and the Power of the Church — Calvin and Passive Obedience — John Knox