(sorry if this posts twice, I got a bizarre error message the first try)

That said, the best young political philosopher on the market this year has a quite unrelated PhD, and was appointed into a highly analytic Philosophy department. So he’ll be another exception.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00346705/ap050226/05a00210/0?searchUrl=http%3a//www.jstor.org/search/BasicResults%3fhp%3d25%26si%3d1%26Query%3dpolitical%2btheory%2bhegel%2bmansfield&frame=noframe&currentResult=00346705%2bap050226%2b05a00210%2b0%2c0F&userID=8da15319@georgetown.edu/01cc99333ccdab10ac22f0b77&dpi=3&config=jstor

For those who don’t the basic idea seems to be that political theory came to the U.S. as a Hegelian history of the concept of the state (Staatslehre) and turned into the history of political philosophy.

In theory, it seems to me that there’s less and less Strauss-type work done (I always want to spit after I say “Strauss”) and more people doing work in things like democratic theory, theories of justice, etc. Rawls probably gets taught as much in poli sci departments as in philosophy.

In philosophy, there’s an active move toward empiricism (although I don’t know whether it’s hit political philosophy yet): there’s the experimental philosophy group, there’s the big pile of philosophy of mind work that is based in actual neuroscience…

So it seems like there ought to be a track one can take where one can get the best of both worlds: the argumentative rigor of philosophy, with the powerful techniciques and empirical grounding of poli sci.

How can anyone do democratic theory, for example, without being able to use both rigorous ethical/legitimacy arguments (philosophy) and game/social choice theory (poli sci)?

It’s very odd to me that the philosophers seem to consider their graduate training far more critical and unsubstitutable than the political scientists. There are innumerable people appointed in political science departments (and not just for “theory”) whose graduate training is in philosophy, economics, law, etc. Yet I can think of two prominent people who hold [cross-]appointments in philosophy departments whose major training is elsewhere: Sen and Dworkin. Why is this? Is poli sci graduate training trivial, the sort of thing you can pick up by osmosis, while philosophy graduate training is a mystical initiation into the ranks of the illuminated?

I’m descending into rhetorical flourishes again (hopefully that’ll make this comment, ahem, richer) so it’s probably time to stop. But surely you see my point.

The real distinction seems to be the fact that all of us—whomever we are—tend to read political philosophers more often and more seriously than political theorists on average. We all know major stars in political science: David Miller, GA Cohen, Michael Sandel, Joshua Cohen, and Ian Shapiro all come to mind. In addition, we all know major stars that have moved from philosophy to politics, such as FM Kamm, Philip Pettit, Thomas Pogge, and very minor paricles of moondust like me. But the overwhelming vast majority of names on this list from Arneson to Nagel, Rawls to Scanlon, Nussbaum to Estlund and beyond are all in philosophy departments.

I don’t take this to mean that political philosophers are necessarily better than political theorists, but the major stars in that space we share seem clearly to be in philosophy departments far more often than in political science depts. Perhaps having colleagues working in different areas in philosophy rather than social science helps, rather than hinders. I have no idea. Yet, I can’t see why else this is true.

With all due respect to rhetorical flourishes, either it was always time, or it still isn’t! What’s suddenly new to make it time?

I agree that the rough methodological or tempermental theory-philosophy distinction doesn’t perfectly track poli sci/ philosophy appointments. It does so particularly badly for people with British or British-derived (i.e. Australian) training—Waldron, Pettit. And there important ways in which normative, non-intellectual-historical, Anglo-American theorists have more in common with philosophers than they have in common with even their colleagues in political theory, to say nothing of their colleagues in political science.

But I don’t think that means the distinction does no work. I’m at a conference now where the distinction is resurfacing in spades—what arguments, and what kinds of arguments, seem important and compelling to people does depend on something like a theory-philosophy distinction. Even among non-intellectual-historian, non-continental, normative people, there remains a real difference between people who are likely to be persuaded by G.A. Cohen’s rigor and those who are likely to be drawn in by Michael Walzer’s richness, those who are likely to find Parfit or Putnam important and those who are likely to find Kateb or Shklar important, those who are drawn to ethics or metaethics as a court of appeal and those who are drawn to social science as a court of appeal, those worried about agent-neutrality and those worried about decision procedures.

The ASPLP remains committed to three-discipline parity among legal folks, political philosophers, and political theorists—and I remain struck by the wisdom of that, conference after conference, even though the conferences tend to attract people who cross boundaries and appointments.

“Time to break free?” I don’t feel chained down by the distinction—it’s not as though I don’t read work by political philosophers or hope that they’ll read mine. It’s not even the kind of distinction that’s administratively relevant, since the hiring units are different departments. If you feel chained down by the distinction, and are eager to free yourself from some imagined Straussian taint, call yourself a philosopher (and see whether philosophers will recognize you as such, since you’ll have sacrificed graduate training in the philosophy core for graduate training in empirical fields). I draw the distinction mainly to provide advice about choosing graduate programs, but am also recurrently struck by it in research-academic life.

I think Pettit gets left out of this discussion for the same reason Kymlicka does—he is more book oriented.

Good point on Elster: The Market and the Forum is an important article, and one could make a strong case for inclusion. I’m sure he’s written other important stuff, I don’t really keep up with his work.

Fact: several people whose articles are listed above as essentials for political philosophy work in poli sci departments. (Ian Shapiro and Joshua Cohen come immediately to mind. Not listed: anything by Phillip Pettit or Jon Elster, both additional obvious crossover theory/philosopy people.)

Fact: There’s a lot of departments where the political theory people and the political philosophy people work closely together.

I’m starting a doctoral program in theory this fall, and it irks me no end that the price I have to pay for being in a department where I can learn things like statistics, game theory, and, you know, empirical reality, is that I’ll have to fight the impulse to ghettoize me with the likes of Strauss whenever I try to do serious political philosophy-type work.