7 quotes
Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
One way … in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
Neither the good nor the true is self-realizing, so it is not generally a sufficient explanation of why people believe that X that X is true, or of why people do Y that Y is good.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
When Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia, he is not obviously voicing a wish to rid himself of one or the other of these two sentiments. Not all contradictions resolve into temporal change of belief or desire.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral?
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
It would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true, or the rational in complete abstraction from the way in which these items figure in the motivationally active parts of the human psyche, and particularly in abstraction from the way in which they impinge, even if indirectly, on human action.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)