Reflections on the Nature of Political Theory

Description:

The twenty-first century, though hardly 25 years old, has seen a lot of action in both political theory and also in the world of realpolitik. The world of realpolitik has now become transparent and is almost self explanatory. This is also the age of geo-politics, which had receded into the background with the collapse of the Soviet Union and bipolarity . However, geo-economics is now not in the background, and geopolitics is not a veneer for hiding geoeconomics, as it was in the past. This period is witnessing both the explosions of geo-political and geo-economic matters. It is, therefore, necessary to study these developments with seriousness.

The last couple of decades of the twentieth century witnessed the receding of empirical and quantitative methods of research, and saw the return into prominence the idea of a Grand theory that would provide explanation, in philosophical terms, to the various problems of a globalized world. This was the time when Quentin Skinner published his seminal work titled The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences. The interesting aspect of this title is that Skinner chose to use human sciences, and not social sciences, which was his way of projecting the idea that knowledge would be one for all aspects of human life. There were a number of traditions that came into being at this time, like the Hermeneutic tradition in Germany, the revival of the Pragmatic tradition in America, and return of Philosophy in general not just to the anglophone world, but also to other languages.

After a quarter of a century in the new millennium, it is time to see how much of the optimism of the last part of the twentieth century was actually accurate and whether that optimism fulfilled the promises of that time. This book travels between the last part of the twentieth century and the first 25 years of the twenty first century. It should be remembered that very few philosophies actually had the potential to reach the goal that they set for themselves. It is obvious that small changes, and sometimes big changes, have to be made to the original philosophical thinking and this book documents the changes that were made by philosophies and the philosophers to make the original paradigms more relevant to the present times. So, this book not only explores theoretical dimensions introduced by political theory but also compares them with some occurrences that have taken place in the world during this time period. This was done with the intention to test out on the ground if the nature of reality as seen by philosophy and Grand theory actually took root. It is hoped that the readers will get a fairly decent idea about this time period in knowledge terms. 

Target Audience: 

 This book will be of immense use to students and academicians of political science