Abstract

Thirty years ago political philosophy in Britain was feared to be dead or dying; dying of meaninglessness and neglect.’ Political philosophy now enjoys a golden age, certainly in the English‐speaking world; but never has the level of political debate been lower. The memories are still painful of how, in the American presidential campaign of 1996 and the British general election of 1997, even sustained rhetoric, let alone attempts at reasoned, persuasive discourse, finally collapsed into sound‐bytes, and contingent sound‐bytes at that, mainly reacting to relatively trivial, mainly opportunistic accusations and counter‐accusations, a plethora of sound‐bytes rarely exhibiting either Bagehot's ‘stream of tendency’ or a coherent ‘moral discourse’. All three main parties talked about restoring a sense of morality to politics, but found some difficulty in spelling out what they meant, or even spelling it at all. Never more political knowledge, either, with the growth of political science; but never less use made of it in public life, unless psephology is the name of the game.