Abstract

Events and intellectual fashion have conspired to bring the once neglected topics of nationalism and Staatslehre to the forefront of political-philosophical debate in this country, a development which makes David Runciman’s intellectual-historical study quite timely. The history Runciman tells is that of the early twentieth century English movement of political pluralism, whose central figures were Frederic W. Maitland, John N. Figgis, Ernest Barker, George D. H. Cole, and Harold Laski. To tell their story Runciman quite properly recognizes that he must also discuss Thomas Hobbes and Otto von Gierke. For the story of political pluralism is the story of a debate over the concept of group personality, the problems of which are originally and decisively formulated by Hobbes, but which are received by the English pluralists by way of Gierke. Runciman’s approach here is “somewhat dialectical”, in that the discussions of Hobbes and Gierke are meant to shed light upon the English pluralists even as the discussions of the latter are intended to illuminate them. Runciman characterizes this as a movement between philosophy and history.