Abstract

This book ranges over a number of problems in contemporary political science. Ostensibly about Marx and Burke, Aristotle and the behaviorists also figure in the development. One of the major difficulties of the book is the forced presence of Aristotle and the absence of Hegel. "Burke and Marx being in the Aristotelian tradition, considered it absurd to speak of man as anything but a social or political animal—a zoon politikon...". This sentence is probably correct, but it is ad hoc, for, on this point, Hegel is Marx’s teacher—not Aristotle. There are numerous such references, and thus, as a revisionist view in the history of ideas, the book seems at points strained and at others inaccurate. There is a level of generality at which one can say that Burke, Aristotle, and Marx occupy a common position, and that is the level at which this book is written, viz., a very general generality. One is simply stunned by the overcoming of differences, the omission of distinctions. To suggest that Hegel is a Rationalist is to stretch the language of philosophy to meaninglessness. Repeated again is the simplicities about thesis, antithesis, synthesis, cloppity, clop. Perhaps this is enough about the shortcomings of this book.