The Problem of Political Science

Political Relevance and Scientific Rigor in Aristotle's “Philosophy of Human Affairs

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6231601
AutoresDustin Sebell (Harvard University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen60
Número1
Páginas85-96
Fecha de publicación2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ajps.12194
OpenAlexW2098254689
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas51

Treatments of Aristotle's moral‐political science have largely disregarded the methodological statements that he delivers as he embarks on his “philosophy of human affairs” in book I of the Nicomachean Ethics. A consideration of these statements, however, lends critical support to the view that Aristotle sought to give the sharpest possible expression to ordinary moral‐political opinion. Moreover, apart from revealing the by‐no‐means ordinary reasons that induced Aristotle to do so (and to do so in contrast to Plato), such a consideration sheds light on the source of the vagueness or ambiguity that defines moral‐political opinion as such. Indeed, the methodological statements are perhaps the first entries in the old quarrel of “relevance versus rigor.” And, through them, Aristotle suggests how political scientists today might walk a fine line between “politics,” on one hand, and “science,” on the other, without losing sight of the ultimate tension between them

Ambiguity · Epistemology · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Relevance (law · Sociology · Vagueness · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification