A student writes: "Having used PGR while going through the graduate admissions process last year, I thought I'd offer a suggestion. After studying philosophy and political science while an undergrad at [a liberal arts college], my main interest going into grad school graduate school was political
philosophy/theory. The dilemma faced by someone like myself is whether to focus on political theory in a political science department or political philosophy in a philosophy department. I can't be certain, but I imagine there are a number of others who have faced or will face a similar dilemma."
This is typically a stark choice, since PhD work in Philosophy and Political Science, even with a primary interest in political philosophy, are very different paths to hoe.
The first difference is that the "supporting" and "required" work you'll have to do before getting to your main interest will be quite distinctive. In Philosophy, you'll most likely have to do some history of philosophy, some metaphysics and epistemology, some logic, and some work in ethics. By contrast, in Political Science, the other required work will be in American Politics, Comparative and/or International Politics, and perhaps quantitative or formal methods.
The skills in almost all areas of Philosophy will be argumentative and analytical (with, of course, a somewhat greater emphasis on interpretive, philological, and other scholarly skills in the study of historical figures), whereas Political Science appears to be an increasingly diffuse discipline, an amalgmation of sub-disciplines with very little in common. (The formal methods/rational choice folks in Political Science would be much happier in an Economics Department; the political theory folks often interact much more with folks in History and Comparative Literature and sometimes Philosophy, than with folks in the social sciences; the American Politics people, depending on their approach, may have much more in common with sociologists and psychologists than their colleagues doing rational choice or history of political thought.)
That graduate study in Philosophy is almost always organized around a core intellectual skill--argumentative and analytical rigor and precision--no doubt explains why political theory in Political Science Departments is sometimes afflicted with the two intellectual pathologies that are unknown in Philosophy Departments: Straussianism (on the right, more or less) and postmodernism (on the left, more or less). Both depend on bad arguments, careless scholarship, and a heavy dose of political motivation--and both are absent in the leading Philosophy Departments. The combination of argumentative aggressiveness and analytical rigor that are the hallmarks of the latter make it impossible for the superficial muddle-headedness of the Straussians and postmodernists to get a foothold.
Which brings us to a final, important difference between the two paths. While there are a number of Political Science PhDs whose work is of substantial interest to political philosophers in Philosophy Departments (e.g., Dennis Thompson, Amy Gutmann, Charles Beitz, Michael Walzer, etc.), and while some first-rate political philosophers have been poached in recent years by Political Science Departments (e.g., Philip Pettit by Princeton), it is clearly the case that a lot of work done under the rubric of "political theory" in Political Science Departments is of little interest to philosophers. I am not referring here solely to the Straussian and postmodernist work which, as noted, is regarded as largely silly by philosophers. There are substantial and important political theorists in the Political Science world whose work bears no trace of Straussianism or postmodernism but who are operating, for all practical purposes, in a separate intellectual universe from the political philosophers in Philosophy Departments. Sometimes this is related to the fact that "history of political thought" is an important topic in Political Theory in a way it is not within Philosophy Departments. But some of it is due to fundamental differences in intellectual style, often related to the point noted earlier, namely, the obsession with analytical and argumentative rigor and precision that is the hallmark of philosophical practice.
My advice to a prospective student trying to figure out which route to pursue would be to do some reading, to figure out where one's intellectual sympathies lie. Read (among political theorists) folks like Don Herzog, Rogers Smith, Carol Pateman, George Kateb, Sheldon Wolin, Dana Villa; read (among political philosophers) folks like David Schmidtz, Philip Pettit, G.A. Cohen, Thomas Nagel, Raymond Geuss, Joshua Cohen, Judith Jarvis Thomson. There are some commonality of interests between all these writers, and yet often a clear difference in style and intellectual method. Assuming some of the other factors noted above are not decisive for a student trying to choose, this final exercise ought to make vivid where it is one's intellectual sympathies ultimately rest.
ADDENDUM: I'm less sure how the above points apply to students choosing between Politics and Philosophy in the UK and Australia. (I think the situation in Canada is similar to that in the U.S.) My impression, for example, is that the Straussian pathology is unknown outside North America; but what about postmodernism? What about some of the other differences? I'd welcome comments from Australian and UK political philosophers and theorists.
UPDATE: A UK-based political philosopher writes:
"Oxford's PPE [Philosophy, Politics & Economics] is an enormous boon. It is, I'm pretty sure, far and away the most frequent first degree of Brits who teach political philosophy or political theory in the UK. Therefore, a much higher number of political theorists in Britain than in the US studied analytic philosophy as an undergraduate. And, as you note in your post, postmodernist bullshit dries up and disintegrates under the gaze of an analytically-trained mind. So, though present, postmodernist political theory is much less a presence in UK as compared with US politics departments (it is, I'm told, virtually non-existent in the Oxford Politics department), and UK politics departments are more receptive to analytic political philosophy. Here are a few analytic political philosophers in the UK whose appointments are in politics departments: G. A. Cohen, Susan Hurley, Hillel Steiner, David Miller, Adam Swift, Stuart White, and Matthew Clayton. Moreover, anyone who has studied political theory at Oxford during the last 20 years will not have escaped the towering intellects of Cohen, Dworkin, and Raz."
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jacob Levy, a political theorist in the Poli Sci Department at Chicago, has thoughts on this topic as well. I've also revised slightly my list of who to read, above, to get a sense of the different approaches, based on some of his suggestions. Note that Professor Levy was trained at Princeton, which has, for a long time, been a Political Science Department where the political theory folks have maintained strong ties with political philosophy as practiced in Philosophy Departments.
ANOTHER: And more on the subject here, with particular reference to the UK situation.
ANOTHER: And more comments from political philosophers here.
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