David Lefkowitz (Philosophy, UNC-Greensboro) writes:
"I'd like to contribute a few thoughts on the choice between political philosophy and political theory....
"First, one way for a student to get a quick and dirty look at the differences between political theory and political philosophy is to visit the American Political Science Association's annual meeting web-site, and to look over the panel sessions for political theory, the foundations of political thought, and other related units. Many of these sessions will list abstracts for the papers that are being presented. I don't recall whether the American Philosophical Association provides a similar service on-line for its annual meetings; if not, perhaps the student can get his or her hands on a paper copy of the APA Proceedings. [Ed.--It is available here.]
"Second, students thinking about graduate school in political theory should consider what their academic life will be like if they do not end up at a top research institution. My impression is that political science departments without graduate programs (and even some with them, if the focus of the program is, say, public administration) often have only one political theorist. Of course, similar programs in philosophy often have only one political philosopher. But the philosophy department is also likely to include at least one or two people who work in ethics, and so who are prepared to discuss justice, rights, desert, and so on. The same may not be true of a political science department; that is, no one else in the department will have any real familiarity with political theory (and I suspect this increases the longer the other faculty have been out of graduate school). I should note, however, that this is only my impression.
"Third, the biggest advantage that I can see in doing political theory rather than political philosophy is that one may have greater access to relevant empirical work, say on how different institutions actually work in practice. Even if some questions in political philosophy can be settled without recourse to empirical considerations, many others cannot. Or at least this is true of issues in applied political philosophy - e.g. justice in immigration - and various issues involving democratic governance. But of course one may acquire knowledge of the relevant empirical information without earning a Ph.D. in a political science department - if one is disciplined and inquisitive enough to seek it out.
"Finally, a partial plug - I recently earned my Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Maryland, College Park. My concentration was in political philosophy and philosophy of law. As a participant in Maryland's Committee on Politics, Philosophy and Public Policy, I had the opportunity to take some courses co-taught by people in the philosophy department, the political science department, and the institute for philosophy and public policy. This kind of program - already set up to facilitate some cross-departmental study - might be of particular interest to students who are torn between political theory and political philosophy. As I recall, one or two students actually switched from one graduate program to another after a year or two of coursework, while still being able to count toward their degree most of the classes they had completed."
Jonathan Wolff (Philosophy, UCL) writes (partially in response to the update here):
"1. A person is much more likely to get a job in a politics dept with a philosophy degree than a job in philosophy with a politics degree, for several reasons (e.g., smaller size of phil depts makes it harder to specialise on just one area; suspicion of government depts by philosophers, etc.)
"2. Within analytic political philosophy the style in politics departments seems to be to find as many arguments - good or bad - as possible for your conclusion, whereas in philosophy departments it seems to be to concentrate on a smaller number and make them as strong as you can.
"However this seems rather self-serving and someone currently in a politics
dept might want to comment on philosophy's obsession with minute details and
the focus on partially described abstract models, rather than real cases! (I
think of this as the Nozickian revolution in political philosophy - it is now easy to overlook the fact that Anarchy, State and Utopia was methodologically highly novel. The methodology has stuck even though the doctrine hasn't.)
"I have heard people outside political philosophy say that the existence of
political philosophy, and its connection with the 'real world,' justifies the existence of philosophy, as political philosophy cannot be done well without
a philosophical training (and all the research needed to support this training). However students are often frustrated by the lack of connection with the real world that they find in analytic political philosophy. I think people in politics departments are someone more driven by what they see as urgent problems - problems making headlines - that need addressing."
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