WEEK 1: THINKING POLITICS

1. What is a theory? What are its functions and how and why we need them?
2. What is a good theory? Parsimony, accuracy and significance.
What is an elegant theory?
3. What is a scientific theory?
4. What is a normative political/social theory?
Focus on the Weberian tradition of describing historical correlation and tendencies;
why not determining and predicting human behavior?
Weber’s “ideal types and the epistemological foundations of social research.”
5. What is political theory? The interpretative nature of political theory.
The search for meaning: helpful or unhelpful versus true or false;
intersubjectivity versus objectivity;
understanding versus explanation; and strict social scientists versus political/social theorists.
Finally, “political theory offers suggestive conceptual insights that are subject to self-reflective commentary and critique.”
6. The hermeneutics: interpreting texts and the real life;
natural science versus social science—objectivity versus intersubjectivity;
preconceptions and frictions;
the “fusion of horizons”;
7. The critical nature of political theory: normativeness as an element of ethical theory;
epistemology (theory of thinking/knowledge);
the relationship between normativeness and epistemology as the one between deeds and words;
the friction between morality and the tools of its distribution;
8. Conceptual and historical analyses and the relationship between the microscopic and telescopic views of politics;
the advantages of historical analysis.