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WHAT IS POLITICAL THEORY FOR?
Benjamin Boudou
Presses de Sciences Po | « Raisons politiques »
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2016/4 No 64 | pages 7 - 27
ISSN 1291-1941
ISBN 9782724634549
This document is the English version of:

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Benjamin Boudou, « À quoi sert la théorie politique ? », Raisons politiques 2016/4
(No 64), p. 7-27.
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Benjamin Boudou, « À quoi sert la théorie politique ? », Raisons politiques 2016/4
(No 64), p. 7-27.
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forum
What
À quoiissert
Political
la théorieTheory For?
politique ?
Benjamin Boudou
Benjamin
Translated by Cadenza Academic Translations
La seule raison d’enseigner la théorie politique se trouve dans la conviction qu’une personne
achevée
The onlyetreason
mature to [complete] doittheory
teach political être capable de réfléchirthat
is the conviction intelligemment
a complete personà l’art must
de gou-
be
verner,
able et queintelligently
to think la seule façon aboutdegovernment,
s’élever au-dessusand that de the
la banalité
only wayestto d’apprendre à penser
rise above banality is
et learn
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to think one’s les œuvres
through des grandsofauteurs
the works the great qui ont écrit
writers on the sursubject
la question. Voir
and to learn
comment
to argue withles them.
idées politiques
To see howparticipent à la fit
political ideas république des lettres
into the republic of en général,
letters aux systèmes
generally, into the
politiques
political qu’elles
systems animent,
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distinguer ce qui
took place, andestfinally
mort todesee
ce what
qui estis vivant
dead anddans leswithin
alive riches
spéculations
this accumulatedpsychologiques et sociales historiquement,
wealth of psychological accumulées,
and social speculation is to c’est à la fois êtretrans-
be intellectually intel-
lectuellement
formed, and totransformé
have somethinget avoir à toute heure
completely du jour quelque
and immediately chose
relevant to de pleinement
think about at per-
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tinentofàthe
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nenot
croyais pasthat,
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j’arrêterais
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teaching at once and faire
go intodesbusiness.
affaires.
Judith Shklar 11
Judith
C
T et article
his interroge the
article examines
science politique
avoid reducing Pour
la place
française
place de
theéviter
afin de
la théorie
of political
mieux
de réduire
enthusiasm
politique
theory
comprendre
withinauFrench
litical science so as to better understand its role and its heuristic func-
fonction
tion. To heuristique. l’engouement
for theory
son
to whatthéorique
sein depo-
rôle
Hume called
et
la
sa
à ce
que Hume appelait la « passions des hypothèses
the “passion for hypotheses” as opposed to “fact and observation,” or » opposée à l’« observa-
2
tion
inversely faits » 2, ou
et les granting à l’inverse
theorists d’attribuer
a monopoly onlethinking,
monopole wedewill
la pensée
emphasize aux
théoriciens, il s’agira de souligner les points communs
points that are common to the different approaches to politics. In so doing aux démarches
disciplinaires
we hope to show qui that
enquêtent
theorysur doeslaindeed
politique.
haveNous souhaitons
its place ainsi
in political mon-
science,
trer
and that the crisis of legitimacy it is currently undergoing is the resultcrise
que la théorie a toute sa place dans la science politique, et que la of a
de légitimité qu’elleoftraverse
misunderstanding est dueInà une
its functions. mécompréhension
the first part we presentde ses fonc-
a review of
tions. Nous présenterons
appointments made and theses dans passed
un premier tempstheory,
in political un étattodes lieux des
demonstrate
recrutements
its minoritarian et situation
thèses soutenues en théorie
and the mistrust politique
in which pourInmontrer
it is held. examining sa
situation minoritaire et la défiance dont elle fait l’objet.
the relationship between theory and politics, we then pose the problem of Puis, en interro-
geant le rapport
the usefulness of entre théorie etwhat
the discipline: politique,
and whom nousshould
poserons le problème
it serve? Finally, wede
l’utilité de la discipline : à qui et à quoi faut-il servir ?
defend theory on the basis of the functions that it fulfills. We put forward Enfin, nous défen-
drons la théorie
four such functions:à partir des fonctions
heuristic, qu’elle
pedagogical, doit remplir.
critical, Nous en avan-
and ethical.
cerons quatre : une fonction heuristique, une fonction pédagogique, une
In bringing to light these four functions of political theory, we seek to
fonction critique et une fonction éthique.
provide some answers: firstly to the questions of students just beginning
theirEntraining
mettant in en évidence
political ceswho
theory, quatre fonctionsaskdewhether
continually la théorie
whatpolitique,
they are
nous cherchons à proposer des réponses : d’abord
doing makes sense and corresponds to their ambitions; but also to skepticalaux questionnements
1 - Judith Shklar, « Why teach political theory? », in James Engell et David Perkins (dir.). Teach-
1ing- Literature: What
Judith Shklar, Is Needed
“Why Now, Cambridge-Londres,
Teach Political Cambridge,
Theory?,” in Teaching Literature:Harvard
What Is University
Needed Now,Press,
ed.
1988, p.Engell
James 154 (nous traduisons).
and David Perkins (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), 154.
2 - David Hume, Enquête surConcerning
An Enquiry les principes
the de la morale
Principles of ,Morals
trad. fr. Philippe Baranger,
(Indianapolis Philippe
and Cambridge:
Saltel, Paris,
Hackett, 1983),Flammarion,
16. 1991, p. 75.
II - Benjamin Boudou
political scientist colleagues, who demand a justification for this disciplinary ap-
proach before even considering its results; and finally to those who do political
theory but doubt their usefulness, or suffer from seeing their normative ambi-
tions constrained by practice and their political ambitions constrained by the
demands of theory.
Political Theory Is Not an Empire within an Empire
To ask after the use of a discipline is a symptom of a certain anguish; to
seek to convince others that it is useful is to admit defeat. It is quite evident
that French academia is not convinced by political theory, even if it continues to
entice students. There are two possible explanations for this. Either it is merely
an unfortunate consequence of the position of research within France and the
funding allocated to it; or else there is a specific problem with political theory—a
lack of legitimacy of the subdiscipline itself or of the candidates. The valuable
work done by the Association française de science politique [French Political Sci-
ence Association] allows us to know the number of academic posts, the CNRS’s
recruitment policies and the everyday battles fought by a so-called discipline rare.
The detailed reports of section 4 of the Conseil national des universités [Na-
tional Council of Universities—CNU] inform us about the composition of the
discipline, in particular through changes in the number of thesis qualifications.
Given this essential work, it would be redundant to give a general panorama of
the discipline here. We seek only to give a more precise idea of the situation of
political theory so as to justify our approach in this article.
Consider the last five years: an average of less than one post per year was
advertised in political theory (four posts out of just under one hundred in total,
including those posted mid-year, from 2011 to 2015) for a total of 37 qualified
candidates—that is, around 13% of doctors qualified in political science. There
is therefore a disproportion between the number of posts and the number of
qualified candidates. In comparison, just over forty posts were advertised in po-
litical sociology, for 151 qualified candidates, a more even ratio (around 40%
of posts for around 40% of the qualified candidates), with international rela-
tions even better served (in terms of the ratio of qualified candidates to posts).
Obviously, the specification of posts is not dictated by the rates of qualification,
yet such a wide gap is problematic and reveals the frailty of the subdiscipline.
(We should note that we have disregarded posts in political or social philosophy
relating to section 17, since the agrégation in philosophy is an implicit require-
ment for recruitment to these posts.) More surprisingly, it is in political theory
that the standard deviation is the greatest: it has the greatest year-on-year vari-
ation in qualification rate, going from 11% to 60%, and then to 37%. Shouldn’t
we clarify the criteria for judging political theory, then? Here we cannot neglect
the institutional and personal quarrels, 3 which, it is always worth remember-
ing, primarily affect those in the most precarious positions. Disagreeing on
3 - See for example the opinion columns of Bernard Lacroix and Daniel Gaxie in Le Monde,
February 22, 2013 (respectively entitled “Rendez-vous raté avec les sciences sociales” and “Des
What is Political Theory For? - III
method is one thing, waging a war of attrition with ATERs (Attachés Temporaires
d’Enseignement et de Recherche—Temporary Teaching and Research Assistants)
and using candidates for qualification and post-doctorates as cannon fodder is
entirely another. But the under-representation of the discipline and the arbi-
trariness of a rate of qualification that doubles from one year to the next indicate
something more profound than the harsh realities of academic politics—namely,
a lack of recognition, or even an absence of legitimacy.
In making this hypothesis, however, we must not overlook two other factors.
Firstly, this is a situation that is specific to France, where the separation between
philosophy and the human sciences (in particular sociology) has become some-
thing of a settling of scores centering around figures such as Pierre Bourdieu,
with the respective camps becoming radicalized accordingly. In France we con-

tinually return to the partition of positivism vs. metaphysics, objectivity vs. nor-
mativity, and science vs. speculation. Here we will try to free ourselves from these
dichotomies. They may produce relevant analyses on the very meaning of the in-
tellectual enterprise of political theory and the role of normativity, 4 but may be
costly under the current situation of domination in relation to political science.
To consign political theory to the humanities on the pretext that, unlike science,
it is wholly and completely normative, is to challenge the deep filiation that ex-
ists in France between political science—and the social sciences in general—and
theory, and thus to exacerbate the marginalization of the latter.
Neither should we deny the fact that theory is intellectually inscribed within
political science. The Revue Française de Science Politique (RFSP) regularly pub-
lishes articles relating to the subdiscipline, and theoretical theses continue to be
passed. Only the proportions are in question: only 5 percent of articles published
in the RFSP relate to political theory, 5 and of the 1,145 theses collected in the
central theses file (theses.fr) and passed between 2006 and 2015, we find just
over sixty relating to political theory. Finally, let us note, over the same period,
more than 300 theses relating to political philosophy were passed in philosophy
(of 1,634 in total).
These few statistics describe the situation of a subdiscipline struggling to es-
cape an ultra-minoritarian situation, giving the impression of a battle already
lost. The retreat of this subdiscipline that supposedly took itself for an empire
is an understandable consequence of such a situation. At the risk of caricature,
young political theorists in France are reduced to seeing themselves as a guild
of artisans, caretakers of a useless tradition and craft. Inversely, elsewhere in the
world, they can be fully integrated, no longer held responsible for justifying a
recognized discipline. As a corrective to this sentiment, we will present the func-
savoirs qui s’enseignent surtout à l’université”), and the response by Alain Dieckhoff, Jean-Marie
Donegani, and Marc Lazar on March 1 (“Oui il y a bien de la science politique à Sciences Po”).
4 - Aurélia Bardon, “Normativité, interprétation et jugement en théorie politique,” Raisons poli-
tiques 55 (2014): 103–119.
5 - Manuel Cervera-Marzal, “Vers un retour de la philosophie politique dans la Revue française
de science politique? Le difficile espace d’une sous-discipline de la science politique française
(1951–2010),” Raisons politiques 54 (2014): 141.
IV - Benjamin Boudou
tions of political theory, so as to demonstrate its importance and legitimacy.

With the proviso that “legitimate” does not necessarily mean “useful,” since this
is a problematic designation.
Must Political Theory be “Useful”?
The question of usefulness is often posed to researchers—from “Why do a
thesis on…” to “In your research project you will indicate socioeconomic im-
pacts…”; but it affects different disciplines in different ways. 6 Political theory
shares with the human sciences a tension between its object, which relates to
common sense, and its method; between the “political” and its “theoretical” ap-
proach to it. It may be easy to understand why inequalities are a problem, but it is
less straightforward to employ concepts such as the “difference principle” (John
Rawls) or the “part with no part” (Jacques Rancière) to address them.
These are difficult questions because they involve the sociology and episte-
mology of a profession that is deeply divided as to its methods and objects. Jean
Leca gives a good description of what might almost be described as a disciplinary
state of nature:
In its current usages, political theory is no longer so much a paradigm as a scientific

(or cognitive) collective: it is not a social construct that allows us to resolve enigmas
by giving us a “way of seeing things.” This is not only a matter of the classic situation
in the social sciences where a multiplicity of paradigms prohibits the constitution of a
normal science, but of the coexistence of opposed traditions that make it impossible
to even create a field where competitive paradigms might confront one another. It is
not a “dialogue of the deaf ” because it is not a dialogue at all: to be interested in the
history of ideas, the logical constitution of discourse, the explanation of a process, or
the ethical status of a doctrine (or a practice) are fundamentally different activities. 7
In this Kuhnian vein, a harsher interpretation might have it that political

theory quite simply failed to join the paradigm shift that took place over the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, during which sociology gradually became
independent from philosophy. 8 All that remain are a few intransigents who cling
to the old paradigm, and who will therefore be gradually eliminated from the
profession. 9 And yet arguments can be made to defend a certain practice of po-
litical theory that would allow us to affirm its usefulness for society in general
and for political science in particular.
6 - See Tiphaine Rivière’s amusing Carnets de thèse (Paris: Seuil, 2015) and Alain Resnais, On
connaît la chanson [Same Old Song] (Arena Films, 1997); and, more seriously, Jeremy Waldron,
“What Plato Would Allow,” Nomos 37, Theory and Practice (1995): 178.
7 - Jean Leca, “La théorie politique,” in Traité de science politique, vol. 1, eds. Madeleine Grawitz
and Jean Leca (Paris: PUF, 1985), 76.
8 - Bruno Karsenti, D’une philosophie à l’autre. Les sciences sociales et la politique des modernes
(Paris: Gallimard, 2013).
9 - Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1962] (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2012), 19.
What is Political Theory For? - V
The aim is thus to propose a roadmap. Although methodological discussion

is inevitably all the more arduous when it is not just methodological, it becomes
relevant when it presents itself as a deontological necessity: If I want to do what I
want to do, here are the requirements and the metatheoretical ambitions (What
is the point of doing this theory?) to which I aspire. Now, there is a relatively rich
body of theorists who have undertaken this task, for methodological, pedagogi-
cal, or polemical ends (and sometimes all three at once). Even though the 1960s
were marked by widespread defeatism, as evidenced by the repeated announce-
ment of the death of political theory, 10 numerous innovations, from the work of
John Rawls to the contemporary renewal of realism, by way of theories of power,
multiculturalism, feminism, deliberation, conflict, immigration, and so on, have
demonstrated the great vigor of political theory. This renewed capacity to pose
problems has been accompanied by continual reflection on the conditions of do-
ing political theory, its historical role, its relation to law, to facts, to authors, and
so on—in short, its usefulness.
Another way of approaching the problem of the usefulness of political theory
is to examine the relationship between theoretical activity and political activity.
After all, Marx told philosophers to stop interpreting the world and start chang-
ing it, and he was firmly opposed to the division of labor between intellectuals
and workers (in the broadest sense). 11 In other words: to be useful, doesn’t theo-
ry have to lead to engagement? Must writing on misdeeds and inequalities or on
the disgraceful treatment of refugees be correlated with action on the ground, so
as to put its theoretical arguments into practice? To answer in the positive does
not entail a renunciation of axiological neutrality, which is a matter of the place
of convictions in theoretical work and in teaching. 12 It is rather a question of
the social and political role of the theorist, and her supposed responsibility (and
thus usefulness) in relation to civil society.
Two symmetrical arguments allow us to respond that the usefulness of politi-
cal theory is not necessarily to be looked for in political practice, without neces-
sarily branding the latter as toxic to scientific activity. The substance of these
arguments can be found in Spinoza:
10 - See Brian Barry, “The Strange Death of Political Philosophy,” Government and Opposition 15,
nos. 3-4 (1980): 276–288, where the author catalogues the various views of the death of political
theory. In 1956, Peter Laslett declared: “For the moment, anyway, political philosophy is dead.”
The same was true, in 1958, for Robert Dahl: “In the English-speaking world, where so many of
the interesting political problems have been solved (at least superficially), political theory is dead.”
We could also cite Isaiah Berlin: “[it is suggested] that political philosophy, whatever it may have
been in the past, is today dead or dying” (“Does Political Theory Still Exist?,” in Philosophy, Politics
and Society, second series, eds. Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman [Oxford: Blackwell, 1962], 1),
or Judith Shklar: “the grand tradition of political theory that began with Plato is […] in abeyance”
(After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958], 272).
11 - See, recently, Manuel Cervera-Marzal, Pour un suicide des intellectuels (Paris: Textuel, 2016).
12 - Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, eds. David Owen and Tracy
B. Strong, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2004), 1–31, and in
particular Isabelle Kalinowski’s excellent contextualization of the reception of axiological neutral-
ity in the French translation: Max Weber, La science, profession et vocation (Paris: Agone, 2005),
“Leçons weberiennes sur la science et la propaganda,” 191sq.
VI - Benjamin Boudou
Therefore, while theory is believed to be at variance with practice in all practical sci-
ences, this is particularly so in the case of political theory, and no men are regarded
as less fit for governing a state than theoreticians or philosophers. Statesmen, on the
other hand, are believed to aim at men’s undoing rather than their welfare, and they
have a reputation for cunning rather than wisdom. No doubt experience has taught
them that there will be vices as long as there are men. 13
In other words, a militant (or an activist, or a statesman) will not necessarily
be better for being a theorist, because these vocations require a specific knowhow
that has no need of theory to serve the cause. And a theorist is not necessarily
a good statesman, precisely because she lacks this knowhow. In what does her
activity consist, then? First of all in producing knowledge. This has long been
called “discovering the truth”; let us now say, less naively, that it involves improv-
ing our understanding of a phenomenon. And that this activity can be highly
political—in its choice of subjects, the emancipation that it enables, the action
that it suggests.
Bas van der Vossen develops this argument further, in showing the numerous
effects of political bias on research in theory. He also explains why the will to
transform the world need not take precedence over the professional ethics that
demands we develop the best arguments and correct interpretations. Although
it may be impossible to speak the “truth” of political phenomena—as MacIntyre
rightly says, bring together four theorists, and you will get at least five interpre-
tations of one and the same fact 14—it is nevertheless possible to evaluate inter-
pretations and grade them from the most interesting, or relatively correct, to the
most excessive and incoherent. Van der Vossen therefore insists that theorists
should participate in public debates, producing reasoning that can be appropri-
ated by activists, but without becoming activists themselves, which would have
negative effects upon their work:
I am urging, then, for a division of labor. It is the job of political philosophers to find
out the correct principles for politics. It is the job of activists to implement these. The
focus of each should be firmly on their respective tasks. Activists should not produce
political philosophy but consume it. Philosophers should produce political philoso-
phy worth consuming. 15
13 - Baruch Spinoza, “Political Treatise,” in Complete Works, ed. Michael L. Morgan, trans.
Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2002), 676–754: 680.
14 - Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Indispensability of Political Theory,” in The Nature Of Political Theo-
ry, ed. David Miller and Larry Siedentop (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 25.
15 - Bas van der Vossen, “In Defense of the Ivory Tower: Why Philosophers Should Stay Out of
Politics,” Philosophical Psychology 28, no. 7 (2016): 1055. Cf. Bernard Manin’s similar but more
overtly separatist proposition: “Theorists, driven by various motivations (not necessarily that of
exerting an influence) formulate ideas or theories which then form an available stock upon which
actors can draw depending on their needs of the moment” (“L’idée de démocratie délibérative
dans la science politique contemporaine. Introduction, généalogie et éléments critiques. Entre-
tien avec Bernard Manin,” Politix 57 [2002]: 42).
What is Political Theory For? - VII
We can supplement this argument, which may seem somewhat conservative,

with two nuances. On one hand, to infer from “theorists should not be activists”
that “activists should not be theorists” is to say the least debatable. In reality, it is
far less a matter of separation than one of dialectic: these are two distinct activi-
ties, but this does not mean that the individuals who practice them are distinct.
All of the great political thinkers were activists in their own way, something that
does not at all detract from the quality of their arguments. Plato advised the ty-
rants of Sicily, Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great, Machiavelli spent a
long period of his career in political affairs in Florence and sought to advise the
Medicis, Hobbes was a tutor at the English court in exile during the Civil War,
Locke wrote the constitution of Carolina, Rousseau was invited to draft the con-
stitutions of Poland and Corsica, Tocqueville was deputy of the Manche départe-
ment and member of the Constituent Assembly in 1848, and so on. Moreover,
these authors’ ideas were subversive enough for them to be pursued by those in
power: Locke, Hobbes, and Marx became exiles, Rousseau spent time in prison,
and the Jewish community in Amsterdam banished Spinoza. Although van der
Vossen may be right to denounce the cognitive biases that partisan convictions
can impart to apodictic thought, the figure of the disengaged philosopher upon
whom historical and political circumstances must have no hold does not really
exist.
On the other hand, following a critical logic, it is possible to see the theorist
as an activist by virtue of his very disengagement. Beyond the Sartrean adage
(“not to be engaged is still a form of engagement”), what is at issue here is a
legitimate critique of the way in which political theory is done. Both analytical
theory and liberal theory have been denounced for the same reasons: they are
so cut off from the political conditions that their argumentative mode hides the
reality of domination. Theorists have been called “dangerous social actors” who
contribute to the injustices of the world. They privilege argumentative rhetoric
over political action, and reinforce domination by “analytically” suspending its
conditions. 16
It is difficult to find a middle position in this debate. Neutrality being im-
possible, it is better to avoid both glorifying the ivory tower on the grounds of
a good division of labor, and judging the usefulness of the theorist by his or her
involvement in some public cause. The resolution of the problem is doubtless
more personal than theoretical. In such questions, theory cannot pass abstract
judgment on the well-foundedness of engaged action. It is thus not so much
Plato’s usefulness as a philosopher or as a political advisor that we must judge,
but rather the personal justifications he gives for his actions. On one hand he
affirms that he went to tutor the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse through fear of
“see[ing] myself at last altogether nothing but words, so to speak—a man who
16 - In fact, this argument aims rather to divide good political theory from bad, that which pro-
ceeds from idealization on the basis of the real and in order to think the real from that which
confines itself in a poorly-constructed idealization. See Charles Mills, “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology,”
Hypatia 20, no. 3 (2005): 165–184; Burke Hendrix, “Political Theorists as Dangerous Social Actors,”
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15, no. 1 (2012): 41–61.
VIII - Benjamin Boudou
would never willingly lay hand to any concrete task” (Letter VII, 328c). 17 On the
other, if the political regime is corrupt, then the philosopher must make this
known, but without necessarily taking up arms against it: “When it is impossible
to make the constitution perfect except by sentencing men to exile and death,
he must refrain from action and pray for the best for himself and for his city”
(331d). 18 In other words, Plato is subtler than is sometimes thought, when he is
reduced to the idea of the philosopher-king, or denied any thirst for action or for
the plurality of human affairs. Here it is the fear of being complicit in violence
that renders the philosopher reluctant to act.
The Functions of Political Theory

Rather than distinguish the disciplinary subcategories within political theory

(history of ideas, normative theory, interpretative theory, and so on), 19 we must
identify the functions of political theory. It would be difficult to define it ac-
cording to its method, since political theory mobilizes many methods, even if
it evidently shares the problematizing approach proper to all human and social
sciences.
John Rawls proposed a similar approach, and defined the roles played by
political philosophy, but his proposition remains unsatisfactory: on one hand
because it is too dependent upon his own work, and on the other because it re-
sembles the caricature drawn by his adversaries, partisans of critical or agonistic
theory. 20 Of the four roles that he puts forward (a practical role, the role of ori-
entation, that of reconciliation, and that of the delimitation of what it is possible
to hope for and to do), three tend to legitimate the liberal democratic consen-
sus. Whether it is a matter of justifying the nation-state, convincing oneself of
the rationality of institutions, or believing in the possibility of a reasonably just
democratic regime, here political theory seems by its very nature to legitimate
the status quo, even if Rawls, of course, denies doing so.
The four functions presented below are doubtless not exhaustive, but cer-
tainly are not separable: any work must concern itself with fulfilling, at a mini-
mum, all of these tasks.
Heuristic Function
The first aim of political theory is to make sense of what is happening—that
is to say, to grasp situations in order to extract from them concepts and critical
issues that will help us to understand them. In this sense political theory is no
17 - Plato, The Collected Dialogues Including the Letters, eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington
Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 1578.
18 - Plato, The Collected Dialogues, 1580.
19 - Leca, “La théorie politique,” 76–77; Andrew Rehfeld, “Offensive Political Theory,” Perspec-
tives on Politics 8, no. 2 (2010): 475.
20 - John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2007), 10–11; John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001), 1–5.
What is Political Theory For? - IX
different from any scientific enterprise: its aim is to inquire so as to make the
world more intelligible. The analytical loop is simple enough. (1) Set out from
a problematic situation, from a fact that worries us, either because it is insuffi-
ciently intelligible or because it is incompatible with the factual and axiological
fabric that surrounds it. (2) Inquire into this situation within a more or less de-
terminate theoretical framework (determinate enough to formulate questions,
indeterminate enough for the object to contribute to the development of the
framework). (3) The result will often prove not so much a solution to the prob-
lem as a clarification, or a discovery of its conditions of possibility. 21
This overly broad approach allows us to identify two conditions. Firstly, po-
litical theory plays a part in generating a better understanding of the world. It
therefore postulates on one hand that the world is knowable, on the other that it
exists independently of the observer. These methodological postulates protect us
from radical skepticism. That the world is uncertain and that our understanding
of it depends upon contingent or human criteria is one thing; to claim that the
world is in fine totally impenetrable or that it is never anything but the projection
of my own subjectivity is entirely another. 22
On the other hand, as John Austin writes, when I say, “there is a goldfinch in
the garden,”
I don’t by any means always know whether it’s one or not. It may fly away before
I have a chance of testing it, or of inspecting it thoroughly enough. This is simple
enough: yet some are prone to argue that because I sometimes don’t know or can’t
discover, I never can. 23
In other words, accepting that we can doubt the criteria of our knowledge
(I know that it is a goldfinch) and even the criteria of existence (there is a gold-
finch) does not prevent us from saying something, taking this existence to be
true and our knowledge of it to be viable until proof to the contrary is found. If
the goldfinch were to quote Virginia Woolf (the example is Austin’s), then what
I have said about it must be false or useless, and I must review my definition of a
goldfinch. Similarly, if I am in fact only dreaming that I am writing, this does not
prevent me from continuing to write. If there is another dimension to which our
senses are blind, this does not prevent us from continuing to live in our three di-
mensions. Insofar as we cannot maintain two perspectives at once—I dream but
21 - Michael Oakeshott, “What is Political Theory?,” in What is History? And Other Essays (Exeter:
Imprint Academic, 2004), 392: “‘Theorizing’ is not validating or ‘proving’ a conclusion reached, it
is a procedure of discovery or enquiry. It is, briefly, the urge to inhabit a more intelligible or a less
mysterious world.”
22 - In this sense, constructivism is unsurpassable on condition of recognizing that, if the world
is not knowable outside of categories for knowing it, there exist facts more or less solidified by
experience. See Cyril Lemieux, “Peut-on ne pas être constructiviste?,” Politix 100 (2012): 169–187;
Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA and
London: Harvard University Press, 2002).
23 - John L. Austin, “Other Minds” [1946], in Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961),
44–84: 56.
X - Benjamin Boudou
I know that I am dreaming, I live in three dimensions but I observe that there is
a fourth—and do not have to coexist with individuals capable of doing so—peo-
ple who have access to the totality of the world in all of its dimensions, or who
watch us as we dream our existence—skeptical doubt is not a practical hindrance
to our social, ethical, and political experience. The mystery of the world and of
the human soul can only be the argument of those who have some interest in en-
suring that the scientific enterprise is not pushed too far. 24 No one is intimidated
by the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, and the social construction of reality
does not at all prevent a firm, sufficiently shared construction from holding and
constituting what we call a fact.
Let us come back to the idea of the problem as a point of departure for inquiry.
What is a problem? A problem should not be understood as a default, a danger,

or a simple difficulty to which would correspond a solution that would make it
disappear. This would be a positivist or mathematizing version of thought: to
a problem there corresponds a solution, which, once found, annuls the prob-
lem. Such a conception might work for science, but not for theory in general. As
Jacques Bouveresse explains in relation to the specificity of philosophy,
In philosophy itself, one is only ever confronted with possible solutions, which have
the peculiarity that they remain possible or usable at any moment, albeit at the price
of a certain remanipulation—but never real solutions. Unlike what is generally the
case for the sciences, the problems remain, and one has an essential need of history to
know what the possible solutions are. We might say that the available philosophical
solutions never become impossible; but none of them is imposed or will ever impose
itself as the only possible solution. 25
A political problem is distinguished from a philosophical problem by its do-

main: it concerns, in one way or another, the use of power, the modes of selection
and range of action of those who operationalize it, the type of relation it estab-
lishes, the construction and deconstruction of the legitimacy of these relations,
and so on. It goes without saying that the definition of this domain is itself an
object of power relations, and is thus itself political.
A problem begins with an interpellation. In the words of John Dewey, this
is a matter of an “existential problematic situation.” 26 But attending to this in-
terpellation already supposes a problematizing activity on our part. 27 Thus a
problem is always associated with a question that must make sense of some-
thing unthought. It cannot be resolved via a program or methodology defined
in advance, otherwise it would not be a problem worthy of scholarly attention. It
24 - Rehfeld, “Offensive Political Theory,” 471.

25 - Jacques Bouveresse, Qu’est-ce qu’un système philosophique? Cours 2007 et 2008 (Paris:
Collège de France, new edition, 2012), <http://books.openedition.org/cdf/1715>.
26 - John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Holt, 1938), 498.
27 - Here we rediscover the great teaching of Dewey: taking the indeterminate situation into
consideration signifies that the inquiry has already begun. See Dewey, Logic p. 104sq; see also
Michel Fabre, Philosophie et pédagogie du problème (Paris: Vrin, 2009).
What is Political Theory For? - XI
implies an uncertainty. 28 A problem is therefore not the same thing as a theory,

which is a chain of problems and concepts forming a coherent, but general sys-
tem. The philosopher Barbara Skarga sums it up very well:
When someone tells us that he analyzes the theory of democracy, we are immediately
beset by doubts, uncertain as to whether he means the Athenian, socialist, or Toc-
quevillian theory. On the other hand, if he claims to be interested in the problem of
democracy, we understand very well what he’s driving at. 29
A problem is objective insofar as it imposes itself on thought and, over time,

acquires a stability, a proper existence; but it is contextual and value-relative,
insofar as a certain body of knowledge is necessary to construct it as a problem

and to give it a raison d’être for “our” preoccupations.
A problem, in order to be perceived as a problem, must emerge; and this
emergence is aided by our knowledge, by the past, by that which thought has left
us as an inheritance. But what is proper to a problem is that it will call into ques-
tion this epistemological field, or prior knowledge in which we are immersed.
However, as we said, problematization is not the generalization of a skeptical
doubt that would prevent us from building on previous knowledge. We might
think here of Wittgenstein’s mouse:
If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse has come into being by spontaneous genera-
tion out of grey rags and dust I shall do well to examine those rags very closely to see
how a mouse may have hidden in them, how it may have got there and so on. But
if I am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things then this
investigation will perhaps be superfluous. 30
Although the inquiry begins with the problem (how did this mouse get
here?), which supposes a possible rupture in the fabric of the ordinary or of com-
mon sense (it shouldn’t be there, but it is not so extraordinary), it is channeled by
prior knowledge (I know that this mouse didn’t appear suddenly, this approach
can be abandoned given certain confirmed biological certainties).
28 - “A philosophical problem,” Wittgenstein writes, “has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about.’”
In Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell,
1999), 49e. And Isaiah Berlin states “One of the surest hallmarks of a philosophical question—for
this is what all these questions are—is that we are puzzled from the very outset, that there is
no automatic technique, no universally recognised expertise, for dealing with such questions.
We discover that we do not feel sure how to set about clearing our minds, finding out the truth,
accepting or rejecting earlier answers to these questions. Neither induction (in its widest sense
of scientific reasoning), nor direct observation (appropriate to empirical inquiries), nor deduction
(demanded by formal problems) seem to be of help.” Berlin, “Does Political Theory Still Exist?,” 4.
29 - Barbara Skarga, Les limites de l’historicité. Continuité et transformations de la pensée, trans.
Malgorzata Kowalska (Paris: Beauchesne, 1997), 45 [Granice historyczności (Warsaw: Państwowy
Instytut Wydawniczy, 1989)] (emphasis ours).
30 - Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 26e.
XII - Benjamin Boudou
Such activity is a hallmark of the everyday as much as the scientific. The dif-
ference lies simply in the valuation of the activity. Whereas one poses everyday
problems in view of solutions that appear to terminate the problem, solutions
matter to scientists insofar as they are the expressions and the relays of problems.
Neither is the continuity between scientific problematization and everyday
problematization a matter of consensus, since the idea of an epistemological
break lies at the heart of the definition of science. But if there is indeed a differ-
ence of degree between the two types of knowledge, it is not necessarily a differ-
ence in nature. For Alasdair MacIntyre, political theory is but a systematic and
more articulate version of common interpretations of the way in which people
understand the actions of others. 31 The same is true for Ellen Meiksins Wood:
although political thought can also be found in poems, novels, songs, speeches,
etc., there is nevertheless a difference of degree (rather than of nature) in politi-
cal theory, which is “a systematic analytical interrogation of political principles,
full of laboriously constructed definitions and adversarial argumentation.” 32 For
Waldron, also, there is necessarily a link between political theory and political
discourse in a broader sense, because both are activities of argumentation about
politics, law, economy, etc. Once again the difference is a matter of degree (ar-
gument is systematic, intelligible to all, that is to say explicable and justifiable
before anyone)—and also, as he adds humorously, a difference in the urgency
of making a decision: “Political theory is simply conscientious civic discussion
without a deadline.” 33
Pedagogical Function
Andrew Rehfeld notes ironically that political theory is often conserved in
universities to make students read. Which is certainly true, but if this were the
only reason then theory would be part of the humanities. Its place in political
science poses particular demands in relation to the canon. Two interpretations
of this issue are possible: one consists in making reading the activity of a histo-
rian, the other in making of the history of ideas not the object of an inquiry, but
a pedagogical resource. Since we believe political theory must address political
problems (rather than just problems posed by theorists), our preference is for
the second interpretation. The history of political ideas, as incarnated for exam-
ple in the Cambridge School, belongs to history, not political theory.
When the history of ideas takes as its object the intention of authors, it be-
longs to history or to literature. When instead it is genealogical—that is to say,
when it shows how political ideas shape institutions and relations of power—
then it really is a matter of political theory. 34 We must insist on the difference
between, for example, Edmund Fawcett’s book Liberalism: The Life of an Idea,
31 - MacIntyre, “The Indispensability of Political Theory,” 23.

32 - Ellen Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from An-
tiquity to the Late Middle Ages (London: Verso, 2008), 1.
33 - Waldron, “What Plato Would Allow,” 148.
34 - Rehfeld, “Offensive Political Theory,” 473.
What is Political Theory For? - XIII
which carries out a genealogy of a crucial idea that led to the emergence of cer-
tain contemporary political problems, and John Dunn’s The Political Thought of
John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Govern-
ment.” The radically historicist stance of the history of ideas is commendable for
its advancing of historical knowledge, but cannot seek to impose its approach to
texts upon political theory as a whole.
When Quentin Skinner denounces the mythologies at work in the history
of ideas, he certainly supplies a valuable public health warning against the lazy
repetition of the “classics,” but he actually prohibits their usage. Putting aside the
critique of the inaccessibility of the ancients, 35 which is more a hindrance than a
help to scientific work, the historicist approach to authors prevents our working
with them as we ourselves work. Jeremy Waldron puts it very well:
We cannot understand what Aristotle was doing in the Politics, for example, unless we
notice that among other things he thought it worth criticizing Plato’s conceptions in
the Republic and the Laws. We cannot understand the arguments in Leviathan some
eighteen hundred years later except in part as Hobbes’s attempt to repudiate Aristotle.
[…] In this age of exquisite hermeneutic sensitivity, we may be anxious to avoid the
anachronism of reading the traditional texts in the light of our own concerns. But the
authors whose works we are handling with this sensitivity had no such scruples them-
selves, and I think it is fair to say that our sensitivity to their context seriously distorts
our understanding of their philosophical intentions. […] [T]he authors also intended
their works to survive the historical vicissitudes that elicited them. 36
The paradoxical consequence of understanding the classics only in the light

of an insular context, in large part untranslatable for the contemporary under-
standing, is that it renders the tradition useless. Apart from a purely historical in-
terest, one must do nothing with it, lest one risk anachronistic misinterpretation.
But what makes these texts “greats” is that the propositions they make exceed
the currency of their relatively closed “theoretical space.” 37 In other words, there
is a persistence of problems that surpasses the problematic context or situation
within which they emerged. How can Skinner advocate a forgotten Machiavel-
lian freedom, how can one be Spinozist or Lockean, if one cannot testify that, in
one way or another, the problems raised by Machiavelli, Spinoza, or Locke have
a pertinence beyond the intentions of the author?
35 - For example in Isaiah Berlin and Ramin Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin
(London: Halban, 2007), 26: “[H]ow much do we know about Athens—the mentalité, or the ways
of life, in the days of Socrates or Plato or Xenophon? […] we do not know what the streets really
looked like, what kind of food they liked, what their speech sounded like, what they looked like […]
And yet Plato’s ideas mean something, indeed a great deal, to us today.”
36 - Waldron, “What Plato Would Allow,” 146–147.
37 - Pierre Bourdieu, On the State: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1989–1992 (Cambridge: Pol-
ity Press, 2014), 71: “One of the ways of checking an idea that is proposed to you consists in check-
ing, not its sources in the naive sense of the term, but rather the theoretical space in relation to
which this discourse is produced.”
XIV - Benjamin Boudou
This does not mean that theorists, with an overinflated opinion of them-
selves, should deign to converse only with the great Men of the past. Not all
theorists are imbued with the spirit of Machiavelli’s famous “Letter to Vettori.” 38
Fortunately, humility has overcome this humanist heroism. The interest in not
being concerned wholly with the context lies elsewhere. Here we must follow
Deleuze’s suggestion of a history of problems, which permits at once historical
work and the work of problematization. 39 In this sense, doing the history of
political theory and reading the “classics” is part and parcel of political theory,
on condition that we focus on the problems rather than the intentions of the
author. These problems are not eternal, but, as Isaiah Berlin writes, some of them
“persist longer than others.” 40 We continue to ask ourselves the question “What is
a just society?” because the problem of injustice and the problem of coexistence
between individuals with different aspirations are still with us. It is not a mat-
ter, then, of asking whether Plato anticipated communism, but of showing that
reading the Republic helps us understand why it is necessary to be just.
The great texts thus play a part in the pedagogical function because they teach
us to pose problems that challenge the intelligence, but are also points of entry
into an understanding of the transformations of our relationship with power
and to the political. They do therefore have a historical status—as Skarga writes,
the great texts are in themselves “very profound symptom[s] of change”—and a
heuristic status.
One might nevertheless ask whether the canon, as well as not being diverse, 41
is simply obsolete. If political theory is political as much as it is theoretical, then
the recourse to ancient authors may simply seem pointless or even counterpro-
ductive. Günther Anders in particular has acutely indicated this problem of de-
pendence on the classics:
Today we can no longer be content with interpreting the Nichomachean Ethics when
we are accumulating nuclear weapons. The comical aspect of ninety per cent of phi-
losophy today is insurmountable. The criticisms that have been made of me because
I have philosophized without taking account of the two thousand books of my ances-
tors and because I have not exploited these treasures, have little impact on me. I use
38 - Ronald Beiner, “‘Textualism’: An Anti-Methodology,” in Political Theory: The State of the

Discipline, ed. Evangelia Sembou (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 32.
39 - Gilles Deleuze, with Claire Parnet, Gilles Deleuze from A to Z [1996] (DVD, Semiotext(e), 2011),
“H as in History of Philosophy”: “we create [concepts] as a function of problems. Well, problems
evolve […] Creating concepts and constituting problems are not a question of truth or falsehood,
it’s a matter of meaning [sens] […] doing philosophy is to constitute problems that make sense and
create concepts that cause us to advance toward the understanding and solution of problems.”
See also Nicole Loraux, “Éloge de l’anachronisme en histoire,” Espaces temps: Les cahiers et Clio
87–88 (2004): 129: “Anachronism becomes necessary when the present is the most effective mo-
tor of the drive to understand.”
40 - Isaiah Berlin, “European Unity and its Vicissitudes,” The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chap-
ters in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Pimlico, 2003), 180.
41 - See the recent call to rename departments of philosophy departments of “Anglo-European
philosophy”: <http://nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-
what-it-really-is.html>.
What is Political Theory For? - XV
the world itself as a book, which I strive to translate into an intelligible and effective
language because it is “written” in an almost incomprehensible language. 42
Here it is philosophy, in its (somewhat caricatured) academic form, that is

being attacked. It is also in the name of such a critique that Hannah Arendt
dubbed herself a political theorist, not a philosopher: philosophy renders itself
incapable of thinking action, the unprecedented, and the real because it seeks
truth, ideas, and so on. 43 Once again here we discover the problem of the re-
sponsibility of the theorist, for the question that Anders poses also raises a moral
issue: What should one write in a period of crisis? What responsibility does the
writer or philosopher have in the face of events as dramatic as the “final solu-
tion,” fascism, the passivity of populations, or the capacity to destroy the earth
with an atomic bomb? 44
The pedagogical role of political theory, in particular when it mobilizes its
classic texts, must be to define and sharpen political judgment by confronting
us with particular political problems, and with attempts (albeit often vain) to
resolve them with a universal scope. If for Hobbes and Locke the English Civil
War and the question of exclusion were problems of the day, the theories and
concepts they deploy go well beyond practical recommendations, and this is why
we still read them today. It is the permanence of problems (the problems of
order, legitimacy, obedience, relations between individual and community, mi-
nority and majority, ethics and politics, etc.) that oblige us to commit to a work
of identifying these problems, and of the evaluation of our subjective relation-
ship with the political. Stanley Cavell illustrates this last point in describing his
reading of the contract theorists: the whole interest of their approach, he says,
reading Locke and Rousseau, is that it obliges us to reflect on our consent and to
examine our reasons for belonging to a political community:
The effect of the teaching of the theory of the social contract is at once to show how
deeply I am joined to society and also to put society at a distance from me […] [T]
he philosophical significance of the writing lies in its imparting of political educa-
tion: it is philosophical because its method is an examination of myself by an attack
upon my assumptions; it is political because the terms of this self-examination are
the terms which reveal me as a member of a polis; it is education not because I learn
new information but because I learn that the finding and forming of my knowledge
of myself requires the finding and forming of my knowledge of that membership […]
42 - Günther Anders, “Wenn ich verzweifelt bin, was geht’s mich an? Gespräch mit Günther
Anders [If I Despair, What Does it Matter to Me?—Interview],” in Die Zerstörung einer Zukunft—
Gespräche mit emigrierten Sozialwissenschaftlern, ed. Mathias Greffrath (Reinbeck bei Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 1979), 19–57.
43 - Hannah Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” Social Research 57, no. 1 (1990): 73–103.
44 - Alain Renaut has recently presented his own solution to the problem, by interrogating philo-
sophical resources—and their limits—in the face of the “extreme,” in particular the radical pover-
ty he encountered in Haiti. But despite the overt ambition of breaking with philosophy, the author
continues to pursue a Kantian line for which norms are detached from the world, and the “world
of models” can be analyzed independently of the “world of actors” (to use the terminology of
Christophe Bertossi in La citoyenneté à la française. Valeurs et réalités [Paris: CNRS, 2016], 20sq).
XVI - Benjamin Boudou
Such writing is, therefore, not likely to be taken very seriously if it is read […] as a set
of prescientific jottings about existing states. 45
The goal is not erudition, 46 but an education in judgment. The classics are
landmarks that must be known in order to move more adroitly within the theo-
retical and political field. Even if in fact we are dealing with rationalizations or
abstractions which, as we have seen, can sometimes sin by excess of idealization,
this is no excuse to do away with them. The contour lines on a map cannot re-
place the painful experience of climbing a steep incline when scaling a mountain,
but it is necessary to be acquainted with them in order to know what awaits you
and, therefore, to prepare better for it.
Critical Function
The critical function of political theory rests upon the simple, optimistic idea
that one can always do better and understand better. Political theory is situated
at the crossroads of that which “is” and that which “could be.” 47 Not that which
“should be,” which would suggest too grand a claim to justification, but that
which could be better than the present situation. Political theorists take the facts
into account, but believe in the possibility of doing better. This relatively mod-
est attitude is at the heart of the approach generally described as realist. Authors
such as Judith Shklar, Iris M. Young, Bernard Williams, and Ian Shapiro try to
mark themselves out from the overambitious constructions that seek to rethink
our institutions from top to bottom on the basis of general principles. For them
it is more a question of identifying injustice or domination as it is lived by the ac-
tors themselves, so as to envisage improvements which, while perhaps marginal,
are reasonable given the world as it is:
During the 1980s, many who lived in Soviet bloc countries could detail the fine con-
tours of their oppression, as could victims of apartheid in South Africa. Yet they could
supply only haziest accounts of what their worlds would be like without communism
or apartheid, and why they would be better. […] The inability to depict the details of
a viable alternative was not a failing on their part. It reflected the reactive character
of the human condition. People reject what is painful and oppressive in the hope that
45 - Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 25.
46 - Jean-Fabien Spitz, La liberté politique. Essai de généalogie conceptuelle (Paris: PUF, 1995),
11: “If historical research results in saying in the terms of the past what we believe we know in the
present, then there is no interest in it, because it comes down to dressing up, through a concern
with who knows what respectability or historical profundity, the debates of the present by placing
them within a trompe l’oeil décor that has the appearance, but not the reality, of the past.”
47 - Of course we find the same ambition in Rousseau, who opens his Social Contract as follows:
“I want to inquire whether in the civil order there can be some legitimate and sure rule of admin-
istration, taking men as they are, and the laws as they can be.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The
Social Contract,” in “The Social Contract” and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor
Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 41.
What is Political Theory For? - XVII
something better can be created, even though the destination and path forward are
often, perhaps congenitally, shrouded in fog. 48
Political theory must therefore supply us with the means to better identify
“what will not be accepted.” 49 Not the means for perfect freedom, or the ideal
foundations of a society in which every member will remain faithful to prin-
ciples decided in common by all, but the practical conditions of domination
and the institutional means to diminish it. 50 The work of theory remains crucial
in order to identify what domination is, but critical ambition has displaced a
concern for the correct definition of concepts toward the concrete evaluation
of situations where a well-defined concept would allow these situations to be
improved. It is in such terms that Brian Barry recounts his experience of a col-
laboration between social sciences and political theory in the creation of the
Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. 51 The work of defining what constitutes
social exclusion, the identification of the “exact nature of the evil,” is at the heart
of his work as a theorist, then in opposition to that of his colleague trained in
economics. Without entering into the detail of the text, Barry demonstrates for
example that a good definition is only good if it manages to better identify the
problem, and thus the solutions. This may sound like a truism, but in gauging
the practical implications of a bad definition or a poorly-constructed normative
postulate, we can understand the importance of theoretical work.
The critical function of political theory can be summed up in the two senses
that Michel Foucault gives to “problematization.” On one hand, it is a historical
process of the entry of a problem into the “field of thought.” From the normal
run of things there emerges a problem, which is translated into concepts and
data so as to be resolved. The objects of the inquiry are the conditions of ap-
pearance of problems and solutions. 52 On the other hand, problematization is a
deliberate activity that aims to question what institutions have rendered banal—
48 - Ian Shapiro, Politics against Domination (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), 4.
49 - Michael Walzer strongly insists on this characteristic hope of social critique: “Perhaps there
is one common mark of the critical enterprise. It is founded on hope: it cannot be carried on with-
out some sense of historical possibility. Criticism is oriented toward the future: the critic must
believe that the conduct of his fellows can conform more closely to a moral standard than it now
does or that their self-understanding can be greater than it is now or that their institutions can be
more justly organized than they are now.” Michael Walzer, The Company of Critics: Social Criticism
and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 17; see also Mi-
chael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
50 - See recently Jeremy Waldron, Political Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2016).
51 - Brian Barry, “Why Political Science Needs Political Theory,” Scandinavian Political Studies
25: 2 (2002): 107–115.
52 - Michel Foucault, “Polemics, Politics and Problematizations,” in The Foucault Reader, ed.
Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 383–385; “The Concern for Truth,” trans. Alan Sheri-
dan, in Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984, ed.
Lawrence D. Kritzman (London: Routledge, 1990), 255–270. On the transformation of brute facts
into data as the scientific activity par excellence, see John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty: A Study
of the Relation of Knowledge and Action in The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol. 4: 1929 (Carbondale-
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), 99sq.
XVIII - Benjamin Boudou
that is to say, to render problematic that which is taken for granted. 53 On one
hand, then, problematization is critique in the strict sense: it brings to light the
unthought of practices that have deleterious consequences for human activity;
on another side it is deconstructive, it interrogates the very fact that a practice or
institution has become familiar and accepted. In both cases, it becomes possible
to denounce a routinization and normalization that has become invisible to the
actors upon or among whom this practice operates.
Ethical Function
Finally, there is a fourth function of political theory, one that is generally
neglected: its ethical function. It concerns not only those who do political theory
but also those who read it, and, again, in this respect political theory is as one
with the human sciences. The will to understand the world (heuristic function),
to judge it (pedagogical function), and to propose improvements to it (critical
function) flow from an existential ambition to change one’s life. As Wittgenstein
tells us: “just improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to better the
world.” 54 Leaving aside the individualist cynicism of this proposition, a continu-
ity can be grasped between the ethical aim (the examined life) and the political
aim, which Paul Ricoeur sums up as follows: “the good life with and for the other
in just institutions.” 55 Three conclusions can be drawn from this.
Firstly, the raison d’être of the political theorist must be an existential con-
cern for the res publica—that is to say, a firm belief in the continuity between the
individual and society on one hand, and between ideas and actions on the oth-
er. Let us call this the passion or vocation of the political theorist—one cannot
dedicate oneself to a vocation so arduous (given the current state of French aca-
demia) without a certain act of faith. Ideas and values have importance, they play
a part in the way in which power is distributed, and they therefore deserve to be
studied, taught, criticized, and defended. We consider that certain ideas can help
us in fighting domination, or that certain practices place certain values in peril, 56
and we must recognize that theories can give responses, correct errors, imagine
solutions. The relativity of these theories, the precariousness of the responses,
the persistence of errors or the abstraction of solutions cannot be allowed to
deplete the energy deployed by every intellectual enterprise that has politics as
its object. The best rallying cry is Schumpeter’s: “To realize the relative validity
of one’s convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a
civilized man from a barbarian.” 57 Whether theory is normative, interpretative,
53 - Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” [1984], in The Foucault Reader, 32–50.

54 - Cited in Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage, 1991), 213.
55 - Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago and London: Chicago
University Press, 1992).
56 - Sheldon Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” The American Political Science Review 63,
no. 4 (December 1969): 1080.
57 - Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1976), 235.
What is Political Theory For? - XIX
or genealogical, it exposes the limits of our thinking, and therefore pushes us to

think better and do better, in conditions of pluralism and conflictuality.
In addition, the political object by definition makes us sensitive to relations
of power. And so the theorist has an emancipatory vocation by virtue of the very
fact of his making them explicit. If intellectual curiosity is an everyday resource
that motivates one to read, write, or teach, the responsibility mentioned above
consists in rendering us all more conscious of the way in which power functions,
and tends toward domination. A realist political theorist is guided at the very
least by a certain Spinozism: knowledge is freedom. It is in understanding better
and better what affects us and what determines us that we can live a life more
free. If it does not make us wiser, political theory contributes towards making
the world more “livable” by posing the question perfectly stated by Leca: “What
should the world be in order for us to be able to live in it ‘humanely’”? 58
Finally, here we rediscover Rawls’s ambition for reconciliation: political
theory channels sad passions by politicizing them. As Éric Weil states, “without
theory, there is only affective malaise and violent revolt, both indeterminate and
unexplained, that is to say impossible to soothe or to overcome.” 59 Theory does
not appease conflict by wagering on a consensus to come, but it does summon
us to rationalize it. By virtue of this, the need for analytical clarity in political
theory is not a sign of the imperialism of Anglo-American philosophy, but rather
a kind of democratization: argumentation requires a clarity in its statements so
that everyone concerned by these statements can understand them. 60 When we
call theory “political,” then, we are not simply designating its object, but also its
“public” in the pragmatist sense of the term. The determination of problems, the
elaboration of the ends sought, and the clarification of values, are activities that
have consequences beyond the inner circle of theorists: they play a direct part
in the constitution of a public. Because true philosophers are those who occupy
themselves with the problems of men and women (and not the problems of
philosophers), 61 they have an active part to play and a responsibility in the con-
struction of our political experiences. To be subject to domination is first of all a
concrete experience; but to understand what it is, what it has produced, and the
concept of non-domination that it calls for, is to transform that experience into
knowledge, to discover relations between this experience and other experiences
58 - Leca, “La théorie politique,” 157–158. See also Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Dis-
ability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 280: “Humanity
is under a collective obligation to find ways of living and cooperating together so that all human
beings have decent lives.”
59 - Éric Weil, “Philosophie politique, théorie politique,” Revue française de science politique 11,
no. 2 (1961): 290.
60 - Waldron, “What Plato Would Allow,” 148.
61 - According to Dewey’s slogan: “Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for
dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers,
for dealing with the problems of men.” John Dewey, “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy,” in
The Political Writings, eds. Debra Morris and Ian Shapiro (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett,
1993), 8.
XX - Benjamin Boudou
(inequality, injustice, etc.) or between my experience and that of others, and to

produce possibilities of exit from the problematic situation. 62 As Dewey writes:
[W]ithout resistance from surroundings […] the self [would not] become aware of
itself; it would have neither feeling nor interest, neither fear nor hope, neither disap-
pointment nor elation. Mere opposition that completely thwarts, creates irritation
and rage. But resistance that calls out thought generates curiosity and solicitous care,
and, when it is overcome and utilized, eventuates in elation. 63
Theoretical work enables us to lessen the “irritation and rage” we feel when
faced with an environment that is hostile or that resists our ambitions—not by
making us accept it, but by giving us the opportunity to interact with it.
Conclusion
Epistemological and methodological introspections are bound to remain

case-specific, otherwise theorists would succumb to a sort of methodological
textualism, with priority given to what has been said of the problem rather than
to the problem itself, to the articles of colleagues rather than to the object of the
inquiry. The possibility of political theory being derailed and precipitated into
a new scholasticism, as seen in various schools that discuss the work of a master
rather than the problems he or she addressed, is grave and endemic. But the
causes of this are not intrinsic to the discipline: as everywhere, the injunction
to publish is powerful, and the retreat of this particular subdiscipline is a conse-
quence of its institutional marginalization.
This has not been a plea to make political theory an autonomous discipline.
We only wished to indicate the particularly tragic situation for young theorists
in France today, and to present—no doubt in a rather too abstract manner—the
functions of political theory so as to justify its legitimacy within the human and
social sciences, and in particular in political science.
In attempting to sum up, it is first of all to be celebrated that Raisons Poli-
tiques has never swerved from this task since its creation some fifteen years ago.
Its primary ambition of insisting both on the link between the theoretical and
the empirical and on the interest of studying and developing theoretical dis-
course is of a piece with the pragmatist approach taken in this article. But it is
also sad to observe that the situation that interpellated the creators of this jour-
nal is the same one that worries us today:
The University—and all of its broader extensions—knows philosophy and the social
sciences, the circle of thought, of ideas and concepts, and that of the domain, of the
empirical and the concrete. But, as a matter of mistrust, of habit, and of principle, it
62 - On this approach to knowledge as action, and the articulation of the ideal as “possible”
(as opposed to the idea as “actual”) see Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, 235–240.
63 - John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Perigee/Putnam, 1934), 59–60.
What is Political Theory For? - XXI
tends to place closed doors rather than bridges between the two. It opposes or distin-
guishes when it should make connections and bring together. 64
Author
Benjamin Boudou, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of
Religious and Ethnic Diversity in the department of Ethics, Law and Politics. He is editor-
in-chief of the journal Raisons Politiques and is a former lecturer at Sciences Po. He is the
author of Politiques de l’hospitalité: une généalogie conceptuelle [Politics of Hospitality: A
Conceptual Genealogy] (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2017), and Penser les frontières: philosophie
politique de l’immigration [The Boundary Dilemma: The Political Philosophy of Immigration]
(in progress).
AUTEUR
Docteur en science politique, Benjamin Boudou est chercheur au Max Planck Institute for
the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity dans le département d’éthique, droit et politique.
Il est rédacteur en chef de la revue Raisons politiques et a enseigné plusieurs années
à Sciences Po. Il est l’auteur de Politiques de l’hospitalité : une généalogie conceptuelle
(CNRS Éditions), à paraître en 2017, et Penser les frontières : philosophie politique de
l’immigration (en préparation).
Abstract
What is the use of political theory?
In this paper, the author argues that political theory should be part of political science,
especially in France where political theory is largely undermined and underrepresented. He
begins with an analysis of the job market for political theorists, showing the disproportion
between the number of “qualified” (by the National Council of Universities) young doctors in
political theory and the number of positions. He then poses the problem of the usefulness
of political theory, both for other social sciences and society in general, and argues that
the legitimacy of political theory comes from the fulfillment of four essential functions:
heuristic, educational, critical, and ethical.
Résumé
À quoi sert la théorie politique ?
Cet article part du constat d’un manque de légitimité de la théorie politique afin de mieux
en souligner l’intérêt pour la science politique et les sciences humaines. Dans un premier
temps, l’auteur présente un état des lieux des recrutements et thèses soutenues en théorie
politique pour montrer sa situation minoritaire et la défiance dont elle fait l’objet. Puis, en
interrogeant le rapport entre théorie et politique, l’auteur pose le problème de l’utilité de la
discipline vis-à-vis de sciences sociales et de la société civile. L’auteur défend la pertinence
de la théorie à partir des fonctions qu’elle doit remplir : une fonction heuristique, une
fonction pédagogique, une fonction critique et une fonction éthique.
64 - Editorial, “Penser la politique,” Raisons Politiques 1 (2001) : 1.
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Political Theory Is Not an Empire within an Empire

with the respective camps becoming radicalized accordingly. In France we con-

tions of political theory, so as to demonstrate its importance and legitimacy.

Must Political Theory be “Useful”?

The question of usefulness is often posed to researchers—from “Why do a

In its current usages, political theory is no longer so much a paradigm as a scientific

In this Kuhnian vein, a harsher interpretation might have it that political

The aim is thus to propose a roadmap. Although methodological discussion

We can supplement this argument, which may seem somewhat conservative,

The Functions of Political Theory

Rather than distinguish the disciplinary subcategories within political theory

What is a problem? A problem should not be understood as a default, a danger,

A political problem is distinguished from a philosophical problem by its do-

24 - Rehfeld, “Offensive Political Theory,” 471.

implies an uncertainty. 28 A problem is therefore not the same thing as a theory,

A problem is objective insofar as it imposes itself on thought and, over time,

insofar as a certain body of knowledge is necessary to construct it as a problem

31 - MacIntyre, “The Indispensability of Political Theory,” 23.

with them as we ourselves work. Jeremy Waldron puts it very well:

The paradoxical consequence of understanding the classics only in the light

38 - Ronald Beiner, “‘Textualism’: An Anti-Methodology,” in Political Theory: The State of the

Here it is philosophy, in its (somewhat caricatured) academic form, that is

53 - Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” [1984], in The Foucault Reader, 32–50.

or genealogical, it exposes the limits of our thinking, and therefore pushes us to

(inequality, injustice, etc.) or between my experience and that of others, and to

Epistemological and methodological introspections are bound to remain

64 - Editorial, “Penser la politique,” Raisons Politiques 1 (2001) : 1.

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