What Does "Political" Mean?

Eugene F. Miller
Political is a ubiquitous and seemingly indispensable term in
the discussion of human affairs. We use it to speak of quite different kinds of things institutions, actions, conflicts, expenditures, a type of discourse, a branch of science, and such. We apply it to the life and thought of modern nations, ancient cities, and
primitive tribes. Even the internal affairs of businesses, unions,
schools and churches are sometimes called "political." In all these
cases, we assume that the term has, or at least can have, some
definite meaning. Yet it is difficult to say what, if anything,
"political" signifies in its various applications and how it signifies
what it does.1
The meaning of "political" is not just a problem for semantics.
It is a question that political scientists must confront at the outset
of inquiry, for inquiry in any science "can properly begin only
after one has specified in some way, vaguely and naively, as it
may be, the kind of thing he intends to investigate."2 Political
scientists are compelled to specify or take for granted some meaning of "political" in order simply to identify the political things.
Recent attempts to define "political" have typically followed
one or another of the rival accounts of linguistic meaning that
dominate contemporary thought. One of these accounts holds
that scientific meaning must be established through a process of
1
A recent examination of the meaning of the word politics that takes notice of this problem is Fred M. Frohock, "The Structure of'Politics,' " American Political Science Review, 72
(September, 1978), 859-70. As Frohock observes, "the range of things describable by the
word 'politics' is vast and uneven" (p. 865). Frohock rightly concludes that a strict "taxonomic" definition of politics, in terms of an essential or class property that extends
"through all events describable as political," is not possible (p. 867). Such a definition
would be necessary to give "politics" or "political" what I shall speak of as univocal meaning. Moreover, Frohock rejects, as I do, the accounts, growing out of Wittgenstein's principle of meaning as use, that tend to make the meaning of "politics" or "political" a matter
of convention. There is a considerable difference in the way that Frohock resolves this
problem of meaning and my own approach. Frohock looks for certain "core terms" or
"fixed structures" that are necessary, but not sufficient conditions of any concept of
"politics." These core terms, like taxonomic definitions, "state an invariant feature of
'politics' constant across references of the term" (p. 867), but they are not "essences" in the
strong sense. My approach, which interprets "political" as an equivocal term, avoids conventionalism without positing invariant properties or structures common to all instances
of the political.
2
Manley H. Thompson, Jr., "On the Distinction Between Thing and Property," in The
Return to Reason, ed. John Wild (Chicago, 1953), p. 140.

56

WHAT "POLITICAL" MEANS

57

verification. A scientific term should always have a univocal

meaning, which is fixed by reference to observable properties of
the things to which the term refers. Efforts to find such a meaning
for "political" are defeated, however, by the heterogeneity of the
things called political and by the inaccessibility of the political
things to sensory observation. The meaning of "political" is
neither univocal nor empirical. The other leading account of
linguistic meaning gives up the effort to fix the meaning of terms
by reference to things or their properties and tries to fix it instead
by reference to the way terms are used. Defining "political" in
terms of the principle of "meaning as use" is likely to lead,
however, to a thoroughgoing conventionalism.3
My essay will seek to show what "political" means, or at least
how the term signifies what it does, by applying some principles of
signification that are developed in the writings of Aristotle and the
Aristotelian tradition. I shall argue that when things are called
"political," they are being named equivocally. "Political" is thus an
equivocal term, but it is not one that is hopelessly ambiguous.
The term does not carry a univocal meaning across its various applications, but the meaning that it does have is fixed by reference
to things, so that it is not simply a matter of usage or convention.
TYPES OF EQUIVOCALS

Aristotle's distinction between univocal and equivocal naming

provides a valuable starting point for our consideration of what
"political" means. He draws this distinction in the following way
at the beginning of the Categories: things named univocally (synonyma) have in common both the name (onoma) and the definition
(logos tes ounas) answering to the name; things named equivocally
(homonyma) have a name in common, but a different definition. To
use Aristotle's examples, "animal" is applied univocally to a man
and an ox, for when we state in what sense each is an animal, the
statement or definition of the beingness that makes each of the entities an animal is the same. If, however, we were to apply the
name "animal" to a living man and a figure in a portrait, we
would be using the name equivocally, for the definition of what it
3
I have deal] with these issues in detail in "Positivism, Historieism, and Political Inquiry," American Political Science Review, 66 (September, 1972), 796-817; "The Primary
Questions of Political Inquiry," Review of Politics, 39 (July, 1977), 298-331; and "Metaphor
and Political Knowledge," American Political Science Review, 73 (March, 1979), 155-70.

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is that makes each an animal is different. 4 When things are

named equivocally, the same name is used for things that have no
common definition or form. T h e things are referred to by the
same word, but referred to in ways that vary according to the beingness of the things themselves. Aristotle thus speaks of the
equivocals on occasion as "things said in many ways" (pollachos
legomena).5

With this distinction between univocal and equivocal naming

in mind, we must next observe that there are different kinds of
equivocals. All meet the specifications laid down in the Categories:
they are things that have the same name, but different definitions.
Equivocals differ, however, in this respect: some things have the
same name because of a likeness or proportion that they bear to
one another, even though their "definitions" are different, while
other things have nothing at all in common to warrant the fact
that they have the same name. These latter things may be regarded as equivocals or "homonyms" in the pure or strict sense. It is
simply a matter of chance that they have a common name. A
glance at the dictionary will supply numerous instances of these
pure equivocals. For example, it seems to be merely a coincidence
that "date" refers to both the fruit of the palm tree and a day of the
month, that "dam" refers to both a female animal and a barrier
that holds back flowing water, or that "jet" refers to both a stream
of liquid or gas and a hard, black variety of lignite.
The problem that concerns us can now be stated more precisely. When we speak of various things as "political," we do not name
them univocally. A political party is a different kind of thing from
a political speech, a political expenditure, or a political science. A
party, a speech, an expenditure, and a.science differ in what they
are in their definition and beingness. Nevertheless, when we
refer to these various things as "political," we are not using the
term in a purely equivocal way. It is not merely accidental that
the common name "political" is applied to them. There is some
basis in the things themselves for giving them a common name.
The political things thus lie somewhere between univocals, on the
one hand, and pure equivocals, on the other. Just where they lie
should become clear as we examine Aristotle's treatment of those
equivocals that are not purely coincidental or by chance.
4
Categories la 1-12. The equivocity of the example that Aristotle uses here, zoon, is not
fully apparent in translation, for in Greek, the term means both "animal" and "painting."
5
On Aristotle's use of pollachos legomena, see Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the
Aristotelian Metaphysics, 2nd ed., rev. (Toronto, 1963), pp. 107-115.

WHAT "POLITICAL" MEANS

59

In one place or another in his writings, Aristotle recognizes

several different types of noncoincidental equivocals. Wolfson, for
example, identifies five different types that are to be found both in
Aristotle's writings and in the Aristotelian tradition.6 Of these
types, we shall be concerned with only two: the pros hen (literally,
"to one") equivocal; and the equivocal that is based on analogy.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle mentions both of these
types of equivocals in opposing the Platonic argument that there
is one form or idea of the good in which all good things participate
and to which the term "good" refers. The core of Aristotle's case
against the Platonic idea of the good is this: since the term "good,"
like the term "being," is predicated of different categories, e.g., of
entities, qualities, quantities, relations, and such, it cannot refer
to some one thing that is universally present in all cases. Even the
Platonists seem to grant that good things must be spoken of in at
least two ways the goods that are pursued and loved for
themselves and the goods that tend to produce or preserve these or
to prevent their contraries. Yet not even the things good in
themselves are called "good" by reference to a single idea, for different definitions of the good are given in the case of honor,
wisdom, pleasure and other things that are sought for their own
sake. Aristotle thus concludes that the good is not something common to things in the way of one idea. Good things are not named
univocally, because their definitions are not the same.
How then are they called good? They surely do not seem like things
equivocal by chance. Are they then called good because they are
from something one, or because they are all ultimately directed
towards something one (pros hen)? Or are they good rather by
analogy? for just as sight is good in the body, so is7 the mind in the
soul, and similarly another thing in something else.
As we see, Aristotle rules out the possibility that good things
are named in a purely equivocal way. They must thus fall
somewhere between the univocals and the pure equivocals. They
do not have the unity that the Platonists suppose in speaking of an
idea of the good, and yet they are not altogether different. Different things are called good because they have something in com6
Harry Austryn Wolfson, "The Amphibolous Terms in Aristotle, Arabic Philosophy
and Maimonides," Harvard Theological Review, 31 (1938), 151-73.
7
Nicomachean Ethics 1096b 26-30 (trans. Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being, pp.
116-17).

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mon, some likeness or proportion. Aristotle raises the possibility

that good things are named by reference to something one (pros
hen) or by analogy, but here he does not pursue the question of
whether either of these possibilities, or both, is correct.
"POLITICAL" AS A PROS HEN EQUIVOCAL

Let us look more closely at the pros hen equivocal. Things of

this type have the same name because of a common reference or
relation to some one thing. "Healthy" and "medical" are Aristotle's
favorite examples for illustrating pros hen equivocity. They are
used as follows in the Metaphysics to illustrate the argument that
"being" is expressed in various ways, but with reference to some
one thing and not as a pure equivocal:
Everything healthy is expressed in reference to health, one thing
through preserving health, another through producing it, another
through being a sign of health, and another because receptive of it.
And the medical by reference to medical science for one thing is
called medical because it possesses medical science, another through
being naturally adapted to it, and another through being a function
of medical science.8
Following up the example of "healthy," we might say that the
term is applied to exercise as something that preserves health, to
medicine as something that produces it, to a ruddy complexion as
a sign of health, and to an animate body as something receptive of
it. Each of these things has its own distinctive form or nature and
thus a definition that is different from the rest. Health, properly
speaking, is a certain disposition of the bodily organism. A body
that has this disposition would be the primary instance of
something "healthy." The form or nature of health is not found in
the exercise, the medicine, or the coloring of the skin. Nevertheless, these things are of such a nature as to have some reference
to health as found in the body, and it is for this reason that they
are called "healthy." This feature of pros hen equivocals is stated
concisely by Joseph Owens: "The nature expressed in each case is
found in only one of the instances. All the others have different
natures, but with a reference to the nature of the primary instance."9 As the example of "healthy" shows, there are various
8
9

Metaphysics 1003a 34 - b 5 (trans. Owens, p. 119); cf. Metaphysics 1060b 36 - 1061a 7.

Owens, Doctrine of Being, p. 119.

WHAT "POLITICAL" MEANS

61

ways in which the secondary instances of a pros hen equivocal are

related to the primary instance: "No specific relation or set of
specific relations between two things is necessary for one to be
named by reference to the other."10
The term "political" seems to be an example of a pros hen
equivocal. As G. E. L. Owen says of such equivocals, it has "focal
meaning," i.e., it has "many senses pointing in many ways to a
central sense."11 In order to understand what this central sense is,
it is necessary to identify the primary instance of a political thing
the thing that has the form or nature to which the secondary instances have reference. The etymology of "political" provides the
necessary clue to what we are looking for. The term is derived
from the Greek word polis, which designates a human community
of a particular type. Polis originally meant the citadel at the heart
of the city, but in time it came to mean the city as a whole, including the country dwellers who took part in its business and
politics. The primary instance of something political, and thus the
central or focal meaning of the term, is the political community,
the polis. Other things are called political by reference to this
primary instance.
The Greek political vocabulary provides us with many examples of things that are properly termed "political" by virtue of
their relation or reference to the political community. The polites is
the person who has a right to share in the distinctive work of the
polis the work of deliberating and judging. He is (to use a term
of Latin derivation) the "citizen" who enjoys full political rights.
The polites has reference to the polis as the element of which the
whole is compounded. The politeuma is the whole body of persons
who have the right to deliberate and judge, the civic body. The
word politeia also refers to the body of citizens, but it means
something more. Since the men who rule decide on the good
toward which political activity will be directed, politeia means also
the way of life of a community, its moral taste. It means the ordering or organization of a community with respect to political
authority and also the principle of justice according to which
authority is assigned to some men rather than to others. The
10

Miriam Therese Larkin, Language in the Philosophy of Aristotle (The Hague, 1971), p.

69.

11

G. E. L. Owen, "Logic and Metaphysics in Some Earlier Works of Aristotle," in

Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century, eds. Owen and During (Goteborg, 1960), p.
189.

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politeia has reference to the polis as the form that gives this community its distinctive character. The politikos is the politician or
statesman who under the best circumstances will have the practical wisdom or prudence, the politike, that is needed for directing
the affairs of the political community. 1 2
The things that may properly be called "political" are by no
means limited to those things whose names point by their derivation to the polis. In Aristotle's Rhetoric, for example, we find an account of the things that a speaker must be able to talk about in the
course of political deliberation and debate. In addition to the
politeiai and the laws that are suited to each of them, the political
speaker must know about revenues, expenditures, war and peace,
military power, the defense of the country, and the food supply.
These various things are "political" by virtue of their relation or
reference, in one way or another, to the polis, for example, as sustaining or ennobling it, as its cause or effect, and such. 13
Pros hen equivocity has important implications for understanding the nature of science, as Aristotle points out in the
Metaphysics. Just as all the things named "healthy" fall within the
scope of one science, so it is with the other pros hen equivocals, including "being": "For not only in the case of things which have one
common notion does the investigation belong to one science, but
also in the case of things which are related to one common nature;
for even these in a sense have one common notion." 14 The focus of
inquiry in such a science, however, will be that primary instance
by reference to which the secondary instances are named: "But
everywhere science deals chiefly with that which is primary, and
on which the other things depend, and in virtue of which they get
their names." 15
These considerations serve to explain why Aristotle devotes
the first book of his Politics to a discussion of the polis. Since
"political" is a pros hen equivocal, political science must first of all
make clear the nature of that primary thing, the political community, by reference to which the other political things are
named. Aristotle argues that every community aims at some
good, since every action is for the sake of something that seems
n

Si-c Ernes! Barker's Introduetion to his translation of The Politics of Aristotle (New
York, 1962), pp. lxiii-lxvn.
13
Rhetoric 1359a 30 - 1360b 3.
14
Metaphysics 1003b 13-15 (Oxford trans, by WC D. Ross).
15
Metaphysics 1003b 17-19 (Oxford trans, by W. D. Ross).

WHAT "POLITICAL" MEANS

63

good. The community that aims at some good in the highest

degree and, moreover, aims at the most authoritative of all goods
is the most authoritative and inclusive community. The political
community, the polls, is such a community, for its aim is the good
or happy life for man. 16 Our taking the polis as the primary instance of something "political" is not contradicted by the fact that
the major theme of Aristotle's Politics turns out to be the politeiai,
and more particularly the best politeia, rather than simply the
polis. The politeia is properly understood as the form of the polis,
the way it is ordered or constituted, and every actual polis comes
to view as formed already by some politeia. Truly to understand a
thing is to see it in its complete or perfect condition, so that the
polis itself must be seen in light of the best politeia.
"POLITICAL" AS EQUIVOCAL BY ANALOGY

The principle of pros hen equivocity gives us a plausible way of

accounting for the meaning of the term "political," or its Greek
equivalent, as the term was used by Aristotle and his contemporaries. This principle is not sufficient to account for the meaning of the term as we use it today. The reason for its insufficiency
is this: the primary instance by reference to which political things
originally were named has disappeared as an object of everyday
experience. "Healthy" continues to be a pros hen equivocal,
because health of the body is something that is as accessible to our
experience as it was to that of the ancients. Yet the polis, which is
the primary instance of something "political," has disappeared
from view. This point has been stated well by Harry Jaffa:
Our word "politics," although a noun, is the plural form of the adjective "politic." A parallel instance is the word "athletics," formed from
the adjective "athletic." Now athletics is what athletes do. The Greek
noun athletes from which our athletic and athletics are derived
survives virtually unaltered in our language. We know what
athletics is because we know what an athlete is. The latter is a concrete subject of observation while the former is an abstract general
characterization of his activities. But the Greek noun polis, which
does not survive in our language, is to politics what athlete is to
athletics. Politics, the abstract general characterization derived 17from
the Greek survives, but polis, the concrete subject, does not.
" Politics 1252a 1-6.
17
Harry V. (alia, "Aristo'lt:, in History of Political Philosophy, eds. Leo Strauss and
Joseph Gropsey (Chicago, 1963), p. 65.

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Adapting Jaffa's observations to our own analysis, we may say

that "athletic" is a pros hen equivocal today, as it was in ancient
times, because the primary instance, the athlete, survives, but the
disappearance of the polis makes it doubtful that the present-day
meaning of "political" can be understood this way.
The polis has been superseded by the modern "state" or "nation," and this type of association is something very different from
the polis. Indeed, a persuasive case can be made that the two are
fundamentally opposed. The most obvious difference between a
polis and a state or nation is their size. The polis consists of a city
and its surrounding territory, while a nation can extend across an
entire continent and include hundreds of millions of people. Yet
as the respective proponents of the polis and the nation have
pointed out, a drastic change in size changes the very nature of
the association. According to Aristotle, the polis is large enough
for self-sufficiency, but small enough to combine civilization with
freedom.18 Rousseau, one of the few modern defenders of the city,
argues that its size conforms to the natural limits of man's ability
to know and to care about others. 19 Writers such as Madison, on
the other hand, have preferred the nation precisely because of its
size. Madison finds in the extended republic a cure for the
violence of faction that is unavailable within the confines of a
city.20
The modern vocabulary of politics originates in political
theory that specifically opposes the sort of authoritative community that the polis represented. The polis was understood to aim at
the good or happy life for man, and the education of its members
in virtue was thought to be required by this aim. According to the
dominant modern view, however, the purpose of political society
is not to produce happiness, but to secure the conditions that permit each individual to pursue happiness as he understands it.
"Society" is the web or network of human relationships that arise
from the striving of individuals to attain their private ends, and
the "state" is the agency that guarantees the means or conditions
for this striving. Far from having a comprehensive authority over
the life of man, the state has only the authority that is necessary to
secure the rights of individuals and the safety of the whole society.
18
Cf. Politics 1276a 25-34, 1326a 5 - 1326b 26; Leo S t r a u s s , The City and Man (Chicago,
1964), p . 30.
19
Cf. The Social Contract, bk. I I , c h a p . 9.
20
Cf. Federalist No. 10.

WHAT "POLITICAL" MEANS

65

The polls was regarded as the human community that includes

within its own end the end or purpose of every other form of community, but as Jaffa observes, it is doubtful if the state can be
understood as a species of the genus community at all: "The state,
and the law of the state, can certainly be better understood as a
species of contract. By polls is meant a radically different relationship of the political community to human gregariousness than is
meant by these contemporary terms."21 Sometimes today we implicitly subsume polls and nation under a common genus, as when
we speak of the polls as a "city-state" in contradistinction to a
"nation-state." Surely, however, it is as misleading to think of the
polls as a species of "state" as it is to think of the state as a species of
community.
Given the fact that the polls has disappeared and been replaced
by associations of a fundamentally different kind, what can
"political" mean in its present-day applications? The term is not
used univocally, since it is applied to very different kinds of
things; and it is not a. pros hen equivocal, since the primary entity
to which the term properly refers has disappeared. Does its meaning depend simply on its use, as the followers of Wittgenstein have
argued? Do we mislead ourselves when we search for the real
meaning of "political" in things to which it might refer?
If what we call a "state" or "nation" were something altogether
different from a polls, the term "political," when applied to both,
would then be used as a pure equivocal, for example, to designate
things that have nothing in common but the name. Such a conclusion is suggested by Fustel de Coulanges, who speaks in the Introduction to his classic work The Ancient City, of "the radical and
essential differences which at all times distinguished these ancient
peoples from modern societies."22
Nevertheless, it is not by accident or chance that we speak of
our lives under government and law as "political." In reading of
deliberation and debate in the polls, we recognize issues and processes that are like those which we experience today. We are compelled to decide about such things as revenues, expenditures, war
and peace, military power, defense, the supply of food and other
resources, and legislation. We continue to order our lives together
in accordance with some perception of what is good and bad, just
and unjust, noble and base. Polls is not of the same species as
21
22

Jaffa, "Aristotle," p. 66; d. Strauss, City and Man, pp. 30-35.

Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City (Garden City, N.Y.), p. 11.

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"state" or "nation" or the other associations to which we apply the

term "political." Perhaps it is not even a member of a common
genus. These associations have a kind of likeness, however, and
our problem is to find a kind of naming that is appropriate to
likeness of this sort.
In the Metaphysics, Aristotle takes up the question of the ways
in which things can be "one." He observes that
some things are one in number, others in species, others in genus,
others by analogy. One in number are those whose matter is one;
one is species are those of which the definition is one; one in genus
are those whose location in a category is the same; and one by
analogy are those that are related as a third thing is to a fourth. The
later-mentioned types are always implied in the preceding ones. For
example, whatever things are one in number are also one in species,
while things that are one in species are not all one in number; but
whatever things are one in species are all one in genus, while things
that are one in genus are not all one in species, but by analogy;
while things that are one by analogy are not all one in genus.23
As we see, things can be one by analogy even when they belong to
a different genus.
By Aristotle's account, an analogous relationship involves at
least four terms, in which the second is related to the first as the
fourth is to the third. 24 To illustrate: as knowledge is to the
knowable object, so is sensation to the sensible object. The proportion can also be between things that inhere in something else,
for example, as sight is in the eye so the mind is in the soul, or as a
calm is in the sea, so is stillness in the air. 25 Aristotle had given an
example of this kind of proportion in speaking of the possibility
that things are called "good" by analogy: just as sight is good in the
body, so is the mind good in the soul.
As we saw earlier, there is a kind of equivocal naming that
rests on analogy. Analogical naming presupposes some sort of
proportional relation between four terms, such as when we refer
to intelligence as "sight" or speak of both sight and intelligence as
"good." A pros hen equivocal, by contrast, presupposes the relation
of only two terms that of a secondary instance to a primary.
These considerations suggest the following solution to the
problem of the signification of "political" in present-day applications: the state or nation bears an analogical likeness to the polis;
23

Metaphysics 1016b 31 - 1017a 3 (trans. Owens, p. 124).

24

Cf. Poetics 1 4 5 7 b 1 6 - 1 8 .

25

Topics 108a 7-12.

WHAT "POLITICAL" MEANS

67

and the term "political," when applied to both, is an equivocal by

analogy. Other types of association a business, a school, a
church, an empire, a tribe can also be called "political" by
analogy, even though their degree of likeness to the polis might be
outweighed by their differences. As Aristotle's account of "good"
shows, it is possible for a name to function as both a pros hen
equivocal and an equivocal by analogy, depending on the ways in
which it is used.26 Thus the use of "political" as a. pros hen equivocal
to refer to the things of the polis does not preclude its analogical
use to refer to things of the state or nation.
It is plausible to think that laws or taxes or speeches, as we
know them from our experience, are the same kinds of things as
laws or taxes or speeches as they existed in the polis. They have
the same definition and beingness. Thus when we speak of a "law"
of ancient Athens and a "law" of the United States, we may be
naming these things univocally. When we refer, however, to a
law, a tax, or a speech in contemporary life as "political," we are
naming these things analogically. Whether we intend it or not, we
suppose or imply a proportion between the relationship that these
things bear to a state or nation and their relationship to a polis.
A question of great importance to political inquiry is whether
one finds in the modern state or nation a "regime" that is
equivalent to what the ancients spoke of as a politeia. It seems
doubtful that this is the case. What we call a "regime" or "constitution" or "form of government" is not the same kind of thing as a
politeia. Moreover, modern democracy and tyranny are not the
same kinds of things as the politeiai that were so named. It is thus a
mistake to equate the "regime" of a nation with a. politeia. There is,
nevertheless, some recognizable and significant likeness between
them. The principle of analogy offers perhaps the best way of accounting for this likeness-in-difference. Politeia and "regime" are
named analogically, not only when "political" is applied to both,
but also when the name of one is applied to the other. Thus, for
example, when we apply the name "democratic regime" in speaking of both ancient Athens and the United States, we are implying
that the things so named are equivocals by analogy.

Cf. Metaphysics 1075b 8-10; Owens, Doctrine of Being, pp. 451-53.

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O N RECOVERING THE POLITICAL

Our analysis has reached the conclusion that the term

"political" means or signifies in an equivocal way. The things
called "political" need not have an essence or properties or even
fixed structures in common to warrant this designation.27 What
makes them political is either some reference that they have to one
thing, the polis, or some proportion that they bear to the things of
the polis.
This argument implies that it is necessary somehow to know
what the polis is in order to understand and speak meaningfully of
things as "political." In this concluding section, I want to defend
this assumption and to establish its validity even for scientific or
philosophical modes of speech and inquiry. Moreover, I want to
indicate how the primary sense of the political might best be
recovered.
Edmund Husserl once observed that to speak of the crisis of a
science is to indicate "nothing less than that its genuine scientific
character, the whole manner in which it has set its task and
developed a methodology for it, has become questionable."28
Political science has experienced such a crisis in the 1970's. In the
decades following World War II, the behavioral movement had
largely set the task and provided the methodology for political
science, but by 1970, behavioralism was under attack from many
sides, and there was talk, even in behavioral circles, of a
"postbehavioral revolution." At the theoretical level,
behavioralism had produced not the expected consensus, but
rather a succession of competing theories or conceptual
frameworks, no one of which could gain long-term ascendancy. In
27
Leo Strauss writes that "every political situation contains elements which are essential to all political situations: how else could one intelligibly call all these different political
situations 'political situations'?" (What Is Political Philosophy? [Glencoe, 111., 1959], p. 64). I
have departed from this more or less "Platonic" solution to the question of what "political"
means and proposed instead a solution based on Aristotle's doctrine of equivocal naming.
Nevertheless, I believe that this substitution makes even more compelling Strauss's argument (reproduced below) that we must return to the classics in order to recover the
prephilosophic understanding of political things out of which political science emerges. A
return to the classics is necessary not only because our thinking about the political has
been affected by a tradition of political philosophy, but also because the primary entity
which embodies the essence of the political and by reference to which political things are
named the polis is no longer available to our direct experience.
28

E . H u s s e r l , The Crisis ojEuropean

Sciences and Transcendental

Phenomenology:

An

Introduc-

tion to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans, and introduction by David Carr (Evanston, Illinois, 1970), p. 3.

WHAT "POLITICAL" MEANS

69

the absence of the integration that a common theory or conceptual

framework might have provided, particular behavioral studies
tended to have an isolated, piecemeal character. Yet disillusionment with behavioralism did not arise primarily from its failure to
develop according to expectations. What became radically questionable was behavioralism's conception of the nature of political
inquiry, including its methods and its goals. As we enter the
1980's, no agreement has been reached as to the tasks and
methods of political science, and the question remains as to
whether or not our political investigations have a genuinely scientific character.
What is the remedy for a science in crisis? Husserl argued that
a science can recover the sense of meaning or purpose that was
evident to its founders by returning to the world of prescientific or
pretheoretical experience from which the science first emerged. In
the "life-world" (Lebenswelt), as Husserl terms it, we can recover
the originating experiences that underlie a science and provide its
meaning or significance. The life-world is the world whose givenness or reality we take for granted in all of the affairs of daily life.
It is the evident context or horizon of those familiar objects that
serve our needs and of those encounters that we have with our
fellow human beings. The life-world is known to us by immediate
experience prior to any reflection of a scientific or theoretical sort.
It is the world from which science arises as well as the world which
science always presupposes. The questions that give rise to
science in the first place come to view within the framework of the
life-world, and science always rests on insights or self-evidences
that are experienced there. The life-world functions constantly as
the ground or "subsoil" of scientific inquiry. When a science loses
touch with this indispensable ground, it also loses the sense of its
own meaning or significance.29
Husserl's observations help us to understand the crisis of contemporary political science and to see how this crisis might be
overcome. A science of politics that arises directly from political
life will reflect, in its guiding questions and concepts, the
awareness of political things that men gain from their experience
of political life and their participation in it. No doubt the
emergence of political science requires some sense of the inadequacy of ordinary political understanding the sense that it lacks
Ibid. pp. 122-35.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

clarity and consistency, that it is imprecise, that it raises questions

for which it has no satisfactory answers. Yet in searching for
political knowledge that is clear, consistent, precise, and conclusive, the political scientist takes for granted the context of
meaning that is provided by the ordinary understanding of
political things. Once a tradition of political science has been
established, a process that Husserl calls "sedimentation" begins to
take place. The possibility of political science and the need for it
are taken for granted, so that we are no longer compelled to reflect
on the elementary question of why there should be a science of
politics in the first place. Theoretical concepts that had arisen out
of a direct awareness of political phenomena are now available for
use without any requirement that those who use them confront
these phenomena themselves or relive the insights and experiences that went into their original formulation. The
theoretical enterprise develops a life and momentum of its own, so
that the development of political theory comes to be determined
less by practical interests or questions arising from prescientific
political awareness than by interests or questions that are dictated
by the theoretical enterprise itself. Conceptions of scientific
methodology and explanatory models that have originated in
other spheres of inquiry are taken over by political scientists and
applied to the study of political life. Eventually, theoretical accounts of politics come to bear little resemblance to the ordinary
understanding of political life. Rather than enhancing our
understanding of the political phenomena, they serve instead to
obscure our view of them. Some such process of sedimentation as
this seems to be responsible for what some critics have called the
"apolitical" character of contemporary political science.
Husserl's analysis suggests that a science of politics might
regain a sense of purpose by returning to the phenomena of
political life to the political things as they make their appearance
to men in political life and attempting to "reactivate" or relive
the insights and evidences from which political science originated.
Surely there is great attraction in this invitation to begin political
inquiry afresh from a direct confrontation with the phenomena of
political life. Can we assume, however, that the life-world
phenomena from which political science first originated are accessible to us in our own immediate experience? In an essay on
"The Origin of Geometry," Husserl speaks of our capacity for
reactivating the primal beginnings of this science. Although we

WHAT "POLITICAL" MEANS

71

may know little about the historical surrounding world (Umwelt)

of the first geometers, our own practical experience of corporeal
things of bodies and their shapes, surfaces, edges, angles, and
magnitudes gives us a basis for recovering "the primal selfevidences" that underlie the science of geometry.30 Yet is the
political a permanent feature of the life-world in the way that
material bodies are? Even assuming that there are invariant structures of political life which are as present today as at the time that
political science originated, is it possible for us to recover this
structure of meaning by reflecting on our own prescientific experience of political life? Can we leave aside the concepts and
presuppositions that centuries of political theorizing have produced and confront political life as it appears to the prescientific
consciousness?
Problems such as this led Leo Strauss to contend that a return
to the prephilosophic origins of political science is best accomplished through the study of classical political philosophy.
Strauss argues that modern political science "consists to a considerable extent of inherited knowledge whose basis is no longer
contemporaneous or immediately accessible."31 What he means is
this: our opinions or ideas about politics are mostly abbreviations
or residues of the thought of the past rather than the products of a
direct experience of political life. The modern idea of the "state,"
for example, emerged not simply from the experience of states,
but partly from "the transformation, or reinterpretation, of more
elementary ideas, of the idea of the city in particular."32 The foundations of modern political science thus tend to be "covered up." 33
These foundations lie in the speculations of political science or
political philosophy in its original or classical form. Classical
political philosophy acquired its fundamental concepts by starting
from political phenomena as they present themselves to the
prephilosophic consciousness. It thus enjoyed a contemporaneity
with its basis which no longer exists in modern political thought.
If we are to transform our inherited knowledge into genuine
30
This essay is reprinted as Appendix VI to the English translation of The Crisis of European Sciences, pp. 353-78. For a helpful discussion of this essay, see Jacob Klein,
"Phenomenology and the History of Science," Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund
Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (New York, 1968), pp. 143-63.
31
S t r a u s s , What Is Political Philosophy?, p . 7 7 .
32
Ibid., p . 7 4 .
v
33
Ibid., p. 76; compare Husserl's notion of "sedimentation."

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

knowledge, we must "revitalizfe] its original discovery"; 34 and this

revitalization requires us to recover the common-sense understanding of political things from which political science properly
originates. The classical writings are indispensable to this task.
They display a common-sense political understanding that is
unaffected by a tradition of political philosophy, and they show us
the emergence of a science of politics out of this common-sense
understanding. 3 5
These reflections on political inquiry have led to the same conclusion as our analysis of the meaning of the term "political." In
order to speak intelligibly of political things and to understand
them, we are compelled to seek some insight into the nature of the
polis as a distinctive kind of human community and into the fundamental differences between the polis and other ways of
associating to achieve common purposes. Since this insight is no
longer available to us directly from experience, we must turn attentively to the classical writings in political philosophy, whose
theme is the polis and its right ordering.

34
35

Strauss, What h Political Philosophy?, p.77; compare Husserl's notion of "reactivation."

See Strauss, City and Man, pp. 9-12.