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\u00bfQu\u00e9 es la Filosof\u00eda Pol\u00edtica? \/ I. El problema de la Filosof\u00eda Pol\u00edtica<\/span><\/p>\n

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Por Le\u014dnardus Str\u016bthi\u014d<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Le<\/span>\u014d<\/span>nard<\/span>\u012b<\/span> Str\u016bt<\/span>h<\/span>i<\/span>\u012b<\/span> verba<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

(3)<\/b><\/span> The belief that scientific knowledge, <\/span>i.e.<\/span>, <\/span>the kind of knowledge possessed or aspired to by modern science, is the highest form of human knowledge, implies a depreciation of pre-scientific knowledge. If one takes into consideration the contrast between scientific knowledge of the world and pre-scientific knowledge of the world, one realizes that positivism preserves in a scarcely disguised manner Descartes\u2019 universal doubt of pre-scientific knowledge and his radical break with it. It certainly distrusts pre-scientific knowledge, which it likes to compare to folklore. This superstition fosters all sorts of sterile investigations or complicated idiocies. Things which every ten-year-old child of normal intelligence knows are regarded as being in need of scientific proof in order to become acceptable as facts. And this scientific proof, which is not only not necessary, is not even possible. To illustrate this by the simplest example: all studies in social science presuppose that its devotees can tell human beings from other beings; this most fundamental knowledge was not acquired by them in classrooms; and this knowledge is not transformed by social science into scientific knowledge, but retains its initial status without any modification throughout. If this pre-scientific knowledge is not knowledge, all<\/span> scientific<\/span> studies, which stand or fall with it, <\/span>l<\/span>ack the character of <\/span>knowledge. The <\/span>preoccupation with scientific proof of things which everyone knows well enough, and better, without scientific <\/span>proof, leads <\/span>to the neglect of that thinking, or that reflection, which must precede all scientific studies if these studies are to be relevant. The scientific study of politics is often presented as ascending from the ascertainment of political \u201cfacts,\u201d i.e, of what has happened hitherto in politics, to the formulation of \u201claws\u201d whose knowledge would permit the prediction of future political events. This goal is taken as a matter of course without a previous investigation as to whether the subject matter with which political science deals admits of adequate understanding in terms of \u201claws\u201d or whether the universals through which political things can be understood as what they are must not be conceived of in entirely different terms. Scientific concern with political facts, relations of political facts, recurrent relations of political facts, or laws of political behavio<\/span>u<\/span>r, requires isolation of the phenomena which it is studying. But if this isolation is not to lead to irrelevant or misleading results, one must see the phenomena in question within the whole to which they belong, and one must clarify that whole, i.e., the whole political or politico-social order. One cannot arrive, e.g., at a kind of knowledge of \u201cgroup politics\u201d which deserves to be called scientific if one does not reflect on what genus of political orders is presupposed if there is to be \u201cgroup politics\u201d at all, and what kind of political order is presupposed by the specific \u201cgroup politics\u201d which one is studying. But one cannot clarify the character of a specific democracy, e.g., or of democracy in general, without having a clear understanding of the alternatives to democracy. Scientific political scientists are inclined to leave it at the distinction between democracy and authoritarianism, i.e., they absolutize the given political order by remaining within a horizon which is defined by the given political order and its opposite. The scientific approach tends to lead to the neglect of the primary or fundamental questions and therewith to thoughtless acceptance of received opinion. As regards these fundamental questions our friends of scientific exactness are strangely unexacting. To refer again to the most simple and at the same time decisive example, political science requires clarification of what distinguishes political things from things which are not political; it requires that the question be <\/span>raised and answered \u201cwhat is political?\u201d This question cannot be <\/span>dealt with scientifically but only dialectically. And dialectical treatment necessarily begins from pre-scientific knowledge and takes it most seriously. Pre-scientific knowledge, or \u201ccommon sense\u201d knowledge, is thought to be discredited by Copernicus and the succeeding natural science. But the fact that what we may call telescopic-microscopic knowledge is very fruitful in certain areas does not entitle one to deny that there are things which can only be seen as what they are if they are seen with the unarmed eye; or, more precisely, if they are seen in the perspective of the citizen, as distinguished from the perspective of the scientific observer. If one denies this, one will repeat the experience of Gulliver with the nurse in Brobdingnag and become entangled in the kind of research projects by which he was amazed in Laputa.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n