Political Science · Western Political Thought
UGC NET July 2016 Political Science
Who among the following said: 'Aristotle's new general science of politics was not only empirical and descriptive, but even in some respects independent of any ethical purpose, since a statesman might need to be expert in governing even a bad state.'?
AE Barker
BGH Sabine ✓ Correct
CEB England
DGC Field
Correct answer: (B) GH Sabine — The description of Aristotle's politics as a new empirical and descriptive science, partly detached from ethical purpose, belongs to G. H. Sabine.
Explanation
★The description of Aristotle's politics as a new empirical and descriptive science, partly detached from ethical purpose, belongs to G. H. Sabine.
★George Holland Sabine made the remark in his A History of Political Theory, a standard survey of Western political thought.
★His point is that Aristotle treated politics as a science of how states actually work, so that a statesman could even master the running of a bad state.
★This empirical and comparative method, built on the study of 158 constitutions, separates Aristotle from Plato's deductive idealism.
★Ernest Barker, E. B. England, and G. C. Field are other writers on Aristotle but are not the source of this formulation.
★The contrast the exam recycles is Plato the deductive utopian against Aristotle the inductive empiricist, the father of political science.
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