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Hegel's historical and political thought can best be understood if we understand its relationship to Rousseau's political theory and Kant's philosophy of history. Hegel's conception of the modem state closely resembles Rousseau's ideal community which was based upon rational freedom realized through a general will and reinforced by custom and tradition which shaped the character and interests of the citizens. However, Rousseau's community was utopian-it could not be realized in the modem world. It was incompatible with commerce and trade which promote particular interest and thus corrupt custom and erode the general will. These matters will be discussed in Section III. To explain the possibility of the ideal state in the modern worid, Hegel turns to Kant's philosophy of history where commerce, trade, and confliccing particular interests themselves lead to what morality the categorical imperative or the general will-would demand. Kant's ideal state, however, completely lacks custom, tradition, and community-what Hegel calls "Sittlichkeit." These matters will be discussed in Section II.

Kant combined two traditional approaches in his political theory, reference to a utopian and ideal universal moral order in common with Plato, Thomas More, and Jean Jacques Rousseau and an analysis of the pursuit of individual self-interest leading to the establishment of laws that enable citizens to satisfy their interests, like Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Adam Smith. Kant focused on the international level, arguing that following the categorical imperative would arrange a society equitably while national commercial self-interest would lead to a league of nations to adjudicate international disputes. Kant was unique in providing both a theory of an ideal society and a method to achieve it.

THIS ESSAY CONSISTS OF A COLLECTION OF ARGUMENTS WHICH have been more fully developed elsewhere but are presented here in rather summary form in order to point towards a fundamental problem concerning the present status of political theory in the discipline of political science. This problem is not easily defined; but the difficulty recalls Alfred Cobban's complaint twenty-five years ago that political theory had become disen aged Lom 'political facts' and 'political practice' and transformed into an 'academic discipline'. My concern is with the 'philosophization' of political theory. By this I do not mean simply that political theory is not relevant to politics or has become detached from actual political issues – although this is probably quite true – but that it has tended to become a residue of arguments in academic philosophy. The bios theoretikos and the bios philosophikos have become indistinguishable.

GREEN AND SHAPIRO'S 'PATHOLOGIES OF RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY' FAILS AS A CONVINCING CRITIQUE OF RATIONAL CHOICE APPLICATIONS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE BECAUSE IT LOCKS ITSELF INTO A STATISTICAL FORM OF ASSESSMENT. RATHER THAN SEEING THE CONSTRUCTIVE SIDE OF RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY, BOTH AS AN ENGINE OF THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT AND AS A SOURCE OF NON-OBVIOUS EMPIRICAL INSIGHTS ABOUT POLITICS, GREEN AND SHAPIRO DEPART FROM THE PROCEDURE IN MOST SCIENCES, COMPARING RATIONAL CHOICE AGAINST AN IDEAL RATHER THAN SOME CONCRETE ALTERNATIVE. FINALLY, THEY FAIL TO NOTE THE RECENT EMPHASIS ON SOPHISTICATED EMPIRICAL TESTING OF RATIONAL CHOICE HYPOTHESES.

"Ideal and Nonideal Theory in Political Philosophy" published on by Oxford University Press.

The relationship of the world of ideas to the world of events would appear to be securely established today. It is generally acknowledged that ideas "have consequences," and that in turn they are themselves consequences of events. But recent preoccupation with this problem has perhaps obscured an equally fruitful field of investigation, namely, that of the horizontal relationship among ideas in different areas of thought. I propose to examine here the relationship and the consistency between John Locke's general philosophy and his political theory. In the main, this task resolves itself into a comparison and correlation of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke's chief philosophical work, with his Second Treatise of Civil Government, his principal work in political theory; but I have made use also of other writings.My problem has been considerably complicated by Lock's failure to commit himself unequivocally on several of the most crucial questions to be discussed. He frequently used imprecise language, and, regrettably, sometimes made plainly contradictory statements. These lapses reflect a deep-seated unwillingness in Locke to pursue a line of thought to an unattractive conclusion, both in philosophy and in political theory.