Differences between the Philosophical and the Integrated Approaches to Study Politics are as follows:
Philosophical approach:
Philosophical approach to studying political science is advanced by Leo Strauss. According to Strauss Political theory is “the attempt truly to know the nature of political things”. Philosophy being the “quest for wisdom” “or quest for universal knowledge, for knowledge of the whole”, political philosophy is “the attempt truly to know both the nature of political things and the right, or the good, political order”. Political thought extends to both political theory and political philosophy. Political theory and political philosophy are complementary to each other, since “generally speaking, it is impossible to understand thought or action or work without evaluating it”.
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Strauss is critical of both “historicism” as advocated by Sabine and “social science positivism” for which Catlin has been pleading, the former being in his view “the serious antagonist of political philosophy”. Values, Strauss believes, are an indispensable part of political philosophy, and cannot be excluded from the study of politics.
All political action aims at either preservation or change, and is guided by some thought or evaluation of what is better and what is worse. A political scientist is expected to possess more than opinion. He must possess knowledge, knowledge of the good – of the good life or the good society. “If this directedness becomes explicit, if men make it their explicit goal to acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society, political philosophy emerges”.
“The assumptions concerning the nature of political things, which are implied in all knowledge of political things”, writes Strauss, “have the character of opinions. It is only when these assumptions are made the theme of critical and coherent analysis that a philosophic or scientific approach to politics emerges.”
Political philosophy, according to him, is the “attempt to replace opinion about the nature of political things by knowledge of the nature of political things”, “the attempt truly to know both the nature of political things and the right, or the good, political order.” Political philosophy in the comprehensive form has been cultivated since its beginnings, almost without any interruption, till very recently when the behaviouralists started raising disputes about its subject- matter, methods as well as functions, and challenging its very possibility.
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Integrated Approach:
If it is important not to allow political science to be lost in scientism or moralism, it is also important that both the scientific and the philosophic aspects of political theory should be properly understood and emphasised. But before we try to understand the scientific aspect of political theory, we should first understand what we mean by science, just as before we try to understand the philosophical aspect of political theory, we must understand what we mean by philosophy.
Science has been variously described as “a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws”, “knowledge, as of facts of principles, gained by systematic study”, “a branch or body of organized knowledge”.
A scientific approach to the study of a problem, therefore, involves two things: (a) the agreement on methods, and (b) the training of the human beings in scientific work. Taking these two aspects into consideration, Friedrich would define science as “a body of ordered knowledge, known to and progressively enlarged by the specialists in that field of knowledge through the use of methods which they as a group accept as workable ways for arriving at that particular kind of knowledge”.
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Science is, thus, “organized” knowledge and because there is a consistency of methods employed in the gathering of the particular knowledge of that science by various scholars, which gives it a logical coherence, scientific statements are capable of validation by other scholars. This definition of science, which it would be hardly possible to challenge, does not say that the same methods would be applicable to all the science.
In fact, the method of one may not be applicable to another. Taking the simple matter of generalization, no two sciences agree in the degree of generalization which would make them true sciences. Methods which are highly successful in the study of physics and chemistry may not be equally applicable to astronomy, but that does not take away from the “scientific- ness” of astronomy.
One might argue that they are similar at least in the sense that they both operate with precise quantitative data. Science, however, demands not only accuracy but also relevancy and adequacy of results. History has been made highly scientific during the last few decades. But the evolution of its “scientific” character has nothing to do with quantification – it is on the basis of a more scientific study of sources and a more critical use of the other types of evidence which has led to greater progress in the use of scientific methods in history.
Friedrich makes it very clear that, “neither the degree of generalization, nor the degree of quantification, are in themselves ‘absolute’ criteria of scientific progress, but must be evaluated in relation to the material in hand and to be assessed.” He quotes Aristotle with approval when he describes it as “the mark of an educated man” “to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits”.