“Political Theory Within and Without Political Science”
Douglas Chalmers Graduate Scholars Lectureship by Nathan Feldman
The field of political science is frequently shaped by a schism between political theory and the broader discipline. In this lecture, Nathan Feldman asks how, when, and why this rupture emerged. Discussing new archival findings, he shows how, between the 1940s and 1970s, a cadre of leading political theorists identified their vocation with humanism, presenting it as eternally opposed to practices of “positivists” and “methodists.” This lecture recounts how political theory went its own way and the consequences of it doing so.
Nathan Feldman is a Core Lecturer in Contemporary Civilization in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. He received his PhD in Political Science from Columbia in June 2024. His first book, A Liberal Science, will be a genealogy of political theory as a subfield of Anglophone political science.
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