Civic Thought and Political Science
The past few years have seen the emergence of what appears to be a new field of inquiry in the academy. Rooted in the perspective of the citizen and focused on developing the knowledge required to promote healthy public life in a free society, this field of intellectual work has come to be called "civic thought."
A growing body of academic and journalistic writing has sought to articulate the ends and means of this new endeavor, which was spurred in part by major state universities' creation of programs devoted to reviving university-level civic education. First piloted at Arizona State University as a constructive response to a campus culture perceived as having grown intolerant of conservative discourse, many of these programs have received support from their state legislatures — and in some cases from bipartisan majorities.
The programs are diverse and independent of one another, but they suggest the potential for serious academic work focused on the study of civic questions. Interest in such work also already reaches well beyond these programs and looks likely to intensify in the coming years.
But as both its scholarly articulation and its presence on important campuses grows in the coming years, the friends of civic thought will have to confront some challenging questions about the field and its relationship to existing academic disciplines. Though civic thought draws on the knowledge of (and has attracted scholars from) a number of existing fields — history, the classics, literature, economics, and law, to name a few — it is perhaps most deeply intertwined with political science. How does the emerging field of civic thought relate to that long-established discipline? Are the two so at odds that one precludes the other? Or do their differences allow them to supplement one another in the quest for truth?
To answer these questions, we will need to explore how the field of civic thought both diverges from and converges with that of political science. Broadly speaking, civic thought differs from political science in three ways: in its approach to facts and values, in its concern for the particular versus the universal, and in its attitude toward the use of expertise in political life. It is worth considering each of these in turn.
THE FACT/VALUE DISTINCTION
Political science assumes the validity of the distinction between facts and values — between knowledge of what is and speculation about what ought to be. For reasons explained below, civic thought generally does not. For practical purposes, however, civic thought need not deny the validity of research completed on the basis of that distinction. Indeed, civic thought may see the fact/value-based findings of political science as valuable to its own efforts to develop the citizen's perspective.
The division between is and ought is usually attributed to 18th-century philosopher David Hume. Immanuel Kant also made a distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal realms — the first being the realm of what he called "the metaphysics of morals," the second being the realm of natural science. The distinction eventually became entrenched as fundamental to the social sciences. German sociologist Max Weber more than anyone fixed that distinction in the minds of social scientists, not least with his famous lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation."
In "Science as a Vocation," Weber surveyed the value of science and the ethics that underpin the scientific career. Science, he argued, is concerned with facts, and
determining the facts, establishing mathematical or logical relations among them, or defining the inner structure of cultural artifacts is an entirely different problem from determining the value of culture and its particular content, or, consequently, how one should act in political groups and within the civilized community as a whole.
Weber cautioned that although scientists personally find value in knowing facts and constructing explanations, they must beware of infusing other personal values into their scientific analyses.
In "Politics as a Vocation," delivered about a year after his lecture on science, Weber described — indeed, seemed to speak from personal experience about — the frustrations of democratic life. He concluded that "all ethically oriented action is guided by one of two fundamentally different, irredeemably opposed maxims: either an 'ethic of personal conviction' or an 'ethic of responsibility.'" The former emphasizes acting in accordance with one's beliefs; the latter focuses on an action's foreseeable results.
Weber's fact/value distinction has drawn criticism from moral philosophers like Elizabeth Anscombe and John Finnis, and from political philosophers ranging from Eric Voegelin to Leo Strauss to Alasdair MacIntyre, not to mention analytical philosophers who parse the distinction between description and evaluation.
The moral philosophers argue that considering whether something is good raises a question about its reality — in other words, about what is. But if that something is good, then it ought to be pursued. In other words, the distinction between what is and what ought to be is mistakenly drawn when discussing what is good; if something is good, that is a reason to pursue it — not always sufficient reason, of course, but a reason nonetheless.
The political philosophers, meanwhile, show that describing human or political reality is impossible in amoral terms. Aggression, threat, oppression, prosperity, peace, democracy — all of these are value-laden terms. Yet it is difficult to describe, much less explain, the political world without them; when new-fangled neutral alternatives are proposed, they are either vacuous (e.g., "interactions") or soon take on value valences themselves (e.g., "pluralism"). As these philosophers recognize, political reality invites not only our understanding, but also our judgment. Indeed, our initial judgments often spur our attempts at understanding.
One of the first things to understand about politics is that people see the world in different ways — not randomly so, but in ways that tend to align with basic partisan patterns. In other words, people's partisan perspectives lead them to see things differently from one another. In analyzing politics, therefore, one need always be on guard against one's own partisan bias. That's not to say one can shed his own bias and adopt some neutral stance that sees objectively from a perspective of "value-freedom"; better to strive, with Alexis de Tocqueville, not to see politics divorced from the parties, but to look further, to rise above at least immediate partisan disputes.
Considering what the moral philosophers say about values and the political philosophers say about facts, Strauss's quip that social scientists are too confident in describing facts and too diffident in assessing values seems about right.
But the problematic character — not to say theoretical incoherence — of the distinction between facts and values hasn't stopped the social sciences from building their edifices on it. Ironically, this seems to be because the distinction between facts and values is useful. I say "ironically" because the distinction is presented as scientifically valid — indeed, essential to the definition of science. This is what Weber meant, and what contemporary social scientists presume, when they assert the scientific status of their data and analysis.
Whatever one makes of the philosophic or scientific validity of the distinction, it is practically useful in describing the world in which we have to act. Two examples illustrate its usefulness.
The first example comes from the law. Every legal case contains a blend of facts and law. Ordinarily, questions of fact concerning the case are decided by the jury, while questions of law or right, which are normative, are decided by the judge. The distinction drawn between law and fact is a practical one: Whether a defendant killed with "malice aforethought" is treated as a fact for the jury to determine, but "malice" is hardly a value-free notion. Conversely, in deciding which laws apply to a case, judges make decisions about its factual circumstances. Here, jurors' and judges' common knowledge and sense resolve the theoretical challenges to the distinction between facts and values: Jurors see facts through law; judges find law that fits the facts.
The second example is the simple observation that other people's values are in a sense facts to an observer. Consider opinion polling. In principle, an opinion is unstable — it can be altered by knowledge or argument. Therefore, an opinion is always a "soft" fact — it is valid at the moment, but also subject to change.
Still, opinion can seem immovable: As Polemarchus asks in Plato's Republic: "Could you really persuade if we don't listen?" Though it may be possible to change recalcitrant opinion through indirect means or otherwise (Socrates, after all, does not himself concede the point, though his companion does), public opinion, or at least opinion in certain parts of the public, is often fixed and obstinate, at least in the short run. In brief, although others' opinions can in principle be altered, in practice they are often brute fact. This is important for the citizen to know: Opinions might be foolish, but they are still largely fixed; one's opponents and enemies might be unjust, but they may still fight.
Civic thought has to ask questions about justice and the good, to know both what they are and how they might be achieved. This is why the new schools taking up the subject have political theorists among their faculties: These theorists ask about and study the books that feature the most serious discussions of justice and the common good. But knowing how to achieve justice requires not only knowing ideals, but also acknowledging the hard facts about how unmalleable the world can be.
Are these two separate things to know, the end and the means? Contemporary social science, aiming to establish objective laws or patterns of human behavior, suggests they are. In theory, the social scientist explains how the world works, which presumably allows policymakers to engineer society in accordance with their own policy values. In reality, social scientists sometimes play both roles: A scientist may aim for perfect objectivity in an analysis, then switch hats and use the supposedly neutral findings as tools for a favored cause.
Because human beings act for reasons, not just as a result of impersonal causes, and thus act by choice, not only by necessity, the logic of empirical science that helps us understand the physical universe as it is cannot fully explain us to ourselves. To be sure, we are physical as well as intelligent beings, and since we often act unintelligently, the social science of causation can point out to us what we tend to overlook. And it can point out the unintended consequences of our actions (although as soon as these are known, people either change what they do or now intend those consequences).
Still, civic thought promotes an integrated approach to facts and values because it supposes that people act for reasons and are formed by choices — in short, that they are free, not determined — and so it promotes the virtue of prudence or practical wisdom, which political science on a traditional, pre-behaviorist understanding was itself thought to cultivate. It also promotes institutions where citizens deliberate together and choose by consensus or by vote.
Even though this means that civic thought cannot fit into the paradigm of value-free (or more precisely, fact/value-based) social science, it leaves open the question of whether there is something in the findings of social science that the civic thinker might find useful — the tendencies of mass behavior, or the unintended consequences of rational action, to name two examples. Ironically once again, it is precisely because social scientists do not succeed in removing every judgment of value from their terms of analysis that their findings might prove helpful to those who approach the understanding of society with questions of value always apparent.
THE CITIZEN'S PERSPECTIVE
Civic thought is attached to one's country or one's cause. It is thus patriotic and particular, not scientific or universal, as social science in the age of globalization has tended to become.
There remain in American political-science departments some remnants of the old practice of teaching students from a decidedly American perspective what a citizen interested in politics might want to know. Yet behavioral political scientists have different concerns. The contrast between a classic course in constitutional law and a contemporary course in judicial behavior, or between a classic course in American foreign policy and a course in contemporary international relations, is illustrative. Universities still offer the classic courses because students flock to them, but political-science journals tend to publish research in judicial behavior and international relations.
Or consider a course on the presidency. Our chief executive, as all citizens know, holds the highest and most critical political office in American government. Yet it is hard to find a working political scientist to teach a course on the subject. Why? Because when it comes to the presidency, the sample size is one. A good social scientist knows you cannot draw valid conclusions from a sample that small. Political scientists thus tend to shy away from the topic, with the exception of tangential issues, such as presidential elections or public opinion of the president, on which there are ample data.
Political-science departments typically still count American government as a subfield as well. But as social scientists, the faculty feel a bit guilty about this. From a scientific perspective, they wonder why the study of American politics is not just one option among many in comparative politics, which itself is usually considered a distinct subfield alongside American government.
And yet, as was the case with the fact/value distinction, the differences between the premises of civic thought and political science with regard to the particular and the universal are not as decisive as they may seem. Practically speaking, it is useful and even necessary for the citizen to step outside his patriotic or partisan persona, precisely as a patriot or partisan, and to be able to see the world as his enemies or opponents see it, if only to be able to anticipate what they will do. Even an enthusiastic defender of the American constitutional order cannot study America in isolation if he means to shore up that order with his knowledge.
As civic thought cannot be satisfied with the universalism of science, it cannot be content with Kant's universalist view that the moral is the selfless and that the categorical imperative — "act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" — is what rational beings legislate for all mankind. Rather, the citizen's perspective traces a circle of moral concern that starts with one's fellow citizens — in practice, it probably emerges from a circle of concern that begins with one's family and friends and expands outward to one's community, state, and nation — and thus gives priority to the common good of the center-most circles. Even as moral concern and public-spiritedness expand outward, they begin at home.
That said, one might be reminded by Kant that the life of the good citizen and statesman entails duties as well as rights — something that many American sources tend to overlook. When does citizenship require that one fight for one's country? Or that one bear children and raise a family to replenish the stock? The universalistic perspective can address these questions philosophically, but bloodlessly, so to speak. The arguments that grip the minds of citizens, by contrast, will depend on the culture and traditions that are their own.
I have alluded to the perspective of the citizen and the perspective of the partisan as though they are the same, but that cannot quite be true. On the one hand, the citizen is a member of a political community that almost certainly includes members of the other party. To be good fellow citizens, partisans have to know when to put citizenship above partisanship — when the country is threatened from abroad, for example, or when, after losing an election, one has to reconcile with the other side's taking its turn in power. On the other hand, one often has to be a partisan to be a good citizen, for in a regime with competitive elections, it is through political parties that citizens can identify and choose candidates who share their (usually partisan) opinions about what policies ought to be pursued or, theoretically, how the common good ought to be defined.
Of course I write these reflections as a political scientist; they are not easy things to say publicly as a partisan or as a citizen, neither of whom is apt to fully trust a political scientist as a civic friend. Partisanship tends to be immoderate — there is never really a party of the middle — but understanding partisanship and the value it brings alongside the threat it poses to political life can "furnish a lesson in moderation," as Alexander Hamilton, a partisan of the Constitution at the time of its adoption, wrote in Federalist No. 1.
There is therefore a real tension between the perspective of the citizen and the perspective of the scientist. But insofar as taking our particular political responsibilities seriously requires us to take a dispassionate interest in what is true in general and in communities other than our own, civic thought can learn from universalistic political science, even as it offers the prospect of seeing deeper into our own circumstances than the political scientist can.
FOLLOWING (OR LEADING) THE SCIENCE
If political science and civic thought are to be complementary and not simply competitive, civic thought must consider how scientific expertise can be used not for its scientific validity, but for its contribution to justice and the common good. Insofar as civic thought aims at prudence, it must develop an account of how to profit from scientific expertise, including the expertise of political scientists, without losing sight of its own character as a prudential discipline.
Perhaps it is easiest to start with health science, a field that might once have been presented as objective science, not politically charged. In the wake of the pandemic — but really before, in questions related to the beginning and the end of life — it is widely perceived, at least among conservatives, that health science (particularly public health) is not immune to political bias.
Similarly, economics presents itself as the most scientific of the social sciences, but no one believes that it is altogether politically neutral. At least in the United States, doctrinaire Marxists are generally excluded from the guild, as economists presuppose the legitimacy of private property, exchange, and government rulemaking. Government regularly calls on their expertise, for example in the formulation of monetary policy. Economists seem to recognize and accept, however grudgingly, that different members of their profession will be consulted by different political parties; they generally use the same measurements and share data, but these are complex enough to allow a range of interpretation.
My first observation about the use of scientific expertise, then, is this: If the sciences themselves are politically colored — as the frailty of the fact/value distinction suggests they will be — political partisans are apt to have competing experts and should expect this in the normal course of things. The civic goal is for the competition to occur within each guild, as among economists, so that scholars with different partisan inclinations speak to one another and challenge one another in their professional lives, not only when called to testify politically. They should be learning from one another and working out what, as members of the same discipline, they have in common. When there is no room for civil disagreement among scientists as scientists, they can hardly expect their conclusions to be viewed as authoritative by both of the major parties on the outside.
Moreover, there is the question of how the sciences relate to one another, and who determines which to consult when. Again, this became apparent during the pandemic, when health decisions and economic decisions were made independently of one another, leaving both leaders and citizens perplexed about how to weigh their conflicting insights. Such conflicts cannot be solved by a formula or an algorithm. Aristotle might have thought there was a master practical science — political science — but hardly anyone claims that today in political science, and its fellow social sciences would hardly concede it. Besides, Aristotle may have meant simply that political authorities determine the status of the various fields of expertise — or, as we would say today, who gets the grants.
One way or another, no one has discovered the perfect policy polynomial. Instead, the civic thinker will consider the questions of when to consult and how to balance the various sciences to be a matter of prudence or practical wisdom, something that is taught by experience — including, through the study of history and literature, other people's experience — but that needs to be identified as a virtue and be cultivated or sought out.
FORMING CITIZENS
America promises, and may have proven it possible, to maintain a successful polity without complete agreement on first things — the Constitution forbids religious tests for office and the establishment of religion, guaranteeing instead free exercise and free speech. Because of this, one might be tempted to say that civic matters can stand on their own. This would be a mistake.
The American experiment has succeeded brilliantly in ensuring civic peace because it takes disputes over first principles out of politics, though not out of the lives of individuals, whose moral formation and happiness generally depend on addressing them. Since civic thought is practical, not scientific, it needs to respect science's quest for an ordered account of the whole while allowing claims of faith to guide human choices. At the very least, civic thought needs to recognize what is up to us and what is not; therefore, it needs to acknowledge truths that transcend the political realm.
Because the schools of civic thought aspire to form good citizens, they must aspire to moral formation. In recent years, universities have become quite self-assured — to their critics, quite conceited — in promoting moral instruction of a sort, usually through codes and trainings rather than reading and reflection. The friends of civic thought have warned against promoting a reverse "anti-woke" moralism in response. That is good counsel, of course, not because universities can remain indifferent to the formation of consciences, but because, in their current condition, they need to prove to the country that they have the moral authority to undertake this work.
Political science, like politics itself, is probably better known for quieting consciences than for giving them voice. Count this as another reason why civic education cannot be solely the province of political science. But that leaves open the question of whether — or to what extent — in a regime like our own, we can recognize one another as good citizens when we disagree about what constitutes a good human being. That question, and the intellectual depth required to confront it, points to the need for the academy to make room for civic thought — and the need for civic thought to find a home in the academy.
