Political philosophy has a unique role to play in political science. It focuses attention on the big ontological, epistemological, and normative questions that constitute the foundation of the scholarly enterprise. Due to the reification of subfield boundaries, the assault from hard science, the inward-looking perspective of many political philosophers, and political wrangles within political philosophy, it has ceased to play its distinctive role very well in recent years. As illustrated by the recent debate over methodology, the result is that the rest of the discipline has lost political philosophy’s vital contribution to our common intellectual life.
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