ABSTRACT
Political theory opens up a region of knowledge that planners may find confusing. Many would not even regard it as ‘knowledge’, because it seems to say nothing certain. But that is as it should be. The criteria of knowledge in the region of political theory are different from the criteria of truth to which we are accustomed, based on the paradigm of natural science. There is disagreement in the natural sciences on truth criteria (see Harré, 1972), but these do not form part of the broad public conception of ‘science’, which still tells us what ‘really’ constitutes knowledge. It is this public face of science that gives us the belief that science deals in certainties. Natural science, however, is derived from the praxis of operating on inanimate objects and transforming them for our use. Politics is a study of people, their actions and their relationships. There can be certainty about things, not because things are somehow less changeable or mysterious than people but because things do not appropriate human knowledge for their own use. Moreover, we do not (ethically) operate on people and transform them for our use. We communicate with them, debate with them, enter into dialogue with them. Political knowledge is defined by this ethical standpoint.
