Introduction

Political philosophy excels combined with social, political, economic, or legal data and theory. Unlike the historians of political thought, who should be impartial as well as objective, political scientists and political philosophers are expected to analyze and inspire social policies, which are guides to political action or inaction. Politics, the highest and the lowest form of social action, sometimes the most selfish and at other times the most selfless of activities, is the art of facing or evading social issues, that is, problems other than purely personal predicaments. It behooves political scientists and technologists to detect possible sources of conflict and devise means to resolve them, but it is up to political philosophers to offer ethical arguments for or against any proposals to resolve political conflicts. What might draw a philosopher to the study of politics is that political action is never done in a conceptual and moral vacuum. Political science has advanced appreciably since the last world war.