ABSTRACT
There is a psychology to the political man; it might be called an adversarial spirit about public affairs. With all due respect to his sweetness of temperament and the loftiness of much of his rhetoric, Abraham Edel exemplifies political vigor. Edel categorically denies any effort to correlate naturalism with barbarism, or for that matter personalism with high civilization. He uses political examples to blast away at such equations. Political theory is concerned with finding ways in which human nature can find fullest expressions, the social relations and institutional forms that are desirable, under what conditions they are achievable, and how in less favorable conditions some approximation of the good may be achieved. In this sense Edel has been influenced by John Dewey’s work on the one hand and Morris R. Cohen’s on the other. From Dewey Edel derives a strong, lifelong commitment to a means-end continuum in the political realm.
