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James W. Skillen
The Necessity of a Non-Reductionist Science of Politics


Abstract

The discipline of political science is still too much influenced by the ideal of finding a method that will do for politics what Newton did for physics (as one author puts it). The quest for a “hard” science of political behavior that focuses on “facts” separated from “values” generally controls much if not most of the discipline. In this century-long quest, the discipline has imported assumptions and methods from sociology, psychology, mathematics, biology, economics, and other sciences in various attempts to achieve a cause-and-effect explanation of political behavior. This paper tries to expose the weakness and adequacy of these typically reductionist approaches to political science and outlines an approach that not only rejects modal reductionism but identifies the object of political science as the norm-responsive institutional community that is constituted by government and citizens (or subjects). The political community (or “state” as it is referred to throughout much of the world) is a norm-responsive entity that cannot be properly understood from the prejudicial point of view of a fact/value dichotomy. Instead, it must be recognized as an historically dynamic institution that functions in all modalities of human experience (physical, biotic, psychical, social, linguistic, logical, economic, juridical, ethical, and more) and is distinguishable from other institutions and organizations, such as the family, church, school, and business corporation. Political science, therefore, must be an entity science that entails multi-modal, normative analysis with full self-consciousness of its philosophical and religiously deep assumptions.



Biography
James Skillen became director of the Center for Public Justice in 1982 and has served as its president since 2000.  The Center is an independent, non-partisan, public-policy research center and a civic-education organization established in 1977.  He earned his PhD in political science at Duke University in 1974, a divinity degree in 1969 at Westminster Theological Seminary, and a B.A. in philosophy in 1966 at Wheaton College.  His most recent books are With or Against the World? America’s Role Among the Nations (2005) and In Pursuit of Justice: Christian-Democratic Explorations (2004).  He is the editor of the Center’s biweekly Capital Commentary and an occasional column Root & Branch: The Religion and Society Debate.  He and Doreen were married in 1966 and have two children—Jeanene and Jamie—and two grandchildren—Samuel and Benjamin.

 

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