The -- Pith of Politics
Principles of Social and Political Theory. By Ernest Barker.
(Oxford University Press. 2 ss.) SIR ERNEST BARKER suggests that this elaborated version of the course of lectures which he used to give in Cambridge during the decade before the war—elaborated from " some 80 pages of crabbed manuscript notes, packed with additions and alterations "—is rather like " putting the pieces of pith called Japanese flowers' into water." All of us who heard the lectures will not only welcome this more permanent and extended version of them, which enables others to share in their riches ; we can also marvel that the original dehydration was never apparent. The present plumping out has resulted in neither distention nor dilution, and the argument remains close-packed and tightly reasoned. Here, indeed, is the very pith of political philosophy.
The merit of the lectures, over all others available, was that they offered, not a desultory survey of text and facts, but a systematic presentation of the professor's own political credo, somewhat in the manner of T. H. Green's Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. Accept, reject or criticise it, it stood as a whole. And Sir Ernest was right to present it as such in print—as " the testament of my old age." As a great humanist scholar he is really Much more concerned with political values and ethical problems than with the machinery and devices of government. But in developing his argument he contrives, with considerable success, to marry the two. His recurrent themes are the respective spheres of action, of society and the State, the relationships between them, and the place in both of personal rights and duties. These themes, exemplified by their applications to practical problems of politics, are interwoven to produce a philosophy of democratic liberalism, deriving its main inspiration from Aristotle and from Burke, only slightly less dis- trustful of Rousseau than of Karl Marx, and rating liberty above equality. If at times it is implied that the social order and the political order can be more sharply separated, even in habits of -thought, than they can or ought to be, at least it is a fault con- ducive to clear analysis and challenging to accepted dogmas.
It is more a criticism of our times than of the book to suggest that neither its form nor its content-is likely to win for it a popular reception at the present time. The tough and persistent argument, pursued with erudition and didactically presented, will be found difficult. The extremely cautious welcome given to the " welfare State," and the author's evident distrust of post-war extensions of the ideal of equality, give the argument a highly \ conservative flavour. A modern study of " social theory " might be expected to include greater reference to the influence of Keynesian economic theory on social organisation and concepts, and perhaps greater attention to the consequences of developments in psychology and sociology.
A few minor blemishes have crept in. It is, for example, mis- leading to speak of the concept of a " classless society " (p. 169) as involving " absolute equality of possessions," when so many - leading Marxist theorists have specifically rejected economic . equality. Montesquieu (p: 257) wrote much more of la distribution des pouvoirs than of is separation des pouvoirs, and so allowed' more for an overlap of the organs of government than is here sug- gested. But such blemishes detract nothing from the book as a work of great erudition and ripe wisdom, and as an immensely valuable addition to the all-too-empty shelf of modern contributions to political philosophy in the round. DAVID THOMSON.
Previous page
