Politics and Ethics

In a recent article in this Review, a social anthropologist, Professor W. F. Whyte, challenges American political scientists to “leave ethics to the philosophers and concern themselves primarily with a description and analysis of political behavior.” Only in this way, the author contends, can the study of politics become truly scientific and not only justify its name but fulfill its function as an important body of knowledge. The challenge presented is not a new, but a vital, one with which all political scientists must inevitably be concerned. For in the answer to it is involved not only the fate of political science as a significant body of knowledge, but, conceivably as well, the very nature of the political behavior that Whyte challenges us to describe with an objectivity divorced from all judgments of value.In recent times, the point of view urged by Whyte has been perhaps most notably embodied in the writings of Pareto. But many eminent American political scientists have seriously probed the problem of methodology in politics and have arrived at conclusions similar to those urged upon us again by the author of this more recent challenge.