Volume 10, Number 9 · May 9, 1968
Son of Ideology
By Alasdair MacIntyre
The Concept of Ideology and Other Essays
by George Lichtheim
Random House, 327 pp., $5.95
Mr. George Lichtheim's brilliant new book cannot be read in isolation from his three earlier works, Marxism, Marxism in Modern France, and Europe and America. Taken together these four constitute what is arguably the most important contribution to political thinking in Britain or America in the last decades. Those professional political scientists who have so conscientiously cultivated the virtues of industriousness in the collection of data and of scrupulosity in the refinement of their methodology ought to be reminded by Lichtheim's books that the justification of these virtues can only be that they enable the social scientist to elaborate theories and insights superior to those sprung from the plain historical and analytical intelligence of traditional political philosophy—something they have notably failed to do so far. It is Lichtheim's achievement to have defined the tradition in contemporary terms.
Review, 1712 words
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