Politics and Vision
| Author | Ronald Beiner |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885106067288 |
| Published date | 01 October 2006 |
| Date | 01 October 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Politics and Vision
The Sequel
Ronald Beiner University of Toronto, Canada
Sheldon S. Wolin Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political
Thought, expanded edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Sheldon Wolin is an icon among scholars of the history of political thought. In 1960, at a
time when large segments of the political science profession were ready to jettison politi-
cal theory altogether, in favour of a rigorously value-free social science, Wolin published
Politics and Vision in order to prove that political theory continued to be an academic disci-
pline of great intellectual potency. (In the preface to the original edition, Wolin wrote that
even if those who were dismissive of the tradition of political philosophy continued to
jettison it, his book would, he hoped, ‘at least succeed in making clear what it is we shall
have discarded’ [p. xxiii].) Wolin offered a stunningly ambitious set of commentaries on
major landmarks in the history of political thought: Plato; Hellenistic, Roman, and early
Christian political thought; Luther; Calvin; Machiavelli; Hobbes; and modern liberalism.
But the book was not just an exercise in intellectual history; it ended with a contemporary
social critique that was no less intellectually ambitious – namely, a powerful indictment
of how various forces in modern society (social inequality and hierarchy, bureaucracy,
technology, consumerism, the managerial mentality, the reduction of politics to adminis-
tration) had conspired to undermine and subvert our experience of the political realm.
Political theory was once again shown to be relevant; the near-corpse of political theory
was suddenly bursting with new life. For political theorists, Politics and Vision defines the
gold standard in politically engaged intellectual history, to the point where today (as I know
from having participated in a recent political theory search in my own department), the
absolute highest praise a referee can bestow on someone considered to be a rising star is to
describe the candidate as ‘a young Sheldon Wolin’.
Oddly, this classic work remained out of print for many years, which did a real disservice
to students of the discipline. Now Wolin has done something really extraordinary (prob-
ably unprecedented for such a book), which is to republish, in 2004, an expanded edition
of the book with seven new chapters – once again, comprising both historical exegesis and
contemporary critique. To resume and expand an earlier work is hardly that unusual, but
to do so on the basis of no less than 44 years of further reflection and rethinking certainly
is! (Perhaps the book remained out of print for so long because Wolin always hoped to
do what he has done in this new edition: bring it up to date with new reflections on the
theory and practice of later decades.)
483
review article
Contact address: Ronald Beiner, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto,
100 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G3.
Email: rbeiner@chass.utoronto.ca
EJPT
European Journal
of Political Theory
© SAGE Publications Ltd,
London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi
issn 1474-8851, 5(4)483–493
[DOI: 10.1177/1474885106067288]
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