The canon and comparative political thought
| Published date | 01 June 2015 |
| Date | 01 June 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088214552025 |
| Author | Navid Hassanzadeh |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Journal of International Political Theory
2015, Vol. 11(2) 184 –202
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088214552025
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The canon and
comparative political
thought
Navid Hassanzadeh
Georgetown University, USA
Abstract
While explicitly exclusionary approaches toward the intellectual resources of non-
Western regions of the world have been long studied and criticized, less attention has
been shown toward the ways in which guiding themes and dominant points of reference
culled from canonical authors continue to structure and limit thinking across cultural
boundaries in less conspicuous ways. Accordingly, this article examines the importance of
how the history of political theory, or the political theory canon, influences the emerging
treatment of non-Western works in the field of comparative political thought. Focusing
on two prominent narrators of the theory canon (Leo Strauss and Sheldon Wolin), I
suggest the manner in which an uncritical embrace of their renderings of the history of
political thought can pose problems for treatments of non-Western theoretical works.
By way of illustration, I analyze the writings of particular commentators on medieval
Islamic political thought who draw on Wolin and Strauss, respectively, and demonstrate
how their indebtedness to these canon narrators creates obstacles for their different
readings of one medieval Muslim author in particular: Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah.
Keywords
Canon, comparative political theory, Ibn Taymiyyah, Islamic political thought
Introduction
The urge behind the growth of interest in the past decade and a half in what has
become known as comparative political thought1 can be defined, quite simply, in
terms of a desire to enlarge theoretical conversations beyond Western discourses.
Related to this desire is an effort to question the assumption that Western thought can
Corresponding author:
Navid Hassanzadeh, Department of Government, Georgetown University, ICC 681, 37th and O Streets,
N.W., Washington, DC 20057, USA.
Email: nh236@georgetown.edu
552025IPT0010.1177/1755088214552025Journal of International Political TheoryHassanzadeh
research-article2014
Article
Hassanzadeh 185
unproblematically apply to political constellations in other parts of the world, an
assumption that overlooks both significant issues of translation and the theoretical
resources unique to non-Western locales. This concern with the nature of knowledge
transmission between the West and non-West, moreover, nearly without exception
draws inspiration from an older body of the literature that casts light on issues of
cultural representation bound up with the modern European colonial experience and
its legacy. The creation of an idea of “the West,” the corresponding de-valuation of
cultures and intellectual traditions seen to be foreign to Europe and North America,
and how these gestures both formed the basis of and served as rationalizations for
modern Western expansionism within Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and South America
have been examined and critiqued by a number of scholars associated with post-
colonial theory (Amin, 1989; Bernal, 1987; Cesairé, 2000; Said, 2003).
Yet, while attention toward domination and exclusion has assumed a position of cen-
tral importance in this field within a subfield, less scrutinized have been the thematic
inheritances of the history of political thought in the practice of comparative political
theory and how they limit theoretical investigations in less conspicuous ways. As this
essay will argue, despite the overarching preoccupation in comparative theory with being
sensitive towards issues of difference in cross-cultural inquiry, there remains an assump-
tion in comparative scholarship that the absence of non-Western political philosophers is
an unfortunate omission which can be remedied, somewhat unproblematically, through
an act of straightforwardly including the texts and traditions associated with these
thinkers.2
The trouble with such a view is that it presumes a level of smooth and equal exchange
between these figures, abstracted from the discrepancies in influence which attach to the
traditions that they are affiliated with. Western canonical authors have been examined,
critiqued, and historically situated with a level of frequency and sophistication which
would be problematic to underestimate or ignore. Given this past of canon construction,
which serves as an important pillar of how theory is practiced today, the Western figures
in such a dialogue are afforded authority in the use of their theoretical tools that is not at
the disposal of their interlocutors. With this observation as a point of departure, I will
argue for an understanding not of the exclusion of non-Western theory but of the contin-
ued limitations found within comparative thought as a result of this history and focus in
particular on themes that inform the creation of the theory canon. These themes, while
not unconnected to the problem of the connections between colonial power and dis-
course, point to more indirect ways of esteeming certain forms of theory over others.
In specific terms, this essay will examine the place of “the good” or “the common
good” for Leo Strauss and “the political” for Sheldon Wolin in each of their respective
accounts of the development of the “canon” of political philosophy. The suggestion
made here is not that the canon exhausts scholarship in political theory today. From the
use of different literary genres, to historical archives, to alternative research strategies
derived from other disciplines and political science subfields, political theory has been
able to draw on myriad sources when producing work. And yet the canon remains the
dominant reference point for understanding the history of political thought, not only in
the form of the arguments of those who have come to be construed as its pre-eminent
figures but also through the interpretations of its most prominent narrators. Insofar as
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