How moral relativism was responsible.For decline of modern political theory?
Answers
The last one hundred fifty years till the Second World War have witnessed a steady decline, decay, and death of political theory. On account of several factors, it could not remain an innovative, integrative and invigorating enterprise. It stood as a passive or spineless spectator to the two world wars and failed to save humanity from senseless devastation.
These crises did not create any flutter in the hearts and minds of traditional political thinkers. Perhaps they were unable to react because of their old and anachronistic ideas or love of philosophic virtues to be realised in cloistered seclusion. It even did not cry against large-scale fratricide and senseless killings. They are still simply witnessing the events leading to a global war by nuclear weapons.
(1) Easton has fervently analysed the causes behind this sad state of affairs and has subsumed them under the concept of’ historicism’. The latter term means a tendency to show that values and ideas are by-product of their milieu or prevailing circumstances. The writers adopt the role of historians and trace out history of values or institutions still surviving.
They vividly describe the conditions which produced a particular set of ideas. A ‘historicist’ political writer is little concerned with the problems of his times or finding out solutions or suggesting formulation of new values. He is, in brief, a prisoner of past, unable to peep into present or opine for a better future.