Theories of the Political System: Classics of Political Thought and Modern Political Analysis by William T. Bluhm (review)

~00 BOOK REVIEWS proof and makes some inferences. On these pages the author remains close to the generally admitted scholastic pattern of questions and answers concerning the relationship between God and the world. In spite of quite a few over hasty statements, on the whole the book is solid, scholarly, interesting and well worth reading with sympathy and interest. Nanzan University Nagoya, Japan L. ELDERS, s.v. D. Theories of the Political System: Classics of Political Thought and Modern Political Analysis. By WILLIAM T. BLUHM. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965. 488 pp. + index. $7.95. Considerable ferment and little consensus exist in political theory today. The classics have an unsure status, and contemporary work is diversely fragmented. Scant attention is given to political values and much emphasis is placed on various political facts; seldom do the two realms face each other, rarely do they meet. Most students of politics recognize these problems, but few have attempted their solution. Bluhm has broken ground. He makes a significant beginning in addressing them. Bluhm argues very convincingly that the relevance of the classics need not be doubted; their relevance is evident from their influence on, or thematic recurrence in, contemporary theory. He spends most of the book pointing out, by heuristic comparisons, the affinity of a number of the more significant contemporary positions to classical systems. Examples of his pairings are Plato with Leo Strauss, St. Augustine with Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans Morgenthau, St. Thomas with Jacques Maritain (Bluhm gives the latter pair a fair hearing, along with some penetrating and significant questions and criticisms), Rousseau with Carl Friedrich, and John Stuart Mill with Christian Bay. Bluhm's expositions and comparisons are well done, though not always with maximum profundity and not always without some strain to make a case. In order to deal adequately with the diverse theories that he presents, Bluhm coins two categories that account for two broad positions on the real, the good, and the knowable. He calls them noumenalism and naturalism , assigning special meaning to each term. Noumenalism is the position that identifies the good political order, known by teleological reason, with a divinely ordained set of values taken to have the fullest reality. Within noumenalism, however, transcendentalism sees the good order as radically apart from the empirical world, whereas immanentism finds the good order inherent in the empirical world. Naturalism is the position that assumes BOOK REVIEWS 201 reality, insofar as it is knowable, to be coextensive with the empirical world; this reality and its purposes are essentially unintelligible. Bluhm's noumenalism-naturalism categories closely parallel the common ought-is, value-fact distinctions. Although Bluhm does not side with noumenalist philosophy as opposed to naturalistic science or with science as opposed to philosophical inquiry into the political good, he lays the ground for and calls for bridge building between the two positions for the sake of a unified discipline, in both its ethical and factual dimensions. This problem is vital. Bluhm's major contribution is his bringing the issue to the surface, establishing a historical perspective, and indicating some possible approaches to a solution. It remains for students of politics and of philosophy as well-most of all, Christian students-to take up the issue in earnest. University of Maryland College Park, Maryland RicHARD H. RosswuRM ...