Thank you, Zeeshan Ahmed, for an intriguing question.
What it means to ‘comprehend’ something is its own interesting philosophical question, and one that’s received less attention that might be expected. However, we can probably say a couple of things to shape our thinking without much controversy. One is that comprehension involves appreciating the structure, or internal workings, of something. Knowing that cells absorb sunlight and produce energy is crucial for understanding plants. Another is that understanding admits of degrees. The day I first learned about photosynthesis was the day I came to understand plants more than I had previously understood them, despite still not knowing what phytohormones or cell-nuclei were.
To understand something, often the first step is to look closely at it. Political Scientists can look at a real-world institution and figure out whether, for instance, the European Central Bank works more like a currency board, or whether the UN’s soft power projects are proving effective. In this way we can gain some understanding of our political institutions, even before broaching philosophical questions. But there is, of course, a catch. Political Philosophy includes all questions about the metaphysics of politics. What kind of thing is political power? Under what conditions does it exist or is it being wielded? These are important questions to answer if Political Science’s answers are to be genuinely informative.
If we want to appreciate the inner workings of a political institution, we need to do more than just look at its organisational flowcharts or the behaviour of those who populate it. We need to know how that institution wields and distributes power, and to do that we need to be sure that we will recognise political power when we see it. Aristotle is famous for a position called Political Naturalism, according to which political institutions are things we create by our nature, rather like birds creating nests. The key insight here is that power dynamics exist whenever humans interact, and we are the sort of creature that can’t help but mediate, manage, and organise power. If this is true, then we are all practicing politics, most of the time. Another important insight comes from the interrelated cannons of Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory. Many institutions that were set up to be neutral, apolitical, or technocratic in fact uphold existing, often uneven distributions of power. A right to face one’s accuser before a jury of one’s peers has done little to distribute state violence evenly across white and black communities in the USA. Central Bank technocrats may set monetary policy ‘in accordance with the evidence’, but they are really making decisions about distributive justice, rewarding either borrowers or savers with an extra share of growth, thus distributing power to one group or another.
So, this is that annoying philosopher’s answer of ‘yes and no’. We can understand some things about our political institutions without Political Philosophy, but Political Philosophy brings what Philosophy so often brings: a sharp conceptual clarity that overturns some of the assumptions we didn’t realise we were making.
What do you think? Do we need philosophy to properly understand political institutions? Let us know in the comments.
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I started studying philosophy at the University of Glasgow back in 2011. I was officially a psychology student back then, but I jumped ship almost immediately, and now I'm working on my PhD at the University of Kent. My interests sit mostly in moral and political philosophy, but I have that magpie-like tendency to dip into all the areas of philosophy I know less about as soon as I see a shiny idea. My research focuses on autonomy in mood disorders, pulling together moral psychology, some phenomenology, and moral philosophy. I've also been getting more and more interested in Epistemic Injustices recently (which ties in nicely with my core research), so for now that might be my new favourite area in philosophy.