Star Herleen

B. Yack, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 2.3 After World War II The postwar period has seen a variety of attempts to revive Aristotelian approaches to social and political analysis. All of these efforts present themselves as alternatives to what is perceived as the mainstream academic approach to the study of politics, society, and morality. Many are inspired by a sense that modern social science cannot explain—and may have even contributed to—the catastrophes of twentieth- century totalitarianism. For these latter-day Aristotelians, Aristotle's emphasis on the integration of normative and empirical analysis provides a better way of both explaining and resisting the seductions of nihilism and totalitarianism. For some, like Leo Strauss (1953), the key to this alternative social science is Aristotle's understanding of natural right, his sense that there is ultimately a natural basis for our judgments about political morality. For others, like Hannah Arendt (1958), it is Aristotle's understanding of citizenship as direct political engagement that is inspiring. Aristotelian social thought has, accordingly, been very influential among both conservative moralists and radical democrats in the postwar intellectual world. In more recent years, it has been Aristotle's emphasis on community and the moral virtues that has drawn the most attention from students of social and political life. Aristotelian social thought, in this instance, provides a corrective to the limitations of liberalism rather than to the menace of totalitarianism. The most influential example of this contemporary reinterpretation of Aristotle is Alisadair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1984). Any return to something like the authoritative status that Aristotelian social thought had in the Middle Ages seems extremely unlikely. But as a rallying point for critics of both liberal political philosophies and purely empirical forms of social science, the Aristotelian approach to the study of politics and society is likely to maintain its vitality for some considerable time.