Greek political thought offers us a novel perspective on our own

politics and our own lives. The thinkers I consider in this book lived
in a far different world from ours.

Our goal is now

to examine more specifically what their ideals were, how their

ideals developed in historically specific ways, and what sorts of
translation might be possible to make their ideals a source of
renewal and education for us. Greek political thought offers us a novel perspective on our own
politics and our own lives. The thinkers I consider in this book lived
in a far different world from ours.

http://home.lu.lv/~harijs/Macibu%20materiali%20,teksti/Gramatas%20Seno%20Laiku%20Vesture%20(%20Elektroniski%20)/Balot_Greek_P
olitical_Thought.pdf
2006 by Ryan Balot
The significance then of the political theorist is not that he guided the ruler but that he provided the ruler with a rational explanation of
what he, the ruler, had already done. His works to that extent throw light upon the age in which he lived -- or at any rate upon the age in
which his works were widely read. But to interpret policy throughout the ages in terms of its literary justification is open to certain
objections, of which the chief is that politics are far older than political theory.
While the value of these works (or, at any rate, of some of them) is beyond question, their general tendency is not without its dangers. The
reader is left with fallacies as well as facts.
C. Northcote Parkinson, The Evolution of Political Thought (1958).
http://www.ditext.com/parkinson/evo-preface.html
We have not found that the theories of political philosophers have helped us to understand the societies we have studied and we consider them
of little scientific value; for their conclusions are seldom formulated in terms of observed behaviour or capable of being tested by this
criterion. Political philosophy has chiefly concerned itself with how men ought to live and what form of government they ought to have, rather
than with what are their political habits and institutions.
In so far as political philosophers have attempted to understand existing institutions instead of trying to justify or undermine them, they have
done so in terms of popular psychology or of history. They have generally had recourse to hypotheses about earlier stages of human society
presumed to be devoid of political institutions. . . .
2 African Political Systems. Ed. by M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Oxford, 1940, See 4th Impression (1950), pp. 4 and 5.
The history of political thought can help to illuminate some of the complexity of contemporary international relations. Machiavellis Discourses on Livy indicates
why expansionary or imperialist republics, such as Rome, must keep its plebeians poor so that they will be hungry for land and conquest abroad. Seventeenth
and eighteenth-century neo-Machiavellian thinkers, such as Harrington, Sydney, Trenchard, Gordon, Montesquieu, Madison and Hamilton, repeated Machiavellis
view that advocates of agrarian equality should be murdered by the senate, and deprecated Athens suppression of its senate (Areopagus), as the grounds
whereby Rome was a successful imperialist and Athens was not.
EDW ARD ANDREW , MAR 30 2011
http://www.e-ir.info/2011/03/30/the-relevance-of-political-theory-to-international-relations/
Brainstorming is a group or individual creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas
spontaneously contributed by its member(s). The term was popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn in the 1953 book Applied Imagination. Osborn claimed that
brainstorming was more effective than individuals working alone in generating ideas, although more recent research has questioned this conclusion.[1] Today, the
term is used as a catch all for all group ideation sessions.
Michael Diehl; Wolfgang Stroebe (1991). "Productivity Loss in Idea-Generating Groups: Tracking Down the Blocking Effect". Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 61 (3): 392403. doi:10.1037/0022-

Political thought and its evolution provides not only a deep understanding of current social situations and the rational explanations it implies, but also a varying ideas due to
constant search for answers to the questions imposed by the thinkers themselves.