A Postscript to Professor Dahl's “Preface†1

An exhilarating breath of fresh air has blown into the musty halls of political theory with the publication of Robert Dahl's Walgreen lectures, A Preface to Democratic Theory. We now know that discussion of minority rights and majority rule can be carried on with lucidity and serious attention to some of the intriguing intellectual puzzles which arise, as well as with reasonable rigor and a genuinely remarkable economy of expression.For all his clarity and conciseness, however, Professor Dahl has paid a fourfold philosophical price:1. His case against “Madisonian†democracy is procedural and perhaps more peripheral than profound.2. The neo-Spinozistic endeavor to formalize political ideology appears premature.3. His confessed epistemological perplexity over the ground of “intensity†judgments is peculiar.4. His refusal to wrestle with ethical issues—a refusal he shares with most “empirically oriented†political scientists—leaves them not only open and unresolved, but even unexplored. Yet, in an important sense, these issues seem to be the central ones.Following Dahl's example, I shall try to set forth these caveats as concisely as possible, leaving aside qualifications and positive theory construction.