The supposed difference that exists between theory and practice has played a significant role in the language of science.Specifically, such a division has proven to be detrimental for attempts to understand political events and their actors because it introduces an improper assumption that the investigator can be independent from the studied phenomenon (Fay p.12). In the natural sciences, the scientist is directly involved with the subject via experimentation used for or against numerous causal generalizations, such as the addition of hydrogen to oxygen results in water molecules. The scientist, although outside of the experiment, is responsible for bringing together hydrogen and oxygen atoms together and controlling the environment in which the tested reaction takes place. The scientist thus has a stake in the claim he or she makes because these statements have to be rendered intelligible to others; his language is what ultimately represents the physical world he or she has attempted to describe through predictive generalities. One might say that the theory is constitutive, in that it is a rule “such that the behavior they govern could not exist without it” (Taylor 34), of the physical practice because the rules allow a particular effect to be inferred from specified causative antecedent conditions. Political investigation might appear to be similar to this activity, but it has its own distinctive peculiarities. The problem seeking resolution in political studies is best stated by Sheldon Wolin: “ [political theorists] believe that … facts are richer than theories, [thus] it is the task of the theoretical imagination to restate new possibilities” (p.1082). The nature of political facts is such that they are capable of outstripping the ability of theories to provide sufficiently law-like and predictive statements about a society under investigation.

The questions that need to be answered in order to understand what this means are as follows: What are we referring to when we use the term “political facts”? How do their characteristics limit the act of political theorizing? Given this, what would such a theory look like? Accordingly, what would be the role of the political theorist in society?

According to Horkheimer, facts are defined as “concrete historical circumstances” (p .195) found within “the matrix [of the] total activity [of] society” (p. 199). Accordingly, “the facts our senses present to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through historical character of the perceiving organ. …Both [of these] are shaped by human activity” (p. 200). By accepting this, one undertakes a fundamental shift in their orientation towards the world. Rather than defining the social scientist’s task as “[integrating] facts into conceptual frameworks” for the reason that “the factual material or subject matter is from without,” it becomes obvious that such a task would in fact be redundant and unrepresentative of the state of affairs. It is redundant because these facts already exist within a conceptual framework in society. Furthermore, the socially derived fact is meant to represent the working out of an inherited form of thought (Wolin p. 1070), so the world is not a something we plug in some raw form into out own vision. The world is rather an ongoing social product. Indeed, this definition of facts imputes the existence of such socially constructed bounds such that “realities here are social practices, and these cannot be identified in abstraction from the language we use to describe them, or invoke them, or carry them out” (Taylor 33). The key point here is that what has been rejected in the formation of political theory as an activity, is the idea that the theories correspond to a reality which exists independent of our workings within it. In doing so, the researcher is thereby forced to accept the fact that he is in the world he is studying and that his activities therefore have consequences within this social reality.

As to the specific objects in question, they are equivalent to instances of “social relations, [those] relations which are defined and regulated in terms of duties, obligations, rewards, responsibilities, roles and so on, i.e. they are fundamentally conceptual relations which form part of a cultural tradition of communication” (Fay p.63). Appropriately, the act of speech is rightly cited by Fay as the paradigm of social action (p.80). More shall be said about this later. Beyond the explicit formation of these relations, the communicative social act is laden with the corresponding desires, feelings, emotions, and purposes of the actors within the situation (Taylor 23).

With this, we are immediately faced with a marked differentiation between facts as conceived of in the natural sciences and those in the social sciences. In the former, facts are considered to be “units of information” independent of any values held by the researcher (Taylor p.19). Attempts by the social sciences to mimic this sort of objectivity ignores a crucial facet of human existence, derived from the above discussion: “the life of society is the result of all the work done in various sectors of production, including science, are note self-sufficient or independent… They are moments in the social process of production” that are mortal and conventional states of affairs (Horkheimer p.197). Two consequences follow these characteristics. First, the goal of objectivity is rendered unobtainable because its phenomenon are said to be independent of the particulars. But if social activity does indeed have a limited span of duration, this independence is only a fleeting one. Also, the attempts at prediction by general universal statements are rendered “universal” only for that period of time in which the social activity took place. Second, if the relations the political scientist study are indeed the result of convention, then the prior conditions for their existence are likewise the product of human design. Hence, its related claim that empiricist models of the world employ a “neutral language of observation” (Fay p. 13) cannot follow. He provides an example of this deficiency:

“efficiency alone cannot provide an adequate standard in terms of objective decisions being made, for the concept of efficiency is a purely formal term… and as such it can only have content … when one provides another standard in terms of which work and energy can be identified and measured” (Fay p.50). In the determination of these standards, “whatever answer one gives will reflect a judgement as to that set of factors which the policy scientist thinks is most important in situations of this type, a judgement that cannot be scientifically made for it involves reference to the values of the scientist” (Fay p.51). Expanding on this is the point, “Although everyone is ready to acknowledge that facts depend upon some criteria of significance, what is less frequently acknowledged is that such criteria usually turn out to be fragments of some almost-forgotten “normative” or “traditional” theory” “(Wolin 1073).

To put this in another way, what we are doing in the recording of facts is documenting reality in a certain way. “As man reflectively records reality, he separates and rejoins pieces of it, and concentrates on some particulars while failing to notice others” (Horkheimer p. 201). Before we leave this discussion of fact, we should keep in mind that the nature of what is being talked about in theories is not a singular entity. Rather, we are confronted with a view of social reality in which one may not possess the totality of knowledge to be ascertained from the subject, and as such these “facts” are considered multi-faceted (Wolin 1073).

Having said all that, a picture of the world has managed to present itself for the theorist with nothing being said about how one is to view it or exactly what kind of person performs this observational task. In answering these questions, the kind of life of a political theorist is to lead will make itself explicit.

Besides saying what the facts are in social life, the way in which these fit together or “make sense” is the issue at the heart of any theoretical understandings. Towards this aim, the language one employs becomes an important determinant. According to a hermeneutic conception of science, the actor of theorizing is “interpretation, … an attempt to make clear… an object of study… which is in some way confused, incomplete, cloudy, seemingly contradictory, … [or in other words, it brings] to light an underlying coherence or sense” (Taylor p.15). Before any explanation of the world or a certain state of affairs can be attempted, the role of the theorist requires an ability to perceive reality within a highly specific frame of reference. This requires an awareness of what Wolin calls “political wisdom,” – history, social institutions, legal analyses, knowledge of past political theory, and the sense that political life is an elusive thing (Wolin 1070).

In particular, “previous history cannot really be understood, only the individuals and specific groups in it are intelligible, and even these not totally since their internal dependence on an inhuman society [which can be defined here as a society of the “status quo” established by empirical political science] means that even in their conscious action [these] are still in good measure mechanical functions. The identification then of men with a critical mind with their society is marked by a tension, and the tension characterizes all concepts of the critical way of thinking” (Horkheimer p.208). At first glance, this might seem to indicate a privileged position to the point of view of the political theorist, since he might be said to know more about what’s really going on than, to take an example from Marxist theory, the proletarian factory worker. Such an attack is rather shallow for it neglects the fact that political theorists are not just making knowledge claims that are tied to their own understandings of the world, but also coupling them more broadly with “the satisfaction of human purposes and desires” (Fay p.95).

By making this sort of connection within the nature of a political theory, the aforementioned tension should also be latent within the actions of the political actors themselves, For Charles Taylor, this unsettled quality is made explicit in political action by the breakdown of communication. He writes, “ the discipline which was integral to [contemporary] civilization … is beginning to fail. The structures of this civilization [For example, the constitutive roles which comprise many of its predominant social practices] are beginning top be felt not as normal and best suited to man, but as hateful or empty. …Hence, the virulence and tension of the critique of our society which is always in some real sense a self-rejection” (p. 49).

What does this mean? The issue is the inadequacy of contemporary society to give its occupants the tools to express and achieve their own desires. In doing so, they also modify the web of social relations in which they exist. To put it simply, the concept of change is fulcrum upon which the political world is moved. However, there are two ways to look at this. First, there is the viewpoint of adherents to the positivist political science at large in society, namely resistance. Their “[opposition starts] as soon as theorists fail to limit themselves to verification and classification by means of categories which are as neutral as possible, that is categories which are indispensable to inherited ways of life” (Horkheimer p. 232). They produce for themselves a tension to stay in one place, as opposed to a tension resulting from the insufficiency of the present.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who wish to usher in the necessary social modifications. “Critical thought has a concept of man as in conflict with himself until this opposition [between the individual’s purposefulness, spontaneity, and rationality, and those work-process relationships on which society is built] is removed” (Horkheimer p.210). This overcoming though cannot be viewed as a progression, however. To claim this would be to imply the accretion of knowledge which laid problems to rest was more than being bound by situation. The theories capable of such “removal” only “issue… from crises in the world” (Wolin p.1080).Akin to the subject matter they are formed about, theories of politics are similarly bound by situational and societal limitations. But the difference to be made here is that the effective political theory acts with outright awareness that acceptance of its description of society disrupts the “monotonous effort, long hours unpunctuated by any meaningful rhythm” (Taylor p.46) “with a screech” of warning or pain (Wolin p.1082).

Such interruption of the status quo permits the political actor to examine the world around him without the pressure of contemporary practices compelling him onward in his prescribed role. In one sense, what is being done here by the theorist is a severing the terms in use from the established and protected intersubjective meanings of terms, in order to allow new ways of thinking, evaluating, intuiting and feeling to exist (Wolin p.1075). More importantly, should this alternate be accepted, the meanings and other consequences of dealing with society in this way must be accepted by the political agent, lest the effort made by the theorist to ostensively define one’s political situation is for naught.