The article claims that there is already a close connection between normative and positive projects in political theory. The argument is that, traditionally, normative political theorists have embraced rationality assumptions, both because they were interested in persuading an audience, presumably capable of responding to reasons, and because a normative theory deals with rational subjects, whose actions can be understood and perhaps changed by altering their institutional context. By examining the work of Aristotle, Hobbes and Rousseau the article attempts to do two things: first, to elucidate their conceptions of rationality and show the work rationality does within their theories. Second, the article examines how those conceptions (or interpretations) of rationality depart from current understandings and argues in favor of recovering some lost aspects of rationality as an analytical concept.
Normative theory; Political theory; Rationality; Aristotle; Hobbes; Rousseau