George Holland Sabine Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

A professor of philosophy at Cornell University from 1931 until his retirement in 1948, George Holland Sabine (1880– 1961) was a highly regarded American historian of political ideas. His A History of Political Theory was required reading in political theory courses during the 1940s and 1950s, influencing generations of scholars and their students.

Sabine was born in Dayton, Ohio, on December 7, 1880. He entered Cornell University as an undergraduate in 1899, earning his AB degree in 1903 and a PhD in 1906. His academic career began at Stanford University, where he lectured in philosophy. From 1914 to 1931, he taught philosophy at the universities of Missouri and Ohio State. He then returned to Cornell, where he was the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy, a title he held until retiring. While at Cornell, he also served as dean of the graduate school from 1940 to 1944 and was vice president of the university from 1943 to 1946.

The first edition of Sabine’s A History of Political Theory appeared in 1937, and it was published worldwide in several languages. He organized the work around theories of the state, covering thinkers and movements from the ancient Greek city-state to the modern nation-state. He continued to revise editions of his book in light of new secondary material and the unfolding of historical events, including the emergence of fascism in Italy, national socialism in Germany, and communism in Russia. Toward the end of his life, Sabine expanded the chapters on German philosopher Karl Marx to distinguish between democratic socialism and Leninist Marxism. His last published article, appearing in the July 1961 issue of Philosophical Review, examined the ethics of Bolshevism.

Sabine’s writings on Marxism, moreover, revealed his capacity as a scholar to be open, even receptive, to political ideas and convictions contrary to his own. However, this did not mean for Sabine, as it did for Marxists scholars, that all political theorists are ideologues, speaking on behalf of their party, class, or social group. While it is true that political theories provide standards against which behaviors and institutions can be judged, it is also true that they too can be judged. For example, any “clear-headed theory of politics,” Sabine wrote in his preface to A History of Political Theory, must not confuse statements of reason, fact, and value.

In the end, it was not Marx, but Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume who inspired Sabine’s historical and analytical approach to his subject. Consequently, Sabine refused to read into the historical record of political theory any single, metaphysical truth or end point. He was convinced, on the one hand, that, as he stated in A History of Political Theory, “no man can stand apart for the values and the convictions of the culture in which he was reared.” But, on the other, he was “also convinced that there is in intelligence and good will a power of discrimination and of intellectual honesty that is not wholly limited either by nationality or by social class.” Sabine identified this conviction with the tradition of liberalism and concluded that this tradition provides the most likely prospect for social and political improvement through nonviolent means.

After having received many honorary degrees, Sabine died on January 19, 1961.

Bibliography:

Brown, Stuart. “George Holland Sabine: 1880–1961.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 34 (1960): 98.
Sabine, George H. “The Pragmatic Approach to Politics.” American Political Science Review 24 (November 1930): 865–885.
“What Is a Political Theory?” Journal of Politics 1 (February 1939): 1–16.

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