Een recent meningsverschil over het waardebegrip

Samenvatting

A review of two recent books on political science, centered on their different concepts of 'value.' The books are: (1) A. Brecht, Political theory (Princeton, NJ: 1959); and (2) C. J. Friedrich, Manand his government (New York, NY: 1963). Both Brecht and Friedrich view politics from the German viewpoint of the history of ideas. They are foreign to the sociologically oriented political science developed by Americans like Easton, J. S. Coleman, G. A. Almond and S. M. Lipset. But they differ in their basic approach to the concept of value. Brecht stands for a 'scientific value relativism'; Friedrich takes a 'realistic' approach which claims that a 'value-free' position, far from being objective, merely reflects a scientific solipsism. I. Langnas.