ENGL 298 B: Intermediate Writing Social Sciences   Autumn 2011, University of Washington

1. Normative theory as a threshold concept
   1. Students usually think using the scientific method because of past experiences
   2. Normative theory is significantly different because it doesn’t examine what actually exists – instead it looks at what ought to be
2. Normative theory changes political theory because it is the only critically legitimate means of analyzing how government should work
   1. You can’t argue about what the ideal form of government actually is because

i.      What ideal government consists of is subjective

ii.      Opinions based on current political systems are biased by already existing within a system

1. Normative thought changes how Kropotkin and Socrates’ arguments look
   1. Look at Socrates’ claims for why he must obey the law

i.      How they look without thinking of it as normative theory

ii.      How they look as a normative theory

1. Look at Kropotkin’s claims for why government is unnecessary

i.      How they look without thinking of it as normative theory

ii.      How they look as a normative theory

1. How problematic knowledge arises from each situation, with examples from the blog of how people have struggled with Socrates and Kropotkin’s arguments

Note: the argument will flow from one paragraph to another rather than being stated in the introduction and then shown paragraph to paragraph (or at least that’s my current plan)

In order to mentally process political theory on an intellectually deep level, it’s necessary to understand that political theory is a normative process, and understand how it being a normative process makes political science fundamentally different from other (natural) sciences. Not understanding this difference can cause one’s conception of political theory to be based off the subconscious notion that it follows the scientific method, which is simply not the case. In most disciplines of knowledge explored in high school, people look at events, concepts, or texts that already exist in order to find relations, conclusions, or solutions from them (history looking at events, math at concepts, and English at texts). This is the ‘scientific method’ of thinking, but it is not the political theorist’s method of thinking. The pre-existing tendency to glean new understanding from things that already exist is the issue is a product of the society we live in and it gets in the way of understanding political theory. In order to understand political theory you have to understand the threshold concept that it is an examination of how government ought to exist by using ideas that expressly do not currently exist.