The essays in this collection address interesting and sometimes puzzling issues arising in the relation of political theorizing to political practice and action, "collected" in over two decades of teaching the canonical history of Western political theory. The issues were selected not on some deductive or speculative basis, but for the light they may shed on the political theory-practice relationship by virtue of being controversial and/or puzzling.

The essay on Plato draws upon various philosophical and historical sources to quarrel with the interpretation of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom that the best city of The Republic was never intended to exist in the world, but was intended rather to indicate the limits of politics. It tries to show that this was probably the historic Plato's intent for only most, not all, cases; it then states the conditions under which the cities of The Republic and The Laws were arguably meant to be actualized. The essay on Aristotle tries to show how Aristotle's ontology permits him more "intermediate" responses (than Plato) to the issues of theory actualization in political life; it also discusses Aristotle's mixed regime in connection with the founding of the United States. The essay on Marx asks the reader to perform a thought experiment to account for Marx's various arguments by understanding them first and foremost as rhetoric directed toward motivating political revolution, rather than as economic science or philosophy. The essay on Descartes, Vico, and Oakeshott attempts to illuminate Oakeshott's abbreviated critique of Cartesian rationalism by comparing it with Vico's more developed critique; it also speculates on Descartes's reply to both critiques. The essay on Locke and Descartes investigates and quarrels with a scholarly claim (that of Peter Schouls) that Locke's method is essentially Cartesian (in spite of its empiricist attributes) and that the Cartesian method of "resolution and composition" can account for Locke's political and social individualism. Another essay examines the thesis of Maurizo Viroli that Machiavelli's work is best understood as instances of classical rhetorical strategy, in an attempt to show that Viroli's is an overstated thesis, and while illuminating in some respects, fails to fix on what is new in Machiavelli's orientation to politics. Yet another essay tries to show that Michael Oakeshott's criticism of Rationalism in politics and morals is grounded in an account of the structure of all human experience and activity as creative or "poetic." The final essay reflects on the general relationship of political theory and practice, using instances from the previous essays as an illustrative material, to indicate limits to applied political theorizing as well as its relationship to political rhetoric.

Coats advances a tentative conclusion. As one moves from a Greek rationalist-dualist cosmology and ontology in which the existence of something is accidental or incidental to its essence, toward a political viewpoint making increasingly explicit biblical or creationist and incarnationist cosmological assumptions in which the existence of an idea or pattern adds to its perfection, one sees a more or less explicit assumption that the aim of political theorizing is the influence actual political life.