不用急

QUESTION ONE (70 marks)
This is an adapted extract from an essay about the relationship between political
ideas and political action. It focuses on the example of the opposition led by the
Tory peer, Viscount Bolingbroke, against the Whig Prime Minister, Sir Robert
Walpole, in early eighteenth-century England. Read through the extract and
think about what it is trying to say. You do not need to know anything about the
topic or the period to answer the questions below.



"I have insisted that it does not follow from the fact that Bolingbroke’s
professions of principle were merely retrospective justifications for his actions
that these principles ought to be by-passed when we come to explain his
political behaviour. My aim has been to argue, on the contrary, that for at
least two reasons it must be essential to refer to Bolingbroke’s professed
principle of patriotism, and to explain why he chose to profess it, in order to
explain his actual courses of political action. First, I have sought to show that
the range of actions which it was open to Bolingbroke and his party to perform
in opposing Walpole’s Ministry was limited to the range of actions for which
they could hope to supply recognisable justifications, and was thus limited by
the range of recognised political principles which they could plausibly hope to
suggest as favourable descriptions (and thus as justifications) for their
actions. Secondly, I have sought to show that the principle which Bolingbroke
and his party actually chose to profess in this attempt to justify their behaviour
then made it rational for them to act, and thus directed them to act, only in
certain highly specific ways.

The general belief I have thus been concerned to isolate and criticise is the
belief that it is only if an agent’s1 professed principles can be shown to have
served as a motive for his actions that it is necessary to refer to those
principles in order to explain the agent’s actions. The agent’s principles will
also make a difference to his actions whenever he needs to be able to provide
an explicit justification for them. This will make it necessary for the agent to
limit and direct his behaviour in such a way as to make his actions compatible
with the claim that they were motivated by an accepted principle and that they
can thus be justified. This in turn means that such an agent’s professed
principles invariably need to be treated as causal conditions of his actions,
even if the agent professes those principles in a wholly disingenuous2 way.
What I have thus been concerned to establish, by reference to the specific
case of Bolingbroke versus Walpole, is the sense in which the explanation of
political action essentially depends upon the study of political ideology – and
thus with the way in which it is essential, and not optional, for any political
historian to be a historian of political ideas."




(a) In not more than two or three sentences, describe the view that the author
is arguing against. Use your own words as far as possible.
(10 marks)
(b) Summarise the argument of the extract, in your own words, as briefly as
you can. Do not write more than fifteen lines.
(20 marks)
(c) ‘It is essential, and not optional, for any political historian to be a historian
of political ideas’. Write an essay of two or three sides discussing this statement
in relation to a period or topic with which you are familiar. (Note that ‘political
ideas’ may include any ideas which could be invoked in politics, including, for
example, religious ideas, ideas about society, ideas about race and nationality
etc.)
(40 marks)