Explain the Philosophical approach to the study of Political theory. (Answer in 150 words)

- Explain the Philosophical approach to the study of Political theory. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
The oldest and most normative tradition in political theory, it asks what the good political order ought to be, not how power actually operates.

Body

1. Normative and prescriptive: It judges institutions against ideals of justice, liberty and the good life; Plato's Republic derives an entire state from a conception of justice.
2. Deductive and speculative: Reasoning runs from first principles about human nature to conclusions about the state, as in Hobbes and Rousseau.
3. Clarification of concepts: Leo Strauss defined political philosophy as replacing opinion about political things with knowledge; Weldon turned it towards linguistic analysis.
4. Value-laden by design: Facts and values are treated as inseparable, the ground on which Easton and the behaviouralists attacked it.
5. Decline and revival: Cobban pronounced political theory dead in the 1950s; Rawls's A Theory of Justice restored it in 1971, followed by Nozick and Arendt.

Conclusion
It supplies the evaluative vocabulary no empirical method can generate. Political science describes what is; philosophy alone justifies what ought to be.