Book excerpt: This analysis of the relationship between philosophy and politics recognizes that political philosophers must continually struggle to distinguish their voices from others that clamor within political life. Author Andrew Fiala asks whether it is possible to maintain a distinction between philosophical speech and other political and poetic language. His answer is that philosophy's methodological self-consciousness is what distinguishes its voice from the voice of politics. By focusing on the different ways in which this methodological norm was enacted in the lives and work of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx, the author puts the problem in a larger context and considers the roles that these thinkers played in the political history of the nineteenth century.