Michael Oakeshott, in his essay "Religion, Politics, and the Moral Life" writes:

Now, politics, the promotion or recommendation of change in existing political arrangements, are a practical activity in the precise sense; they are activity in which reflective enterprise is necessarily limited. And a mode of reflection which is to provide principles or rules (or indeed anthing at all) relevant to politics must share the limitations of this character. But this is exactly what is impossible to political philosophy, so long as it retains its character of radically subversive reflection. Where in reflection fixed points of reference are demanded as a condition of the profitableness of the reflection, a demand has been made for the arrest of the reflective impulse--a demand which, ex hypothesi, political philosophy must refuse. And if we expect from political philosophy conclusions relevant to politics, the result will be either a political philosophy in which the reflective implulse is hindered and arrested by being made servile to politics, or a political activity in which the reflective impulse, disengaged from the necessary limits of politics, has lost its virtue. Where there is genuine philosophy there can be no guidance; if we seek guidance, we must hang up philosophy.

In other words, and I hope as always that I am interpreting Oakeshott's ideas correctly, the construction of a political policy (derived from the conclusions of a political philsophy) presents paradox, as (T)rue political philosophy lends it self to no certain conclusions, and it is upon those certain conclusions that a political policy or political action is founded.

So how do we unravel this apparent conundrum? How do we employ (T)rue political philosophy towards the end of recommending and establishing better social and political systems?