A major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one's own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason. The study of history can help to counteract this natural human bias.

Neither the good nor the true is self-realizing, so it is not generally a sufficient explanation of why people believe that X is true, or of why people do Y that Y is good.

In some central and important cases, ... the existence of specific power relations in the society will produce an appearance of a particular kind. Certain features of the society that are merely local and contingent, and maintained in existence only by the continual exercise of power, will come to seem as if they were universal, necessary, invariant, or natural features of all forms of human social life, or as if they arose spontaneously and uncoercedly by free human action.

Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral?

The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.

Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question.

To the extent to which the pull that moves me really is irresistible, like an invincibly strong addiction, the normal procedures of evaluation, deliberation, choice, decision, etc. that constitute the substance of our political life are not operating. The same is true of overwhelming aversion. The person being tortured who simply wants it to stop, period, is also not a good model for an agent acting politically.