Political science is generally used in the singular, but in French and Spanish the plural (sciences politiques and ciencias políticas, respectively) is used, perhaps a reflection of the discipline's eclectic nature.[1]. It is Ethics applied to a group of people, and discusses how a society should be set up and how one should act within a society. These political philosophies have shaped various forms of government, from tyranny to republican democracy to welfare states. Back to Top. A minority (including Jean-Jacques Rousseau) interpreted The Prince as a satire meant to be given to the Medici after their recapture of Florence and their subsequent expulsion of Machiavelli from Florence. After St. Thomas Aquinas's reintroduction and Christianization of Aristotle's political works, Christian Scholastic political philosophy dominated European thought for centuries. Where do you fit in the political typology? The Scholastics by combining the philosophy of Aristotle with the Christianity of St. Augustine emphasized the potential harmony inherent in reason and revelation. ", "What makes a government legitimate? This view was challenged by the "rationalist" Mutazilite philosophers, who held a more Hellenic view, reason above revelation, and as such are known to modern scholars as the first speculative theologians of Islam; they were supported by a secular aristocracy who sought freedom of action independent of the Caliphate. My dissertation explores … Though one could be worried about restrictions on liberty by benevolent monarchs or aristocrats, the traditional worry is that when rulers are politically unaccountable to the governed they will rule in their own interests, rather than the interests of the governed. Mantranga, the principal governing body of these states, consisted of the King, Prime Minister, Commander in chief of army, Chief Priest of the King. Thomas Hobbes, well known for his theory of the social contract, goes on to expand this view at the start of the 17th century during the English Renaissance. The Situationists were more influenced by Hegel; Guy Debord, in particular, moved a Marxist analysis of commodity fetishism to the realm of consumption, and looked at the relation between consumerism and dominant ideology formation. Confucianism advocated a hierarchical, meritocratic government based on empathy, loyalty, and interpersonal relationships. and Mozi (470 - 391 B.C.) : Pages in this category should be moved to subcategories where applicable. This led to a challenge to the social contract by philosophers Charles W. Mills in his book The Racial Contract and Carole Pateman in her book The Sexual Contract that the social contract excluded persons of colour and women respectively. and "When may a government be legitimately overthrown, if ever?". Political philosophy asks questions like: "What is a government? The clashes between the Ehl-i Sunna and Shia in the 7th and 8th centuries had a genuine political character. The industrial revolution produced a parallel revolution in political thought. The Marxist critique of capitalism—developed with Friedrich Engels—was, alongside liberalism and fascism, one of the defining ideological movements of the twentieth century. In a letter to Frederick II, King of Prussia, dated 5 January 1767, he wrote about Christianity: La nôtre [religion] est sans contredit la plus ridicule, la plus absurde, et la plus sanguinaire qui ait jamais infecté le monde. [4] Chanakya quotes several authorities including Bruhaspati, Ushanas, Prachetasa Manu, Parasara, and Ambi, and described himself as a descendant of a lineage of political philosophers, with his father Chanaka being his immediate predecessor. In Ancient China, Confucius, Mencius (372 - 189 B.C.) He uses, On Liberty to discuss gender equality in society. the sole purpose of law should be to stop people from harming others. Perhaps the most central concept in Locke’s political philosophyis his theory of natural law and natural rights. The Agrarians advocated a peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.". Mill then introduces justice as a proper part of the duty. It was decided that "state" would refer to a set of enduring institutions through which power would be distributed and its use justified. Since the 1990s, these political theorists, broadly engaging the "genealogical approach", "deconstruction", and "weak ontology", have expanded the scope of political theory and issued a variety of arguments on topics such as pluralism, agonism, gender performativity, secularism,[34][35] and more recently the Anthropocene[36] and the non-human turn. Along with his teacher Plato, Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory. Anarchism is similar to Communism in the desirability of the destruction of the state and socioeconomic classes--the difference, however, is that there is no temporary 'lower stage', or Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Out of the Frankfurt School, thinkers like Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jürgen Habermas combined Marxian and Freudian perspectives. In Leviathan, Hobbes set out his doctrine of the foundation of states and legitimate governments and creating an objective science of morality. but whose works have had a strong influence on contemporary ideas about ethics, morality and politics. Free trade, as opposed to these religious theories, is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. Logical-positivist interlude; Rawls; Libertarian and communitarian critiques; Foucault and postmodernism; Feminism and sexual equality; Contemporary questions Similarly, in Ancient India, Chanakya (350 - 283 B.C.) Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal service by extirpating this infamous superstition, I do not say among the rabble, who are not worthy of being enlightened and who are apt for every yoke; I say among honest people, among men who think, among those who wish to think. The rise of Islam, based on both the Qur'an and Muhammad strongly altered the power balances and perceptions of origin of power in the Mediterranean region. Until his mid-twenties, Athens was involved in a long and disastrous military conflict with Sparta, known as the Peloponnesian War. The Iroquois philosophy, in particular, gave much to Christian thought of the time and in many cases actually inspired some of the institutions adopted in the United States: for example, Benjamin Franklin was a great admirer of some of the methods of the Iroquois Confederacy, and much of early American literature emphasized the political philosophy of the natives. The Liberty of the Ancients was participatory republican liberty, which gave the citizens the right to directly influence politics through debates and votes in the public assembly. John Locke in particular exemplified this new age of political theory with his work Two Treatises of Government. A larger list of political philosophers is intended to be closer to exhaustive. Hospers, John (1973). The ‘chief obstacle’ to Mill relates to women's intellectual capability. Instead, the voters would elect representatives, who would deliberate in Parliament on behalf of the people and would save citizens from the necessity of daily political involvement. In this sense, anarc… Prior to China's adoption of communism, State Confucianism remained the dominant political philosophy of China up to the 20th century. Abunaser, Avicenna and Ibn Rushd where part of this philosophical school who claimed that human reason surpassed mere coincidence and revelation. [37] The works of Judith Butler, William E. Connolly, Wendy Brown, Jane Bennett, and Bonnie Honig have been highly pertinent in this regard. Political philosophy, they presume, cannot in the end avoid taking one or the other of the two opposing paths. The Liberty of the Moderns, in contrast, was based on the possession of civil liberties, the rule of law, and freedom from excessive state interference. Mohism advocated a communal, decentralized government centered on frugality and asceticism. ... My one regret in dying is that I cannot aid you in this noble enterprise, the finest and most respectable which the human mind can point out." Early Islamic philosophy emphasized an inexorable link between science and religion, and the process of ijtihad to find truth—in effect all philosophy was "political" as it had real implications for governance. An important conceptual distinction (which continues to this day) was made at this time between state (a set of enduring institutions through which power could be distributed and its use justified), and government (a specific group of people who occupy the institutions of the state, and create the laws by which the people are bound). The terms relate to the philosophies of great thinkers from Plato to Mill (who helped define the way in which we talk about and understand governments and related ideologies). From the end of World War II until 1971, when John Rawls published A Theory of Justice, political philosophy declined in the Anglo-American academic world, as analytic philosophers expressed skepticism about the possibility that normative judgments had cognitive content, and political science turned toward statistical methods and behavioralism. To Mill, Utilitarianism was the perfect tool to justify gender equality in The Subjection of Women, referring to the political, lawful and social subjection of women. It can also be read as reflections on the nature of theory, and what can—or cannot—be … Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who lived during the fourth century B.C. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. Political thought was not purely rooted in theism, however. developed a viewpoint in his "Arthashastra" which recalls both the Chinese Legalists and the later Political Realist theories of Niccolò Machiavelli. What is involved in the study of philosophy involves is described by the London Times in an article dealing with the 20th World Congress of Philosophy: "The great virtue of philosophy is that it teaches not what to think, but how to think. Moreover, Constant believed that, in the modern world, commerce was superior to war. Hume on "Is" and "Ought". Without breaking entirely from the past, Marx established principles that would be used by future revolutionaries of the 20th century namely Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro. Both the capability approach and republicanism treat choice as something which must be resourced. In continental Europe, on the other hand, the postwar decades saw a huge blossoming of political philosophy, with Marxism dominating the field. Indian political philosophy in ancient times demarcated a clear distinction between (1) nation and state (2) religion and state. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold liberal economic positions while economically left-wing and nationalist political parties generally support protectionism, the opposite of free trade. For example, the ideas of the Khawarij in the very early years of Islamic history on Khilafa and Ummah, or that of Shia Islam on the concept of Imamah are considered proofs of political thought. These fundamental questions involved a conceptual distinction between the concepts of "state" and "government." A fundamental split runs through the ranks of contemporary political theorists and other social scientists. Urbanization and capitalism greatly reshaped society. A Solid Liberal? Locke stood to refute Sir Robert Filmer's paternally founded political theory in favor of a natural system based on nature in a particular given system. Among the most important classical works of political philosophy are Plato's "The Republic" and Aristotle's "Politics". “Hey, did you know my advisor hasn’t written about topic X? Wikimedia Commons has media related to Political theories. Mill's explicit theory of rights is introduced in Chapter V of Utilitarianism in the context of his sanction theory of duty, which is an indirect form of utilitarianism that identifies wrong actions as actions that it is useful to sanction. There are various types of political view that we all keep within ourselves. Listed below are some of the most canonical or important thinkers, and especially philosophers whose central focus was in political philosophy and/or who are good representatives of a particular school of thought. Justice involves duties that are perfect duties—that is, duties that are correlated with rights. According to Andrew Hacker, “Political Theory is a combination of a disinterested search for the principles of good state and good society on the one hand, and a disinterested search for knowledge of political and social reality on the other." "Political Theory" and "political treatise" redirect here. They believed, for example, that natural phenomena occur because of certain rules (made by god), not because god interfered directly (unlike Al-Ghazali and his followers). Another important strand of contemporary political theory in North America draws on thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze, among others, to develop critiques and articulate alternatives to the sufficiency of the liberal-communitarian debate and republicanism discourse. In the mid-19th century, Marxism was developed, and socialism in general gained increasing popular support, mostly from the urban working class. Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and their passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. Ancient Liberty tended to be warlike, whereas a state organized on the principles of Modern Liberty would be at peace with all peaceful nations. A philosopher of religion must be objective. Or somewhere in between? While the Middle Ages did see secular politics in practice under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, the academic field was wholly scholastic and therefore Christian in nature. The Magna Carta, viewed by many as a cornerstone of Anglo-American political liberty, explicitly proposes the right to revolt against the ruler for justice's sake. However, in Western thought, it is generally supposed that it was a specific area peculiar merely to the great philosophers of Islam: al-Kindi (Alkindus), al-Farabi (Abunaser), İbn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). As long as the concept of natural order was not introduced, the social sciences could not evolve independently of theistic thinking. While it is easy to presume that a woman would not marry under these circumstances, being unmarried had social consequences. Ideologies of political parties Our mission is to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. This was the time of Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser, and the victories of Mao Zedong in China and Fidel Castro in Cuba, as well as the events of May 1968, led to increased interest in revolutionary ideology, especially by the New Left. Every branch of philosophy can be rooted back to one simple question Although neither Machiavelli nor Hobbes believed in the divine right of kings, they both believed in the inherent selfishness of the individual. For Locke, knowledge is neither innate, revealed nor based on authority but subject to uncertainty tempered by reason, tolerance and moderation. [21] Perhaps the most influential political philosopher of medieval Europe was St. Thomas Aquinas who helped reintroduce Aristotle's works, which had only been transmitted to Catholic Europe through Muslim Spain, along with the commentaries of Averroes. Marxist doctrines. Capitalism. [24] Though the work was written for the di Medici family in order to perhaps influence them to free him from exile, Machiavelli supported the Republic of Florence rather than the oligarchy of the di Medici family. That work, as well as The Discourses, a rigorous analysis of classical antiquity, did much to influence modern political thought in the West. [12] Roman political philosophy was influenced by the Stoics and the Roman statesman Cicero. We’ll also examine how parties form around key voter issues (as can be seen in single voter issue parties like the “Prohibition Party“).Taking this approach (rather than only doing an issue-by-issue breakdown of the modern parties) will allow us to understand any political party, of any … According to Aquinas, there are four kinds of law: Aquinas never discusses the nature or categorization of canon law. Politics describes the use of power and the distribution of resources. Anyone who is ready to study philosophy should be able to attack and defend. During the Age of Enlightenment, Europe entered a sort of golden age of political philosophy with the work of such thinkers as John Locke (whose ideas on Liberalism and Libertarianism are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence and whose influence on Voltaire and Rousseau was critical), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (whose contractarianist political philosophy influenced the French Revolution, and whose 1762 work "The Social Contract" became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition), and the Baron de Montesquieu (1889 - 1755) (whose articulation of the separation of powers within government is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world today). Under the heading of Political Philosophy, the major doctrines or theories include. He attacked Napoleon's martial appetite, on the grounds that it was illiberal and no longer suited to modern commercial social organization. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while also becoming increasingly dependent on them. Plato was born in Athens in c. 427 B.C.E. ", "What rights and freedoms should a government protect? This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. The theory of the divine right of kings became a passing fancy, exposed to the type of ridicule with which John Locke treated it. The Social Contract outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. In other words, it is not enough to be legally able to do something, but to have the real option of doing it. [11] Ancient Greece was dominated by city-states, which experimented with various forms of political organization, grouped by Plato into five categories of descending stability and morality: monarchy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. The government ought to favor some corporations or businesses and grant them special privileges. The way political theory positions itself in relation to political science, history, and philosophy can be read in part as reflections on the meaning of the political. Political philosophy, branch of philosophy that is concerned, at the most abstract level, with the concepts and arguments involved in political opinion. A woman could only advance in social stature and wealth if she had a rich husband to do the groundwork. [9] Taoism advocated a proto-anarchism. Populism is a kind of political philosophy, unusual in that it may (arguably) describe many more specific philosophies, right-wing, left-wing, and neither, including democracy, socialism, labor parties, libertarianism, and even some forms of fascism! Lenin; Lukács and Gramsci; Critical theory. The … [27], As well, there was no spread of this doctrine within the New World and the advanced civilizations of the Aztec, Maya, Inca, Mohican, Delaware, Huron and especially the Iroquois. The major philosophies during the period, Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, Agrarianism and Taoism, each had a political aspect to their philosophical schools. Politics, his work on political philosophy major result of these experiences, which sit the legitimacy of this work. Augustine’s political and social views flow directly from his theology. Aristotleanism flourished as the Islamic Golden Age saw rise to a continuation of the peripatetic philosophers who implemented the ideas of Aristotle in the context of the Islamic world. [20], Medieval political philosophy in Europe was heavily influenced by Christian thinking. Aristotle (b. Under the heading of Political Philosophy, the major doctrines or theories include: Anarchism. 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