Political Philosophy

Andrew Reeve: The systematic elaboration of the consequences for politics of suggested resolutions of philosophical dilemmas (or of the intractability of those dilemmas). The greatest works of political philosophy try to present those consequences in relation to fundamental cosmological, ontological, and epistemological issues. They articulate a view of human nature which links the cosmological with the political. On a less grand scale, political philosophy explores the political implications of particular disputes, for example about the nature of the self (see communitarianism; freedom; liberalism; and autonomy), or about the notion of moral responsibility (see punishment). There is obviously a close connection between political philosophy and moral philosophy, because both involve exploring the nature of judgements we make about our values; consequently, when it was thought on epistemological grounds that it was not the place of philosophy to explore these normative matters, political philosophy was declared to be dead. Contemporary political philosophy flourishes because the epistemological argument once thought fatal to it has been rejected.

Political philosophy tries both to make sense of what we do, and to prescribe what we ought to do. Hence different conceptions of the nature of philosophy lead to different views of its status in relation to political activity. Many have contrasted the contemplative nature of philosophy with the active, practical character of politics, suggesting that the former provides a ‘higher’ form of activity which is in danger of corruption by the latter. Others have sought to ensure that their political practice is built upon a coherent philosophical foundation. When Marx complained that philosophers had only interpreted the world, but that the point was to change it, he was proposing not the abandonment of philosophy, but a more adequate conception of it.

Both philosophy and political analysis raise issues which are timeless, but both have a history and both will, at a particular time, be engaged by contemporary circumstances or intellectual preoccupations. Perhaps the most abiding question in political philosophy is whether mankind has a nature, and, if so, what follows for political organization. Some answers to that question put human nature in a historical context. Perhaps the most abiding political issue is the legitimacy of government. But although these problems have constantly to be addressed, the situation and experience of those struggling to respond to them necessarily differ. For example, how is the experience of totalitarianism to be described, understood, or explained? Political philosophy may thus be approached historically, and with an emphasis on the context of an author's work, and analytically, with a critical approach to its internal coherence or inexplicit assumptions. Contemporary political philosophy also has its context, of course, while earlier writers struggled to find eternal truths, so these approaches are properly complementary in the exploration of the political consequences of the human condition.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Branch of philosophy that analyzes the state and related concepts such as political obligation, law, social justice, and constitution. The first major work of political philosophy in the Western tradition was Plato's Republic. Aristotle's Politics is a detailed empirical study of political institutions. The Roman tradition is best exemplified by Cicero and Polybius. St. Augustine's City of God began the tradition of Christian political thinking, which was developed by Thomas Aquinas. Niccolò Machiavelli studied the nature and limits of political power. Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) raised the problem of political obligation in its modern form. Hobbes was followed by Benedict de Spinoza, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the exposition of a social-contract theory. This was rejected by David Hume and also by G.W.F. Hegel, whose Philosophy of Right (1821) was fundamental for 19th-century political thought. Hegel's defense of private property stimulated Karl Marx's critique of it. John Stuart Mill developed Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian theory of law and political institutions, so as to reconcile them with individual liberty. In the 20th century John Dewey sought to counteract the dehumanizing aspects of modern capitalist society through a freer form of education. Until the end of the Cold War, the field of political philosophy was characterized by a division between Marxists and more traditional liberal thinkers, as well as by disagreements between left- and right-leaning liberals, such as John Rawls and Robert Nozick (1938 – 2002), respectively. From the 1970s, feminist political philosophy drew attention to the apparent gendered nature of many concepts and problems in Western political philosophy, especially autonomy, rights, liberty, and the public-private distinction.

History 1450-1789: Political Philosophy: At the dawn of early modern Europe, political philosophy had been largely shaped by the categories and language of Aristotelian thought as integrated into the Christian Scholastic framework during the preceding two centuries. According to Christian Aristotelians, political "science" constituted the highest form of practical knowledge, but ultimately was subordinate to the still higher forms of theoretical excellence and transcendent truth to be found in the pursuit of philosophical and theological wisdom. Scholastic political philosophy thus promoted government that comported with the virtue and salvation (and thus happiness) of members of the community. The Latin recovery of the main social writings of Aristotle (the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics as well as the Economics of Pseudo-Aristotle) in the mid-thirteenth century provided the framework within which medieval Christian political ideas were ultimately crystallized and systematized.

The history of political philosophy during the fifteenth and subsequent centuries should be recounted against this Scholastic backdrop, negatively as well as positively. Despite a renewal of Scholastic energy in the midst of the Counter-Reformation fervor of the sixteenth century, the political ideas associated with Christian Aristotelianism served as targets of widespread attack throughout the early modern era. Yet at the same time, themes familiar to readers of medieval Scholastic writings recurred and refused to disappear entirely.

Wikipedia: Political philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown—if ever. In a vernacular sense, the term "political philosophy" often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, belief or attitude, about politics that does not necessarily belong to the technical discipline of philosophy.

Three central concerns of political philosophy have been the political economy by which property rights are defined and access to capital is regulated, the demands of justice in distribution and punishment, and the rules of truth and evidence that determine judgments in the law.