Politics & International Relations
Political Philosophy
Political philosophy is a branch of philosophy that explores the fundamental questions about power, justice, rights, and the nature of government. It seeks to understand and analyze political concepts and institutions, as well as the ethical and moral principles that underpin them. Political philosophers examine the nature of political authority, the best forms of government, and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.
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11 Key excerpts on "Political Philosophy"
eBook - PDFClassical Theorists in the Social Scienc
From Western Ideas to African Realities
- Dejo Abdulrahman(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Malthouse Press(Publisher)
Political Philosophy in essence “broadens and at the same time narrows the field of Political Theory” (Gupta, 2007: 16). Political Philosophy is often seen as a branch of academic philosophy, with especially close and sometimes overlapping relationships to normative moral philosophy and meta- ethics. Though Political Philosophy and political theory are intricately connected, there are some distinguishing features, most especially as it relates to the scope of philosophy. “In a general sense philosophy is the science of wisdom and the field is so “vast that it tries to explain not something but everything in the universe, the macrocosms and the micros cosmos” (Gupta, 2007:17). It is when philosophy is applied to the study and analysis of political phenomena that it assumes Political Philosophy. One of the principal tasks of Political Philosophy is to “bring men’s political beliefs to self-consciousness and to subject them to the scrutiny of reason” (Gupta, 2007:17). The major preoccupation of Political Philosophy which Classical Theorists in the Social Sciences: From Western Ideas to African Realities 30 also expresses its relationship to and difference from political theory includes the following: 1. Political Philosophy provides general answers to general questions on concepts and theories such as justice, rights, the distinction between is and ought and the larger issue of politics; 2. Political Philosophy is part of normative political theory for it attempts to establish the interrelationships between concepts; 3. Every political philosopher is a political theorist but not every political theorist is a philosopher e.g. David Easton, Harold Lasswell and Charles Meriam are considered as leading political Theorist but not as philosophers; 4. Political Philosophy is a complex activity which is best understood by analysing the many ways that the acknowledged masters have practiced it; 5.
eBook - PDFPhilosophy
Made Simple
- Richard H. Popkin, Avrum Stroll(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Made Simple(Publisher)
2 Political Philosophy Definition of 'Political Philosophy 1 It is difficult to formulate a precise definition of 'Political Philosophy' because Political Philosophy seems to have no special subject matter of its own. Its main tasks are in part to describe past and existing social organizations, in which respect it seems to duplicate the findings of economics, political science, anthropology, biology and sociology; and in part to evaluate these organizations, in which respect it is like ethics. For example, it describes the essential features of various types of governments (democracy, monarchy, fascism, etc.) and at the same time asks such questions about them as 'What is the ultimate justification for the existence of any form of government?' The answer to such a question seems most naturally to emerge from ethical theory (e.g., a utilitarian might answer 'to provide the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number') and for this reason, Political Philosophy has sometimes been charged with being merely 'applied ethics'. But even though Political Philosophy has intimate connections with the social sciences and with ethics, it would be a mistake to conclude that it does not have distinctive problems of its own. It deals, for example, with such issues as 'What are (or ought to be) the proper limits of government power over the members of society?' 'Is it possible to have rigid control over the economic affairs of people without curtailing their political freedom?' 'Should elected representatives to a legislature be allowed to vote as they see fit, or should they merely reflect the majority opinion of their constituency?' and so forth. No doubt, these issues in part involve moral considerations, but it should also be remembered that they pose special difficulties of their own as well. We can further characterize Political Philosophy by dividing it, like ethics, into 'classical' and 'modern' theories.
eBook - ePub- Charles Larmore(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
1
The Relation between Political and Moral Philosophy
THE QUESTION IN the title of this book receives much less attention than it deserves. Too often the domain of Political Philosophy is defined by a series of classic texts (running from Aristotle’s Politics , through Hobbes’s Leviathan , to Rawls’s A Theory of Justice ) along with a conventional list of the topics to be addressed—the acceptable limits of state action, the basis of political obligation, the virtues of citizenship, and the nature of social justice. Precisely this last topic, however, shows why the question “What is Political Philosophy?” ought to have a greater urgency. For justice is a topic that also belongs to moral philosophy. How, therefore, are moral philosophy and Political Philosophy to be distinguished? Both take as their subject the principles by which we should live together in society. How exactly do they differ? If justice—to invoke a traditional tag as indisputable as it is uninformative—means giving everyone his or her due (suum cuique ), then what is it to fill in the import of this phrase as a moral philosopher and to do so instead from the standpoint of Political Philosophy?These questions are not motivated by a general love of intellectual hygiene. I do not assume that the various areas of philosophy need always to be cleanly demarcated from one another in order to avoid contamination by alien concerns and influences. Rather, disciplines arise in response to problems, and the boundaries between them, when justified, reflect the extent to which they deal with different problems or handle what might seem to be similar problems from fundamentally different perspectives. Now Political Philosophy—to invoke what may also look like a vacuous definition—consists in systematic reflection about the nature and purposes of political life. The relation it has to moral philosophy depends therefore on how political philosophers, in tackling this subject, should position themselves with respect to the sphere of morality. There have been, broadly speaking, two competing conceptions.
eBook - PDF- Gerald F Gaus, Chandran Kukathas, Gerald F Gaus, Chandran Kukathas(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
Differences in political thought have become increasingly reflective of splits and specializations among its students, and the divergence between some philosophers and some students of ideology is the most significant, and the least understood, among these. Political Philosophy: THE GOOD, THE RIGHT AND THE VALID Political Philosophy is situated in a highly intrigu-ing relationship to politics. On the one hand, its focus on the normative, on forms of the good life, on what is morally proper, and on the right kind of decisions, has placed it at the centre of what most contemporary academics regard as political theory: a guide, a corrective, and a justification for enlight-ened and civilized forms of organized social life and political institutions. On the other hand, the dis-ciplinary constraints that apply to producing good philosophy have all too often distanced its practi-tioners from the actual stuff of politics and have contributed to a general sense of the estrangement of philosophy from political life. There is unsur-prisingly no complete agreement on what political philosophers do, and there are great divides between, say, Anglo-American analytical philoso-phers and varieties of continental philosophy, a dis-tinction that is more substantive than geographical. Analytical philosophers are not necessarily specific students of politics ; they may often be seen as apply-ing their general insights to the realm of politics. That is to say, political philosophers are frequently philosophers prior to their examination of the politi-cal, and they apply techniques and methods typical of philosophers rather than other students of politics. For instance, one of their central concerns relates to what constitutes a good argument.
eBook - PDF- J. Baggini, G. Southwell(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
What is more, we cannot begin to understand the conflicts in worldviews between fundamentalist religions of all kinds and Western liberal democracy unless we recognise the fact that the ide- ology we accept is not accepted by all. To do that effectively we need Political Philosophy 175 to see clearly what our ideology is and how it differs from those of its critics. Political Philosophy can help in this because it analyses and lays bare the ideas, arguments and concepts that form these ideologies. For that alone, the subject is well worth our attention. Summary Political Philosophy is concerned with issues such as how we justify the existence of a state, what form and powers a state should have and what principles governments should follow. The dominant political ideology in the West is liberalism, which stresses the rights of individuals to choose for themselves how to live their lives. Liberalism is based in the idea that our freedom to choose is an important part of what gives human life value, that there are many values one can live by, and that no-one has the knowledge or right to choose how everyone else should live. Critics claim liberals place too high an importance on human freedom as compared to happiness, welfare and solidarity. Socialism is a reaction against the tendency of capitalist societies to concentrate wealth in the hands of the owners and away from the workers who actually produce the wealth. Socialists claim a fairer society is one where the workers own the means of production and enjoy a fair share of the wealth created. Critics claim that socialism is idealistic because people will always prefer to look after themselves more than society as a whole. They also say that socialism requires taking away too much liberty from individuals.
- Heinrich Meier, Robert Berman(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
Although Political Philosophy, as far as its subject matter is concerned, makes up merely a part of philosophy, it by no means has a narrowly circumscribed segment of human life as its object. Nor do we meet in this object, say, an autonomous domain of life that exists alongside a number of autonomous domains of life or “provinces of culture” of equal rank. The central questions of Political Philosophy, the questions of the best political order, of the right life, of just rule, of the necessary weight of authority, knowledge, and force, can be properly raised only in conjunction with those other questions of the nature of man, of his place between beast and God, of the abilities of the human mind, the capacities of the human soul, and the needs of the human body. The object of Political Philosophy is thus the human things in the comprehensive sense, and the questions of Political Philosophy all lead back to a question that is posed to man as man: the question of what is right. If he wishes to answer it seriously, if he seeks to gain clarity for himself, he finds himself faced with conflicting claims. He is subject to the law of the political community, the commandment of God or of men, and he meets with answers that are advanced with the demand for obedience or with the will to enforcement. The question of what is right is posed to man, in other words, in the sphere of the political
eBook - PDFAfter Politics
The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy
- Glen Newey(Author)
- 2000(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
1 Political Philosophy and Politics Post-politics and Political Philosophy Modern Political Philosophy has little to say about politics as an activity. This is perhaps not quite as odd as would be the case if philosophers of science had nothing to say about scientific activity, or philosophers of language nothing about linguistic practice – or, for that matter, if philosophers of ethics found nothing of relevance to their inquiries in the phenomena of the moral life (even Kantians can apply a just savings principle to some of the latter). But it is still fairly odd. I shall first seek to substantiate this claim. Most political philosophers are currently not providing very much philosophical reflection on politics – at least not on politics as it is. 1 The central concern of Political Philosophy since the publication of A Theory of Justice 2 has been to arrive at a set of ideal prescriptions rather than attempting to provide a descriptive account of politics as it non-ideally exists. Not that the latter is the only fit subject for political philosophers to address. For example, we can ask whether there are any general conditions under which the existence of the state is justified, and what these conditions may be, or (differently) under what conditions the state’s requirement that its citizens perform certain actions is justified. Again, we can ask what justice is, how important it is in relation to ethical and other concerns, and how much heed an account of justice should take of what is politically possible. Recent Political Philosophy has addressed some, though not all, of these prescriptive issues. There is a shared pattern in normative Political Philosophy, which remains despite disagreements about the nature of justice or other kinds 15
eBook - PDF- Barbara Goodwin(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
A more normative and engaged kind of philosophy is now favoured. The other task of Political Philosophy is said to be to provide generally acceptable definitions of central political terms. These self-ascribed functions also rest on the conviction that even value-laden concepts are capable of a constant and definite meaning. Formulae such as ‘justice is giving every man his due’ and ‘democracy means “one man one vote”’ summarize attempts at com- prehensive, foolproof definitions which appear to be factual and to describe justice, democracy and so on in terms of behaviour or institutions. But these formulae can be shown to be disguisedly normative and therefore contentious. Some recent political philosophers have been sceptical about the search for fixed meanings and have argued that political concepts are ‘essentially contested’, that is, their meanings are necessarily disputed and vary according to the meaning of a cluster of related ‘contextual’ concepts, and are ineradicably dependent on values and ideologies. 5 A postmodernist approach would also contend that concepts have no fixed meaning, and no meaning at all outside the ‘discourses‘ or ‘narratives’ in which they are deployed. If no final definitions were possible, it would seem that Political Philosophy had no useful role to play. But it can still be maintained that the discipline deals with problems that are, in principle, open to theoretical solution, despite the contestability of the concepts which are its tools. In any case, the logical basis of the ‘essential contestability thesis’ has itself been called into question. 6 Part III of this book illustrates how such disputes may arise by showing the range of meanings which political ideas can have in different ideological contexts. Newcomers to political theory deserve two cautions. The first concerns values and value-neutrality. Political Philosophy sometimes appears unsatisfactory because it fails to deliver decisive answers to political questions.
eBook - PDF- Ezra Talmor(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Pergamon(Publisher)
Politics and Political Philosophy So far we have given an account of how political theory, while arising out of the activity of people discussing, debating, in short taking part in the political game, developed its method and enlarged its vision by taking a certain distance and removing itself from actual politics. This distance from its source has resulted in a new ordering of the conceptual activity of the philosopher. For didactic purposes, for the sake of achieving effective influence even when remote from the actual strife, greater emphasis was placed on fundamental rules of order, on ideals aimed at, and, as the result of such emphasis, what is actually an enquiry into mental and political concepts appears much more as a deduction of an ideal policy from a set of premisses. The consequence of such a transformation was that people tended to consider the ideas rather than the whole arguments through which these ideas are established, as the source of the possible influence of social philosophers. But in fact political philosophers wielded less and less influence by the methods through which they hoped to increase it. We must, however, qualify our statements about the influence or lack of influence of Political Philosophy on politics. We do not want to give the impression that in deploring Oakeshott's strict separation between the students of the language of political theory and the students of the programmes proposed in these same theories, that Oakeshott is condemning political theory to a state in which it is denied the powerful influence it could have if it did participate in actual politics. Nothing could be further from our view of the influ-ence of political theory on actual politics. Our notion of the polit-ical continuum, which we first developed when we examined Plato's theory, is supposed to include all the powers which any observer of politics knows about.
eBook - PDFOn Justice
Philosophy, History, Foundations
- Mathias Risse(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Political Philosophy as a Vocation, Continued 55 of justice carry “no weight.” 23 Finally, citizens need assurance that sufficiently many others also accept this much, which takes us to public justification. “Public” justification (merely) consists in verifying whether there exists an overlapping con- sensus of reasonable doctrines. So, crucially, justification happens within comprehensive doctrines, which phi- losophers take as given. Once citizens accept these justifications, nothing more must be said to philosophers. Political liberalism “applies the principle of toleration to philosophy itself” and “leaves philosophy as it is.” 24 This approach generates the authority of acceptance among citizens, rather than acceptability among philoso- phers. Philosophers participate in formulating ideas as citizens, alongside others. As Rawls writes, those who study Political Philosophy may sometimes know more about some things, but so may anyone else. Everyone appeals equally to the authority of human reason present in society. So far as other citizens pay attention to it, what is written may become part of the ongoing public discussion – A Theory of Justice along with the rest – until it eventually disappears. 25 But although philosophers decidedly are no Platonic experts, their input is needed pervasively. That point is reflected in Rawls’s four-stage sequence, a framework that citizens should use to think through matters of justice. 26 That sequence starts from selecting principles of justice and proceeds to the constitu- tional, legislative, and judicial decision-making stages. The earlier in the sequence, the rarer occasions for debate will be. Still, the topics can be revisited any time. At each stage, philosophers can engage as citizens who have pondered questions longer and harder than others, and whose input, therefore, may carry a distinct weight.
eBook - PDF- Alexander Moseley(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
CHAPTER 10 APPLIED Political Philosophy The application of philosophy to politics is where we encounter political ideas and their impact. Politics surrounds us – most head-lines involve politicians and their ideas on how people ought to live their lives; often they disagree and accentuate the nuances between them but periodically more radical ideas are brought to the fore and sometimes they manage to shift the entire paradigm of debate – such was the Whig ascendancy of the eighteenth century, the social reform movement of the early nineteenth, the socialist movement of the mid to late nineteenth century, the various forms of totalitari-anism in the first half of the twentieth century, and the liberalism of the post-war period. What motivates any human action is a desire to change one set of circumstances for another, whatever those circumstances may be. The goals and ambitions we form hinge upon ideas, but a person acting alone or in a group may e ff ect that change in two fundamen-tally di ff erent ways – peacefully or violently, and politicians must choose between the two. Peacefully means encouraging the volun-tary assistance of others whether in exchange, gifting or mutual assistance on a common project. Violently means deploying force or its threat to e ff ect a change in processes or outcomes. That is, I can encourage you to help in my project by appealing to your own inter-ests by o ff ering remuneration or other rewards or by appealing to our friendship or communal benefits that will accrue if we help each other; or I can threaten to beat you up, torture or kill you, take your property or income away, or constrain you against your will if you do not work for the project. The choice between peace and violence is indeed stark but think of any project and consider whether it has an underlying application of 157
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