The way in which a nation’s economy is structured is of great importance for the material welfare of its people as well as the people’s relationship with the state and the operation of the state itself. It is also important for the proper functioning of a nation as a people and its psychological welfare. If the gap between rich and poor increases, the structure of an economy, and therefore the welfare of the state and the nation, is at risk. Two (...) important documents of antiquity, Plato’s Nomoi and the Book of Deuteronomy, which even today influence life, dealt intensively with the fissures between rich and poor within society as a danger to political welfare and harmony. This article will examine these documents to make use of these two books for improving a societal situation. This will be done by a comparative perspective on both of these books. (shrink)

_The Blackwell Guide to Social and Political Philosophy_ brings together a collection of newly commissioned essays which examine fundamental issues in social and political theory. Written by leading social and political philosophers, each essay provides a map to the history of the issue at hand and a judicious assessment of the main arguments that have been brought to bear upon that issue.

This book combines the insights of enlightenment thinking and feminist theory to explore the significance of love in modern philosophy. The author argues for the importance of emotion in general, and love in particular, to moral and political philosophy, pointing out that some of the central philosophers of the enlightment were committed to a moralized conception of love. However, she believes that feminism's insights arise not from its attribution of special and distinctive qualities to women, but from (...) its recognition of human vulernability. (shrink)

Characterizing feminist ethics and social and political philosophy as marked by a tendency to be non-idealizing serves to thematize the volume, while still ...

The essays in this book weave together insights and arguments from such diverse traditions as German critical theory, French philosophy and social theory, and recent Anglo-American moral and political theory, offering a unique approach to the political and theoretical consequences of the modernism/postmodernism discussion. Through an analysis of central themes in classical Marxism and early critical theory, the author shows how recent work in a variety of traditions converges on the need to question familiar distinctions between material (...) production and culture, the public and the private, and the political and the social, and to reconsider the conceptions of agency and power that have informed them. (shrink)

Ontology. Revisited. Groff's argument cuts against a familiar anti-metaphysical grain. Social and political philosophy, she maintains, is not as metaphysically neutral as it may seem. Even the most deontological of theories connects up with a ...

In this volume, thirteen distinguished contributors from the United States, Canada, Britain, and Germany cast light on important aspects of Kant's liberal thinking.

The ongoing debate on the ethics of self-driving cars typically focuses on two approaches to answering such questions: moral philosophy and social science. I argue that these two approaches are both lacking. We should neither deduce answers from individual moral theories nor should we expect social science to give us complete answers. To supplement these approaches, we should turn to political philosophy. The issues we face are collective decisions that we make together rather than individual decisions we (...) make in light of what we each have reason to value. Political philosophy adds three basic concerns to our conceptual toolkit: reasonable pluralism, human agency, and legitimacy. These three concerns have so far been largely overlooked in the debate on the ethics of self-driving cars. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here (...) for the first time. In these pieces, Cohen asks what egalitarians have most reason to equalize, he considers the relationship between freedom and property, and he reflects upon ideal theory and political practice.Included here are classic essays such as "Equality of What?" and "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," along with more recent contributions such as "Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice," "Freedom and Money," and the previously unpublished "How to Do Political Philosophy." On ample display throughout are the clarity, rigor, conviction, and wit for which Cohen was renowned. Together, these essays demonstrate how his work provides a powerful account of liberty and equality to the left of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Isaiah Berlin. (shrink)

This unusual introduction to political philosophy draws on its history and main theories_classic liberal, democratic, socialist, radical_with an eye to how each sees the place of the individual in the political order.

It is an excellent companion to Plato's Dialogues.

pseudo-Master's thesis Since Jacques Derrida’s 1989 essay “Force of Law: the Mystical Foundations of Authority,” Carl Schmitt has been a perennial subject of Derrida’s political critique. I will argue that Derrida’s concept of auto-immunity is uniquely applicable to Derrida’s interpretation of Schmitt’s political philosophy. Therefore, my argument will consist of two interrelated but equally divergent parts; the digressive structure will attempt to mimic Derrida’s complex style of weaving opposed concepts into a coherent whole. First, I will demonstrate (...) the many forms of Derrida’s concept of auto-immunity. Second, I will exhibit how this schema uniquely applies to Derrida’s criticisms of Schmitt and the contemporary state of politics. (shrink)

A.P. Martinich's interpretation that in Leviathan Thomas Hobbes believed that the laws of nature are the commands of God and that he did not rely on the Bible to prove this has been criticized by Greg Forster in this journal (2003). Forster uses these criticisms to develop his own view that Hobbes was insincere when he professed religious beliefs. We argue that Forster misrepresents Martinich's view, is mistaken about what evidence is relevant to interpreting whether Hobbes was sincere or not, (...) and is mistaken about some of Hobbes's central doctrines. Forster's criticisms are worth discussing at length for at least three reasons. He takes the debate about Hobbes's sincerity to a new level of sophistication; his misinterpretations of Hobbes may become accepted as correct; and his criticisms raise issues about the proper method of interpreting historical texts. (shrink)

This essay – although aware of the contradiction in terms of the concept of conservative theory – tries to pick out some key notions within the conservative political mindset, and offers an analysis of them by relating them to one another. Beside Aristotelian phronesis or practical wisdom, it focuses on kairos, or the right moment for action. It points out that due to the time constraint inherent in the realm of political action, agents need to acquire a kind (...) of tacit, practical knowledge of how to deal with pressing issues, and phronesis is a term which covers this sort of practical ability. The paper then tries to show that individual action is closely connected to communal interests, differentiates between formal and informal forms of communal knowledge and ends up by referring to Oakeshott’s, MacIntyre’s and Tocqueville’s ideas of communal wisdom and practice. (shrink)

This book argues that Collingwood developed a complete political philosophy of civilization. It also demonstrates that his philosophical work comprises a unity in which there is no fundamental discontinuity between his earlier and later writings.

Many interpreters of Plato's Laws have seen the introduction of the ‘nocturnal council’ towards the end of that dialogue as a return to the sort of philosophic dictatorship allegedly recommended in the Republic and thus as a betrayal of the principle of the rule of law evinced in most of the Laws. This paper defends the consistency of the council with the larger programme of the Laws by showing that its function is philosophic discussion and not rule. Its influence will (...) be the influence of philosophy on its members, who already occupy political offices in the city, and not direct rule as a body. In this way, the council provides a point of entry for the transpolitical good of philosophy into the city and thus offers an essentially legal regime the means of transcending some of its characteristic limitations. It also points to larger themes in Plato's political philosophy. (shrink)