Civil disobedience

By Greenawalt, Kent

According to common definitions, civil disobedience involves a public and nonviolent breach of law that is committed in order to change a law or policy, and in order ...

Whistleblowing, ethics of

A whistleblower is someone who, in the course of her work, comes across wrongdoing in her organization and reports it with the aim of bringing a particular harmful ...

Green political philosophy

By Ball, Terence

All the major political philosophies have been born of crisis. Green political philosophy is no exception to this general rule. It has emerged from that interconnected series of ...

Green political philosophy

All the major political philosophies have been born of crisis. Green political philosophy is no exception to this general rule. It has emerged from that interconnected series of ...

Thoreau, Henry David (1817–62)

By Gould, Timothy

Thoreau was one of the founders of the new literature that emerged within the fledgling culture of the United States in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. ...

Anarchism

By Crowder, George

Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable. Although there have been intimations of the anarchist outlook throughout history, ...

Political philosophy

By Miller, David

Political philosophy can be defined as philosophical reflection on how best to arrange our collective life - our political institutions and our social practices, such as our economic ...

Applied ethics

By Almond, Brenda

Applied ethics is marked out from ethics in general by its special focus on issues of practical concern. It therefore includes medical ethics, environmental ethics, and evaluation of ...

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William (1872–1970)

By Griffin, Nicholas

Bertrand Russell divided his efforts between philosophy and political advocacy on behalf of a variety of radical causes. He did his most important philosophical work in logic and ...

Discrimination

By Nickel, James W.

A principle forbidding discrimination is widely used to criticize and prohibit actions and policies that disadvantage racial, ethnic and religious groups, women and homosexuals. Discriminatory actions often rely ...

Justice, international

By Barry, Brian; Matravers, Matt

Although it has been denied (by, for example, F.A. Hayek 1976) that the concept of distributive justice has application within states, it is not controversial that there can ...

American philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries

By Goodman, Russell B.

Jonathan Edwards, the first great American philosopher, interpreted Calvinist theology within the newer framework of Newtonian physics and Lockean empiricism in his Freedom of the Will (1754). However, ...

Green, Thomas Hill (1836–82)

By Bellamy, Richard

Green was a prominent Oxford idealist philosopher, who criticized both the epistemological and ethical implications of the dominant empiricist and utilitarian theories of the time. He contended that ...

War and peace, philosophy of

By Nardin, Terry

The war/peace dichotomy is a recurrent one in human thought and the range of experience it interprets is vast. Images of war and peace permeate religion, literature and ...

Violence

By Coady, C.A.J.

Violence is a central concept for much discussion of moral and political life, but lots of debate employing the concept is confused by the lack of clarity about ...

Dworkin, Ronald (1931–2013)

By Christodoulidis, Emilios A.

Ronald Dworkin’s early, highly controversial, thesis that there are right answers in hard cases in law, coupled with his attack on the idea that law is simply a ...

Stewart, Dugald (1753–1828)

By Madden, Edward H.

Dugald Stewart was, after Thomas Reid, the most influential figure in the Common Sense School; he was a major influence on Victor Cousin and Théodore Jouffroy in France ...

Applied ethics

Applied ethics is marked out from ethics in general by its special focus on issues of practical concern. It is concerned with ethical issues in various fields of ...

Common Sense School

By Madden, Edward H.

The term ‘Common Sense School’ refers to the works of Thomas Reid and to the tradition of Scottish realist philosophy for which Reid’s works were the main source. ...

Obligation, political

The problem of political obligation has been one of the central concerns of political philosophy throughout the history of the subject. Political obligations are the moral obligations of ...

Obligation, political

By Simmons, A. John

The problem of political obligation has been one of the central concerns of political philosophy throughout the history of the subject. Political obligations are the moral obligations of ...

Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004)

Jacques Derrida was born in El-Biar, Algeria in 1930, a Jewish citizen of France. He was nine years old when the Nazis marched into Paris. Algeria was never ...