Marxism, Western

By Torrance, John

Western Marxism is used here as an umbrella term for the various schools of Marxist thought that have flourished in Western Europe since Marx’s death in 1883. It ...

East Asian philosophy

By Ames, Roger T.

Sinitic civilization, which includes the Chinese-influenced cultures of Japan and Korea, established an early lead over the rest of the world in the development of its material culture ...

Bloch, Ernst Simon (1885–1977)

By Geoghegan, Vincent

Bloch was one of the most innovative Marxist philosophers of the twentieth century. His metaphysical and ontological concerns, combined with a self-conscious utopianism, distanced him from much mainstream ...

Lefebvre, Henri (1901–91)

By Shields, Rob

Henri Lefebvre was a Marxist and existential philosopher, a sociologist and a theorist of the state. His humanistic neo-Marxism has been influential throughout Europe. In the English-speaking world ...

Feminist political philosophy

By Mendus, Susan

In all its forms, feminism asserts that social and political structures in society discriminate against women. Feminist political philosophy aims to show how traditional political philosophy is implicated ...

Civil society

By Cohen, Jean L.

In modern social and political philosophy civil society has come to refer to a sphere of human activity and a set of institutions outside state or government. ...

Althusser, Louis Pierre (1918–90)

By Callinicos, Alex

Louis Althusser was the most influential philosopher to emerge in the revival of Marxist theory occasioned by the radical movements of the 1960s. His influence is, on the ...

Critical Legal Studies

By Norrie, Alan

Critical Legal Studies first developed in the USA in the latter half of the 1970s. Drawing on the political inspiration of the contemporary New Left, it was an ...

Hungary, philosophy in

By Perecz, Laszlo

The situation of Hungarian philosophy can be best illustrated by two sayings: ‘there are Hungarian philosophers, but there is no Hungarian philosophy’, and ‘a certain period of Hungarian ...

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 ...

Bernstein, Eduard (1850–1932)

By Tudor, H.

Eduard Bernstein, an eminent German social democrat, is now noted as ‘the father of revisionism’. He made a reputation as the radical editor of the German Social Democratic ...

Social theory and law

By Cotterrell, Roger

Social theory embodies the claim that philosophical analyses, reflections on specific historical experience and systematic empirical observations of social conditions may be combined to construct theoretical explanations of ...

Political philosophy, history of

By Hampsher-Monk, Iain

The history of political philosophy attempts to yield a connected account of past speculation on the character of human association at its most inclusive level. ‘History’ or ‘philosophy’ ...

Alienation

By Wood, Allen W.

‘Alienation’ is a prominent term in twentieth-century social theory and social criticism, referring to any of various social or psychological evils which are characterized by a harmful separation, ...

Labriola, Antonio (1843–1904)

By Hunt, Geoffrey

Antonio Labriola was the founder of Italian theoretical Marxism. Generally situated in the Marxism of the Second International, he was more questioning than others in that movement. He ...

Luxemburg, Rosa (1871–1919)

By Tudor, H.

Rosa Luxemburg, of Polish-Jewish origins, was for most of her life a prominent activist and theorist on the radical left of the German Social Democratic Party. She defended ...

Marxist thought in Latin America

By Schutte, Ofelia

Marxism is a theory offering a critique of capitalist political economy. Marxism also views itself as an instrument or means of changing the world from a capitalist to ...

Kautsky, Karl Johann (1854–1938)

By Tudor, H.

Karl Johann Kautsky became the leading German socialist theoretician at the time of the Second International and the authoritative exponent of ’orthodox Marxism’. He was a close associate ...

Marxism, Chinese

By Munro, Donald J.

Chinese Marxism is a mixture of elements from Confucianism, German Marxism, Soviet Leninism and China’s own guerrilla experience. Because Mao Zedong (1893–1976) was in power longer than any ...

German idealism

By Franks, Paul

From the late eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, German philosophy was dominated by the movement known as German idealism, which began as an attempt to ...

Engels, Friedrich (1820–95)

By Carver, Terrell

Until the 1970s the most influential framework for understanding Marx’s career and ideas was the one established by Engels. This framework was crucially related to his understanding of ...

MacIntyre, Alasdair (1929–)

Alasdair MacIntyre has contributed to the diverse fields of social, moral and political philosophy. He is one of the leading proponents of a virtue ethical approach in moral ...

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–61)

By Baldwin, Thomas

Merleau-Ponty belongs to the group of French philosophers who transformed French philosophy in the early post-war period by introducing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers Husserl and ...

Rancière, Jacques (1940–)

By Davis, Oliver

Jacques Rancière was born in Algiers in 1940 and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he participated in French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser’s seminar reading ...

Socialism

By Oneill, John

While socialist ideas may retrospectively be identified in many earlier forms of protest and rebellion against economic injustice and political oppression, socialism both as a relatively coherent theoretical ...