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 ...

Political philosophy, African

see African philosophy, Anglophone.

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 ...

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 ...

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’ ...

Political philosophy, nature of

By Plant, Raymond

Political philosophy developed as a central aspect of philosophy generally in the world of ancient Greece, and the writings of Plato and Aristotle made a basic and still ...

Political philosophy, Indian

By Inayatullah, Sohail

While Western political theory has been framed as the struggle between the state and the individual, Indian political philosophy has been more concerned with issues of self-liberation, morality ...

Political philosophy, Jewish

By Zohar, Noam J.; Walzer, Michael

Jewish ideas about politics are embedded in the traditional genres of Judaic discourse, more often legal or homiletic than systematically philosophical. A defining feature of this tradition is ...

Political philosophy in classical Islam

By Frank, Daniel H.

Political philosophy in Islam is the application of Greek political theorizing upon an understanding of Muhammad’s revelation as legislative in intent. In lieu of Aristotle’s Politics, unknown in ...

Religion and political philosophy

By Weithman, Paul J.

Political philosophy began in Athens, but the large-scale impact of religion upon it had to await Christianity. Biblical Christianity portrays human beings as subjects of a kingdom of ...

Postmodernism and political philosophy

By White, Stephen K.

Just as there is much disagreement over both what is meant by ‘postmodernism’ and which thinkers fall under this rubric, so also is there disagreement over its implications ...

Political philosophy, Confucian

By Chan, Joseph

Confucianism is a tradition of ethical and political thought in which ethics and politics are tightly connected. Confucianism endorses a politics of virtue that can be understood in ...

Global Justice

By Tan, Kok-Chor

For introductions to the current debate on global justice, the obvious entries to start with are Simon Caney’s Global Justice, recent work on and Charles Beitz’s International Relations, ...

Introduction to Philosophy

By Crane, Tim

REP can be approached at so many different levels: philosophers at any stage can lose themselves in the interconnected web of entries. ...

Moral pluralism

By Weinstock, Daniel M.

Moral pluralism is the view that moral values, norms, ideals, duties and virtues are irreducibly diverse: morality serves many purposes relating to a wide range of human interests, ...

Iqbal, Muhammad (1877–1938)

By Hassan, Riffat

Muhammad Iqbal was an outstanding poet-philosopher, perhaps the most influential Muslim thinker of the twentieth century. His philosophy, though eclectic and showing the influence of Muslims thinkers such ...

International law, philosophy of

By Buchanan, Allen

The philosophy of international law has a long history, reaching back on some accounts beyond the Medieval period to late Hellenistic philosophy. In the twentieth century work in ...

Human nature

By Shapiro, Ian

Every political philosophy takes for granted a view of human nature, and every view of human nature is controversial. Political philosophers have responded to this conundrum in a ...

Molina, Luis de (1535–1600)

By Freddoso, Alfred J.

A leading figure in sixteenth-century Iberian scholasticism, Molina was one of the most controversial thinkers in the history of Catholic thought. In keeping with the strongly libertarian account ...

Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969)

By Salamun, Kurt

Karl Jaspers is generally known as an existentialist, but he also developed interesting conceptions in other fields of philosophy: in philosophy of religion, the concepts of Transcendence, cipher ...

Liberalism

By Waldron, Jeremy

Liberal political philosophy explores the foundations of the principles most commonly associated with liberal politics: freedom, toleration, individual rights, constitutional democracy and the rule of law. Liberals hold ...

Price, Richard (1723–91)

By Darwall, Stephen

Richard Price was a Welsh dissenting minister who contributed widely to philosophy and public life in latter-eighteenth-century Britain. The leading British ethical rationalist of the period, Price did ...

Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86)

By Arkush, Allan

A Jewish disciple of Leibniz and Wolff, Mendelssohn strove throughout his life to uphold and strengthen their rationalist metaphysics while sustaining his ancestral religion. His most important philosophic ...

Oakeshott, Michael Joseph (1901–90)

By Minogue, Kenneth

Although Michael Oakeshott was in his own time a lone figure in a philosophical world dominated by Oxford analysis, he has come to be recognized as the most ...