Wolff, J., 2015 (revised 3rd edn) An Introduction to Political Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press (the 4th edition may also be used) An Introduction to Political Philosophy Rationalist and Empiricist Theories, and that this division reflects, and depends upon, the division betweenrationalistand empiricist theories of logic and knowledge. If this is so, nofinalanswer can be given to the questions of political philosophy without a decision on these broader issues, but a necessary and important task will have been accomplished if the problems of political philosophy are reduced to their ultimate and logical form. Comparing and contrasting dominant and marginal voices, this is the only text to explore key political concepts through a truly diverse range of political thinkers. This raises a further set of questions that we will consider over the term. How are regimes founded, the founding of regimes? What brings them into being and sustains them over time? For thinkers like Tocqueville, for example, regimes are embedded in the deep structures of human history that have determined over long centuries the shape of our political institutions and the way we think about them. Yet other voices within the tradition–Plato, Machiavelli, Rousseau come to mind–believed that regimes can be self-consciously founded through deliberate acts of great statesmen or founding fathers as we might call them. These statesmen–Machiavelli for example refers to Romulus, Moses, Cyrus, as the founders that he looks to; we might think of men like Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the like–are shapers of peoples and institutions. The very first of the Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton even begins by posing this question in the starkest terms. “It has been frequently remarked,” Hamilton writes, “that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” There we see Hamilton asking the basic question about the founding of political institutions: are they created, as he puts it, by “reflection and choice,” that is to say by a deliberate act of statecraft and conscious human intelligence, or are regimes always the product of accident, circumstance, custom, and history? Chapter 3. Who Is a Statesman? What Is a Statesman? [00:22:19] This course aims to introduce students to political philosophy especially in the western liberal tradition by:

An Introduction to Political Philosophy An Introduction to Political Philosophy

Find the best philosophy books on a wide variety of topics with this collection of over 120 philosophy reading lists. Publishers description: Discussed and debated from time immemorial, the concept of personal liberty went without codification until the 1859 publication of On Liberty. John Stuart Mill’s complete and resolute dedication to the cause of freedom inspired this treatise, an enduring work through which the concept remains well known and studied. Structured around the main issues of political philosophy, Wolff introduces readers to writings from a diverse range of thinkers, helping to make a complex subject readily accessible and stimulating. The works listed so far have all been written by — and mostly for — men. In the development of modern Western societies, women were largely excluded from the political arena in both literal and theoretical terms — until great thinkers like English philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft began making waves with powerful works like her 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she challenged the dominant narrative that women shouldn’t receive a rational education.Furio Cerutti has written a wide-ranging and profound analysis of the nature, the purpose and the morality of politics. In a time of post-truth, fake news, and rising populism across the West he reminds us that the art of government must fail if it does not respect scientific knowledge, and that while it is prudence rather than theoretical knowledge which leads to good choices in politics, clear concepts and rational argumentation are still essential aids. A compelling read." - Professor Andrew Gamble, Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Cambridge Publishers description: Written in 1833-4, when Marx was barely twenty-five, this astonishingly rich body of works formed the cornerstone for his later political philosophy. In the Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State, he dissects Hegel’s thought and develops his own views on civil society, while his Letters reveal a furious intellect struggling to develop the egalitarian theory of state. Equally challenging are his controversial essay On the Jewish Question and the E conomic and Philosophical Manuscripts, where Marx first made clear his views on alienation, the state, democracy and human nature. Brilliantly insightful, Marx’s Early Writings reveal a mind on the brink of one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history – the theory of Communism. This translation fully conveys the vigour of the original works. The introduction, by Lucio Colletti, considers the beliefs of the young Marx and explores these writings in the light of the later development of Marxism. Callicles A theory which closely resembles that of Antiphon is attributed by Plato to Callicles in the dialogue Gorgias, According to Plato, Callicles held that Nature is governed by the law of force, while civil and moral laws are normally the result of contracts made by the weak to defraud the strong of what their strength would otherwise secure for them. In a state of nature the survival of thefitwould be the effective rule of life, whereas the laws of society frequently reverse this principle and compel the strong to assist the weak. Callicles thought that his theory was supported by the considerations that in both the animal kingdom and the sphere of international relations,1 in neither of which there are restrictive laws, the rule of force is the operative principle. Hence, Callicles concludes, the rule of force is natural, and should not be opposed by the laws of society. It is not clear from what Plato tells us about Callicles* theory whether (to put the point in modern terms) he was defending a naturalistic theory of morality by defining 'right' in terms of 'might', or whether he was merely arguing that, as a matter of fact, it is morally desirable that the strong should get their way. The fact that he tried to deduce what ought to happen in human society from what does happen in the animal kingdom suggests that the Turning from introductions and anthologies to primary texts, where better to start than with a discussion of political philosophy that, though over two thousand years old, is one of the subject’s finest works and still drives discussion today? But a regime is more than simply a set of formal structures and institutions, okay? It consists of the entire way of life, the moral and religious practices, the habits, customs, and sentiments that make a people what they are. The regime constitutes an ethos, that is to say a distinctive character, that nurtures distinctive human types. Every regime shapes a common character, a common character type with distinctive traits and qualities. So the study of regime politics is in part a study of the distinctive national character types that constitutes a citizen body. To take an example of what I mean, when Tocqueville studied the American regime or the democratic regime, properly speaking, in Democracy in America, he started first with our formal political institutions as enumerated in the Constitution, such things as the separation of powers, the division between state and federal government and so on, but then went on to look at such informal practices as American manners and morals, our tendency to form small civic associations, our peculiar moralism and religious life, our defensiveness about democracy and so on. All of these intellectual and moral customs and habits helped to constitute the democratic regime. And this regime–in this sense the regime describes the character or tone of a society. What a society finds most praiseworthy, what it looks up to, okay? You can’t understand a regime unless you understand, so to speak, what it stands for, what a people stand for, what they look up to as well as its, again, its structure of institutions and rights and privileges.

Introduction to Political Philosophy | Politics Trove

Publishers description: To investigate the imaginative leaps of so agile and incisive a mind as Machiavelli’s one needs as much commentary about history, political theory, sources, and language as possible. I have gradually come to realize that readers who remain unaware of these topics frequently finish reading The Prince, put down their copies, and wonder what the shouting was all about. Thus commented eminent Machiavelli scholar James B. Atkinson thirty years ago in justifying what remains today the most informative English-language edition of Machiavelli’s masterpiece available.By using this service, you agree that you will only keep content for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services An Introduction to Political Philosophy Hume's Empiricism Before the present century, when the doctrine has received wide support, the most celebrated exponent of Empiricism was the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), now generally recognized to have been one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Hume held that the only propositions which are certainly true are those which describe * relations of ideas', by which he meant analytic relationships in the sense defined above. Those which describe "matters of fact*, i.e. synthetic propositions, cannot be rationally justified, although they can be accepted as true in so far as they are justified by direct observation. But of course the great majority of synthetic propositions—in particular, the socalled 'laws' of science—go far beyond this and make assertions which cannot be justified by experience. Thus Hume argued that the belief in the universal truth of scientific laws follows repeated observations of the sequences which they describe; but he denied that there is any necessity in these sequences, or even in the occurrence of the belief that they are universal and necessary. If I infer that, because all observed samples of arsenic have proved to be poisonous, therefore all samples whatsoever are poisonous, no logical justification of this inference can, according to Hume, be given. It is just a fact that, following on the observation of numerous samples of arsenic which prove to be poisonous, everybody believes that all samples whatsoever will prove to be poisonous. But there is, according to Hume, no rational justification for this belief; it just happens to occur following on experience of the effects of arsenic in a limited number of instances, and just happens to have proved a reliable guide in practice. There is no guarantee that it will prove to be true of all instances whatsoever. Thus there is nothing * reasonable' in the belief in the a priori sense. Hume reached the same sceptical conclusions about the general propositions of morality. He thought it obvious that these propositions are synthetic, and argued that they cannot therefore be a priori Such propositions as * Jealousy is evil* or * Lying is wrong* are, he thought, obviously synthetic in that their predicates are not part of the meaning of the subjects. And such propositions cannot be a priori, for no necessary connection can, in his view, be discerned between the subject and the predicate. Hence the basis for these moral generalizations must be the same as the basis for the generalizations of natural science— the observation of a limited number of instances. And this is not a rational ground for asserting them. Having denied that moral generalizations have any logical necessity, Hume set himself to analyse the empirical evidence on which they are based. He reached the conclusion that the basis of such generalizations is a peculiar type of sentiment or feeling. When I say "Honesty is good* I am, according to Hume, saying, in a rather specific sense of the word 'like*, i Like honesty*. I am, in fact, describing not an inherent quality of honesty but a feeling excited in me by the contemplation of honesty. This feeling Hume called the 'pleasing sentiment of approbation*. He thought that moral disapproval in the same way expresses a sentiment of disapprobation. Thus Hume concluded that there is nothing "rational* or "logical* in morality and that it is impossible to show, on a priori grounds, that moral propositions are true or false. Their truth or falsity depends on the purely empirical question whether they are or are not accurate descriptions of the feelings to which they relate. This second edition also goes beyond any other anthology on the market in its coverage of traditionally under-represented views such as libertarianism, neo-socialism, feminism, and critical race theory. And it is one of the only anthologies to go beyond A Theory of Justice in its coverage of the political thought of John Rawls. Beauvoir dissects how “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” — shining a light on the negative fallout and injustices of stereotyped gender expectations. An Introduction to Political Philosophy The difference between analytic and synthetic propositions was defined by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) as follows: Analytic propositions, he said, 'add nothing through the predicate to the concept of the subject, but merely break it up into those constituent concepts that have all along been thought in it, although confusedly', while synthetic judgments 'add to the concept of the subject a predicate which has not been in any wise thought in it, and which no analysis could possibly extract from it'.1 The difference is, in short, that the predicate in an analytic proposition is contained within the meaning of the subject, while in a synthetic proposition the predicate is not contained within the meaning of the subject but adds something related to it. Kant illustrated the difference by the two propositions 'All bodies are extended' and 'All bodies are heavy'. The former, he thought, is analytic, because the concept of 'extension' is part of the meaning of 'body', while the latter is synthetic because the concept of 'heaviness' is not part of the meaning of 'body', but only a quality which it acquires when it is placed in a gravitational field. Kant's definition drew attention to an important difference between analytic and synthetic propositions, although not all analytic propositions naturally fall into the simple subject-predicate form which his examples illustrate. The essential characteristic of an analytic proposition is that it defines the meaning, or part of the meaning, of its subject and does not describe unessential features which may, or may not, belong to it A cube of iron has a certain weight at sea level, a smaller weight at the top of a high mountain, and no weight at all at a certain point between the earth and the moon; but these differences are not essential elements in the meaning of the description 'cube of iron'. It is clear, on the other hand, that if the cube of iron had no extension it would not be a cube of iron, since extension is an essential part of the meaning of the phrase 'cube of iron'. In other words, to deny an analytic proposition is self-contradictory since that is simultaneously asserting and denying the same thing. It is, to borrow Bertrand Russell's example, like saying 'A bald man is not bald'.1 Modern philosophers have devoted much attention to the study of analytic propositions, and many would agree with Professor Ayer that 'a proposition is analytic when its validity depends solely on the definitions of the symbols it contains',2 and that this is so because analytic propositions 'do not make any assertion about the empirical world They simply record our determination to use words in a certain fashion.'3 They are, in other words, tautologies; and the reason why we think it worth while to assert them and sometimes, as in mathematics, to draw elaborate deductions from them, is that our reason is too limited to recognize their full significance without going through these complex verbal processes. These considerations may appear to be extremely abstract and their connection with what is commonly understood as 'political philosophy' far from obvious; but in fact this connection is both simple and fundamental. For philosophy is the 'quest for certainty', and if certainty is a characteristic of propositions, then an inquiry into the nature and scope of