Understanding the Political Philosophers PDF Download

Author: Alan Haworth
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1135198969
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This absorbing study invites you to climb inside the heads of the major political philosophers, as it were, and to see the world through their eyes. Beginning with Socrates and concluding with post-Rawlsian theory, Alan Haworth presents the key ideas and developments with clarity and depth. Each chapter provides a concentrated study of a given thinker or group of thinkers and together they constitute a broad account of the main arguments in political philosophy. There are chapters on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, the Utilitarians, Marx, Rawls, and post-Rawlsian developments. This is a fascinating, lively and engaging look at the topic and will be appropriate for any student taking a course in political philosophy or political thought.

Author: Camil Ungureanu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415552189
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Should democratic politics and religion, political reason and faith be completely separated from each other, or should they be seen in a relationship of discursive interaction? The continuous presence of religion in the public sphere has undermined state-induced attempts to privatise faith, and it has raised anew normative and practical issues related to the place of religion in a democratic polity, generating spirited political debates. This textbook: Provides an introduction to, and a critical appraisal of the major schools of political thought with a focus on the relationship between democracy and religion. Contains an analysis of different schools: political liberalism, postmodernism, and Christian thought, analytical and continental political theory. Discusses religion from the perspective of the emerging field of international political theory. Features reflections on the question of Islam and Islamism. Include an analysis and appraisal of the issue of religion in contemporary republican thinking. Deals with the relationship between democracy and religion from the perspective of two opposing theologians, representing important theological trends. Teases out the political implications of post-modern thought in a jargon-free manner. This important text will be of great to use to students of religion and politics in the fields of political and legal theory, and religious and theological studies.

Author: Robert E. Goodin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This monumental volume provides the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of the essential primary readings in post-war political philosophy. The anthology includes classic articles on the nature of the state, democracy, justice, rights, liberty, equality, and oppression. It sets work in politics, law, and economics alongside philosophical texts; work of continental philosophers alongside analytic philosophers; work of feminists, marxists, and other radicals alongside that of more traditional liberals. This new edition updates the existing sections, taking into account recent developments in the field, and adds a new section of articles reflecting the pressing interests in international affairs - just war, self-determination and the nation state, and global governance. Together with the Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Blackwell, 1993), this volume forms the basis for a truly systematic introduction to political philosophy as it is practiced today.

Author: Will Kymlicka
Publisher: Oxford : Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198782748
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
This new edition of Will Kymlicka's best selling critical introduction to contemporary political theory has been fully revised to include many of the most significant developments in Anglo-American political philosophy in the last 11 years, particularly the new debates over issues of democratic citizenship and cultural pluralism. The book now includes two new chapters on citizenship theory and multiculturalism, in addition to updated chapters on utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, socialism, communitarianism, and feminism. The many thinkers discussed include G. A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, William Galdston, Carol Gilligan, R. M. Hare, Chandran Kukathas, Catherine Mackinnon, David Miller, Philippe Van Parijs, Susan Okin, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, John Roemer, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Iris Young. Extended guides to further reading have been added at the end of each chapter, listing the most important books and articles on each school of thought, as well as relevant journals and websites. Covering some of the most advanced contemporary thinking, Will Kymlicka writes in an engaging, accessible, and non-technical way to ensure the book is suitable for students approaching these difficult concepts for the first time. This second edition promises to build on the original edition's success as a key text in the teaching of modern political theory.

Author: John Rawls
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042565
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Constantly revised and refined over three decades, Rawls's lectures on various historical figures reflect his developing and changing views on the history of liberalism and democracy. With its careful analyses of the doctrine of the social contract, utilitarianism, and socialism, this volume has a critical place in the traditions it expounds.

Author: Steven Frankel
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271087439
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
Inspired by Machiavelli, modern philosophers held that the tension between the goals of biblical piety and the goals of political life needed to be resolved in favor of the political, and they attempted to recast and delimit traditional Christian teaching to serve and stabilize political life accordingly. This volume examines the arguments of those thinkers who worked to remake Christianity into a civil religion in the early modern and modern periods. Beginning with Machiavelli and continuing through to Alexis de Tocqueville, the essays in this collection explain in detail the ways in which these philosophers used religious and secular writing to build a civil religion in the West. Early chapters examine topics such as Machiavelli’s comparisons of Christianity with Roman religion, Francis Bacon’s cherry-picking of Christian doctrines in the service of scientific innovation, and Spinoza’s attempt to replace long-held superstitions with newer, “progressive” ones. Other essays probe the scripture-based, anti-Christian argument that religion must be subordinate to politics espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, both of whom championed reason over divine authority. Crucially, the book also includes a study of civil religion in America, with chapters on John Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders illuminating the relationships among religious and civil history, acts, and authority. The last chapter is an examination of Tocqueville’s account of civil religion and the American regime. Detailed, thought-provoking, and based on the careful study of original texts, this survey of religion and politics in the West will appeal to scholars in the history of political philosophy, political theory, and American political thought.

Author: Adam Swift
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745652379
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Bringing political philosophy out of the ivory tower and within the reach of all, this book provides us with the tools to cut through the complexity of modern politics.

Author: Stephen C. Angle
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 074566153X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current challenges and offering insights from which we can all learn. The Progressive Confucianism defended here takes key ideas of the twentieth-century Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) as its point of departure for exploring issues like political authority and legitimacy, the rule of law, human rights, civility, and social justice. The result is anti-authoritarian without abandoning the ideas of virtue and harmony; it preserves the key values Confucians find in ritual and hierarchy without giving in to oppression or domination. A central goal of the book is to present Progressive Confucianism in such a way as to make its insights manifest to non-Confucians, be they philosophers or simply citizens interested in the potential contributions of Chinese thinking to our emerging, shared world.

Author: Katrin Flikschuh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139428101
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In this book Katrin Flikschuh examines the relevance of Kant's political thought to major issues and problems in contemporary political philosophy. She advances and defends two principal claims: that Kant's philosophy of Right endorses the role of metaphysics in political thinking, in contrast to its generally hostile reception in the field today, and that his account of political obligation is cosmopolitan in its inception, assigning priority to the global rather than the domestic context. She shows how Kant's metaphysics of freedom as a shared idea of practical reason underlies the cosmopolitan scope of his theory of justice, and she concludes that despite the revival of 'Kantianism' in contemporary thinking, his account of justice is in many respects very different from dominant approaches in contemporary liberal theory. Her study will be of interest to political philosophers, political theorists, and historians of ideas.

Author: Ben Laurence
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067425841X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
An incisive argument for the relevance of political philosophy and its possibility of effecting change. The appeal of political philosophy is that it will answer questions about justice for the sake of political action. But contemporary political philosophy struggles to live up to this promise. Since the death of John Rawls, political philosophers have become absorbed in methodological debates, leading to an impasse between two unattractive tendencies: utopians argue that philosophy should focus uncompromisingly on abstract questions of justice, while pragmatists argue that we should concern ourselves only with local efforts to ameliorate injustice. Agents of Change shows a way forward. Ben Laurence argues that we can combine utopian justice and the pragmatic response to injustice in a political philosophy that unifies theory and practice in pursuit of change. Political philosophy, on this view, is not a purely normative theory disconnected from practice. Rather, political philosophy is itself a practiceÑan exercise of practical reason issuing in action. Laurence contends that this exercise begins in ordinary life with the confrontation with injustice. Philosophy draws ideas about justice from this encounter to be pursued through political action. Laurence shows that the task of political philosophy is not complete until it asks the question ÒWhat is to be done?Ó and deliberates actionable answers.