An Introduction to Political Philosophy

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For example, whether or not 'the good' can be defined as 'the desired*, it is quite a distinct question whether a proposition such as 'Benevolence is good' is a priori or empirical.

Introduction to Political Philosophy | Open Yale Courses Introduction to Political Philosophy | Open Yale Courses

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. Cavarero, A. (2004) ‘Politicizing Theory’, in S. White and D. Moon (eds.) What is Political Theory?, London: Sage Publications, pp. 54–79. An Introduction to Political Philosophy beings must feel and will and think in accordance with certain psychological laws. Of these psychological laws Antiphon thought that the most fundamental is the desire to live and be happy and to avoid death and unhappiness. But the laws of society often interfere with the operation of this Law of Nature since they restrain people from performing acts, e.g. stealing, which might bring them happiness. Antiphon admitted that there is a sound reason for observing the laws of society if to break them would involve the shame of conviction and the pain of punishment, for these consequences are painful to the individual, and to court them is therefore to violate the fundamental Law of Nature. But whenever an individual can increase his happiness by breaking the Law of Society and avoiding detection and punishment, it is, Antiphon thought, in accordance with the Law of Nature for him to do so. The weakness of this theory is that it ignores the inevitable social relationships in which a man must live. The laws forbidding theft and murder may at times stand in the way of what a given individual would like to do; but they also prevent other people from doing to him what would undoubtedly be to his disadvantage. Indeed, the majority of civil laws are of potential advantage, as well as disadvantage, to an individual. As Hobbes subsequently recognized, a theory based upon the assumption that self-interest is the primary motive of human conduct is tenable only if it recognizes that self-interest may be quite different from the gratification of an immediate impulse, and that the achievement of personal happiness depends in no small measure upon controlling these immediate impulses and obeying civil laws made in the interest of all. Antiphon's principle might, indeed, have a useful application in a society ruled by a dictator ready to sacrifice his subjects* interests in pursuing his own, but apart from such circumstances the principle is fraught with grave dangers to the interests of both the individual and society. Wolff, J., 2015 (revised 3rd edn) An Introduction to Political Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press (the 4th edition may also be used) To participate in the course you will need to have regular access to the Internet and you will need to buy the following texts:Many courses can be studied for credit which means they can count towards a recognised qualification. The course will provide an introduction to political philosophy by examining the justification of the state, problems democracy, liberty, justice, and feminist theory. But this goes in a slightly different direction as well. Not only is this study of the regime, as we’ve seen, as I’ve just tried to indicate, rooted in, in many ways, the practical experience of the thinkers we’ll be looking at; but the study of regime politics either implicitly or explicitly raises a question that goes beyond the boundary of any given society. A regime, as I’ve said, constitutes a people’s way of life, what they believe makes their life worth living, or to put it again slightly differently, what a people stand for. Although we are most familiar with the character of a modern democratic regime such as ours, the study of political philosophy is in many ways a kind of immersion into what we might call today comparative politics; that is to say it opens up to us the variety of regimes, each with its own distinctive set of claims or principles, each vying and potentially in conflict with all the others, okay? Underlying this cacophony of regimes is the question always, which of these regimes is best? What has or ought to have a claim on our loyalty and rational consent?

Conceptualizing Politics An Introduction to Political Philosophy Conceptualizing Politics An Introduction to Political Philosophy

The blueprint for Marxist thinking, Das Kapital is Karl Marx's 1867 magnum opus, in which he builds out his sustained critique of capitalism and private property, and asserts his vision for a system of common ownership of the means of production — a communist society built around the maxim, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”Political philosophy contains some of the greatest writings in the western intellectual tradition, as well as highly stimulating contemporary contributions. This online course introduces the student to classic and contemporary texts in the context of approaching some central questions in political philosophy concerning, the state, democracy, liberty and justice. 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.

356 Book Reviews this sort. - JSTOR

By a 'judgment' is here meant the 'assertion of a proposition'. The word thus serves to emphasize the active function of the mind upon which Kant and Hegel laid so much stress. An elegantly written introduction, structured by a topical approach to the field. While introducing canonical authors, the focus is on contemporary problems of political philosophy." - Dr Egbert Klautke, University College London, UK An Introduction to Political Philosophy right or wrong. For moral propositions are synthetic propositions, and are therefore without a priori certainty. All that can be asserted with a priori certainty is that //'X is good* is true, then the propositions which are logically implied by 'X is good' are also true. If, for example, it is true that 'All pleasures are good*, then it follows logically that a pleasure is good whatever its source and nature. And if this implication is held to be false, then the general principle by which it is implied must be rejected, just as the Law of Gravity would have to be rejected if some material bodies were found not to obey it Thus the Empiricist Theory implies that there can be no ultimate demonstration of the truth or falsity of a moral proposition; all that reason can show is whether it is consistent with other moral propositions, and what its logical implications are. The other logical possibility open to the empiricist is the view that moral propositions are analytic, and therefore a priori certain. But this would imply that moral characteristics must be part of the meaning of that to which they are attributed, and this does not seem to be the case. For it does not appear to be self-contradictory to deny a proposition which asserts that X is good or bad or right or wrong, as it would be if such a proposition were analytic. On the contrary, there is widespread disagreement about such propositions, most obviously if we compare the moral beliefs which prevail in different communities, or in the same community at different epochs of its history, but also to some extent within the same community at a given time. For example, there are in Britain today sharp differences of opinion about the morality of gambling, divorce, and blood sports. Some people believe that these things area within limits, blameless, while others hold that they are unconditionally wrong; but, while both opinions cannot be true, it does not seem that either is self-contradictory. It would, of course, be self-contradictory to say that gambling is legitimate if evil were an inherent part of the meaning of gambling, but the argument that evil is an inherent part of the meaning of gambling would usually be rejected as 'begging the question* on the ground that the question whether gambling is good or bad is a question of substance and not of definition. Of course there is no logical way of refuting anyone who obstinately maintains that the moral propositions which he asserts are analytic, and that anyone who denies these propositions is talking nonsense, any more than there is any logical way of refuting the person who asserts that 2 plus 2 equals 5; but this point of view can only be justified by disregarding the beliefs which are inconsistent with it instead of accounting for them. The general assumptions made about the nature and scope of a priori knowledge have therefore important implications for the analysis of moral experience, since it is only on the assumptions of Rationalism that it is possible to avoid the conclusion that moral propositions are empirical descriptions, whether or not these descriptions can be reduced without remainder to non-moral propositions.1 And both of these alternatives represent a radical departure from the assumptions commonly made about the nature of moral experience. For thefirstalternative implies that moral propositions are purely empirical descriptions devoid of any rational necessity; while the second implies that moral propositions can be expressed without loss of meaning as non-moral propositions, and that it is therefore misleading to speak of them as 'moral* propositions and thus imply that they describe a special and distinctive type of experience. 1The best introductory text about political philosophy currently available. The contents are easy for the newcomer to the subject of political philosophy to assimilate. The narrative is clear and thought provoking." - Professor Ian Godfrey Finlayson, European School of Economics, UK This course aims to introduce students to political philosophy especially in the western liberal tradition by: Written by the renowned political philosopher, Jo Wolff, this is the most succinct, lucid, and thought-provoking introduction to the key questions and controversies dominating political philosophy. From introductions and anthologies to grand political treatises from individual thinkers, this reading list is designed to provide you with a well-rounded view of the most important political contributions from philosophers down the ages.

An Introduction to Political Philosophy An Introduction to Political Philosophy

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. This does not, of course, mean that experience can in practice ever provide a logically valid proof of the 'uniformity of Nature*, but only that experience never reveals anything which is inconsistent with the assumption of that principle. An Introduction to Political Philosophy First published in 1953, this seminal introduction to political philosophy is intended for both the student of political theory and for the general reader. After an introduction which explains the nature and purpose of philosophy, Dr Murray provides a critical examination of the principle theories advanced by political philosophers from Plato to Marx, paying special attention to contemporary issues. The book also makes an attempt to define the essential issues of philosophical significance in contemporary politics, with special reference to the conflict between political authority and individual rights, and to show how the different moral assumptions underlying authoritarian and democratic systems of government are ultimately based upon different theories of logic. An Introduction to Political Philosophy The subordinate function which Hume attributed to reason may be briefly described as that of applying scientific generalizations. Of course these generalizations are. not * rational' in the a priori sense for they are synthetic propositions, and only analytic propositions are, in Hume's view, a priori. But on the assumption—which experience seems to justify1— that both physical and mental events occur in accordance with certain general laws, it is rational to look for these laws and to apply them with a view to predicting the future course of events. The process is rational in the strict sense in so far as it consists in drawing the logical implications of a hypothesis. If all arsenic is poisonous, it follows a priori that this piece of arsenic is poisonous, but neither the proposition that all arsenic is poisonous nor the proposition that this is a piece of arsenic is a priori Both of these propositions are empirical and cannot be rationally justified. The Rationalism of Kant and Hegel Hume's revolutionary account of the function of reason naturally evoked a reaction, and the philosophies of the great German thinkers Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) were attempts to restore to reason the positive functions which Hume had denied to it. Kant and Hegel sought to do this by stressing the active function of the mind in knowledge and, in particular, by arguing that, while synthetic propositions may by themselves be devoid of logical necessity, they are characterized by another kind of necessity (which Kant called 'transcendental necessity*) derived from the mind in which they originate. They are necessary, not in the logical sense that their falsity is inconceivable, but in the transcendental sense that experience could not take the form which it does take unless they were assumed to be universally true. Such, in brief, is Kant's theory of the nature of causal and moral laws. He admits that they are synthetic but claims that they are none the less a priori in the transcendental sense. His theory is idealist' in the sense that he holds the stuff of experience to be not independent objects but our ideas ofox judgments about objects. And while he believes that there are independent objects—which he calls 'things-in-themselves'—he holds that these are necessarily unknowable except in the form of appearances conditioned by the way in which the mind, in view of its structure, is bound to apprehend them. Many philosophers would question whether a theory of this sort constitutes any real answer to Hume's empiricism. They would question whether * transcendental' necessity is more than the empirical regularity admitted by Hume—whether, for example, the fact that we always interpret our experience in terms of causal regularities justifies the conclusion that we necessarily interpret it in this way. It must at least be admitted that Hume and other philosophers who think like him have not interpreted their experience in this way. And it is difficult to see why the almost universal belief in causal determination cannot be adequately described, as Hume described it, in terms of habit 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 ofWhat would life be like without the state? What justifies the state? Who should rule? How much liberty should the citizen enjoy? How should property be justly distributed? This book examines the central problems involved in political philosophy and the past attempts to respond to these