bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Anthropology, philosophy of
Authors: Salmon Merrilee H.
Published: September 2018

Anthropology, like philosophy, is multifaceted. It studies humans’ physical, social, cultural and linguistic development, as well as their material culture, from prehistoric times up to the present, in all parts of the world. Some anthropological sub-fields have strong ties with the physical and biological sciences; others identify more closely with the social sciences or humanities. Within cultural and social anthropology differing theoretical approaches disagree about whether anthropology can be a science. The question of how it is possible to understand cultures different from one’s own, and to transmit that knowledge to others is central to anthropology because its answer determines the nature of the discipline. Philosophy of anthropology examines the definitions of basic anthropological concepts, the objectivity of anthropological claims and the nature of anthropological confirmation and explanation. It also examines the problems in value theory that arise when anthropologists confront cultures that do not share their own society’s standards.
Evolutionary theory and social science
Authors: Sober Elliott
Published: September 2018

Ideas from evolutionary theory impinge on the social sciences in two ways. First, there is the research programme of sociobiology, which attempts to demonstrate the impact of biological evolution on important features of human mind and culture. Second, there is the idea that biological evolution provides a suggestive analogy for the processes that drive cultural change. Both research programmes have tended to focus on the idea of natural selection, even though the theory of biological evolution considers processes besides selection. Sociobiology attempts to show that the following conditional helps explain psychological traits just as it applies to traits of morphology and physiology: if a trait varies in a population, makes a difference for the survival and reproduction of individuals, and is influenced by genetic factors, then natural selection will lead the trait to change its frequency in the population. Models of cultural evolution are built on an analogous conditional: if a set of alternative ideas are found in a culture, and people tend to find some of these ideas more attractive than others, then the mix of ideas in the culture will change. Sociobiology and the understanding of cultural change as an evolutionary process are approaches that have a history and both will continue to be explored in the future. Each is a flexible instrument, which may be better suited to some tasks than to others, and may be handled well by some practitioners and poorly by others. As a consequence, neither can be said to be ‘verified’ and ‘falsified’ by their track records to date.
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1929–)
Authors: Thomas Alan
Published: September 2018

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 philosophy, part of a wider attempt to recover an Aristotelian conception of both morality and politics. His return to ancient sources has been powered by a critical indictment of the modern moral predicament, which MacIntyre regards as theoretically confused and practically fragmented; only a return to a tradition which synthesizes Aristotelian and Augustinian themes will restore rationality and intelligibility to contemporary moral and political life.
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1929–)
Authors: Thomas Alan , Angier Tom
Published: September 2018

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 philosophy, part of a wider attempt to recover an Aristotelian conception of both morality and politics. His return to ancient and mediaeval sources has been powered by a critical indictment of the modern moral predicament, which MacIntyre regards as theoretically confused and practically fragmented; only a return to a tradition which synthesizes Aristotelian and Augustinian elements will restore rationality and intelligibility to contemporary moral and political life.
Anarchism
Authors: Crowder George
Published: September 2018

Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable. Although there have been intimations of the anarchist outlook throughout history, anarchist ideas emerged in their modern form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the wake of the French and Industrial Revolutions.

All anarchists support some version of each of the following broad claims: (1) people have no general obligation to obey the commands of the state; (2) the state ought to be abolished; (3) some kind of stateless society is possible and desirable; (4) the transition from state to anarchy is a realistic prospect

Within this broad framework there is a rich variety of anarchist thought. The main political division is between the ‘classical’ or socialist school, which tends to reject or restrict private property, and the ‘individualist’ or libertarian tradition, which defends private acquisition and looks to free market exchange as a model for the desirable society. Philosophical differences follow this division to some extent, the classical school appealing principally to natural law and perfectionist ethics, and the individualists to natural rights and egoism. Another possible distinction is between the ‘old’ anarchism of the nineteenth century (including both the classical and individualist traditions) and the ‘new’ anarchist thought that has developed since the Second World War, which applies the insights of such recent ethical currents as feminism, ecology and postmodernism.

Anarchists have produced powerful arguments denying any general obligation to obey the state and pointing out the ill effects of state power. More open to question are their claims that states ought to be abolished, that social order is possible without the state and that a transition to anarchy is a realistic possibility.
Civil disobedience
Authors: Greenawalt Kent
Published: September 2018

According to common definitions, civil disobedience involves a public and nonviolent breach of law that is committed in order to change a law or policy, and in order to better society. More, those classed as civilly disobedient must be willing to accept punishment. Why is the categorization of what counts as civil disobedience of practical importance? The usual assumption is that acts of civil disobedience are easier to justify morally than other illegal acts. Acts of civil disobedience, such as those committed by abolitionists, by followers of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr and by opponents of the Vietnam War, have been an important form of social protest.

The decision as to what exactly should count as civil disobedience should be guided both by an ordinary understanding of what the term conveys and by what factors are relevant for moral justification. For justification, nonviolence and publicness matter because they reduce the damage of violating the law. Tactics should be proportionate to the evil against which civil disobedience is aimed; someone who assesses the morality of a particular act of civil disobedience should distinguish an evaluation of tactics from an evaluation of objectives.
Freedom of speech
Authors: Jones Peter
Published: September 2018

Freedom of speech is one of the most widely accepted principles of modern political and social life. The three arguments most commonly offered in its defence are that it is essential for the pursuit of truth, that it is a fundamental constituent of democracy, and that it is a liberty crucial to human dignity and wellbeing. Its advocates also plead the dangers of allowing governments to control what may be said or heard. Yet there is also general agreement that speech should be subject to some limits. Most contemporary controversies about free speech concern those limits; some focus upon what should count as ’speech’, others upon the harms that speech may cause.
Corruption
Authors: Philp Mark
Published: September 2018

Corruption denotes decay or perversion. The term implies that there is a natural or normal standard of functioning or conduct from which the corrupt state of affairs or action deviates. When we talk of a person becoming corrupt, we mean not just that they have broken a rule, but that the basic norms of ethical conduct no longer have any force for them. Corruption strikes at the root of a thing.

Political corruption involves the decay or perversion of political rule. Broadly, this occurs when a group or individual subverts a society’s publicly endorsed practices for conciliating conflicts and pursuing the common good so as to gain illegitimate advantage for their interests in the political process. The precise specification of the nature and dynamics of corruption is inherently controversial. Classical accounts associate it with a collapse of civic virtue and the eventual destruction of the state. Modern theories focus more narrowly on the misuse of public office for private gain.
Economics and ethics
Authors: Hausman Daniel , McPherson Michael S.
Published: September 2018

Unlike many other sciences, economics is linked both to ethics and to the theory of rationality. Although many economists regard economics as a ‘positive’ science of one sort of social phenomena, economics is built around a normative theory of rationality, and has a special relevance to policy making and the criticism of social institutions. Economics complements and intersects with moral philosophy in both the concepts it has constructed and in its treatment of normative problems.

Fundamental to modern economics is its conception of human beings as rational agents, whose choices are determined by complete and transitive preferences. Although economists stress the usefulness of this notion of rationality in explaining human behaviour, rationality is clearly also a normative notion. The mathematical tools economists have developed to represent and study the implications of rational action in collective and interactive contexts are thus of immediate relevance to moral philosophers.

Also of interest to moral philosophy is the problematic attempt in welfare economics to fashion a normative theory of economic institutions and policies around the goal of helping people satisfy their subjective preferences. This project relies, controversially, on equating people’s wellbeing with the degree of satisfaction of their subjective preferences; an individual’s ‘utility’ on this view is no more than an index of how well their subjective preferences are satisfied. Furthermore, since most welfare economists assume that there is no meaningful way to compare degrees of preference satisfaction across people, the project also requires a scheme for weighing the effectiveness of alternative economic arrangements in satisfying preferences without weighing the comparative satisfaction levels of different individuals. Central to the project is Pareto optimality – the notion of an ‘efficient’ arrangement as one in which no individual can achieve higher preference satisfaction without someone else undergoing a reduction in their satisfaction level.

Economic policies and institutions can be appraised in terms of a variety of values other than efficiency. Notable both in historical and contemporary discussions are the values of liberty, justice and equality. Since a large part of economics is carried out with a view to its possible application to policy, ethics has a significant part to play in economics. By the same token, economics may be of great importance to ethics, both through its exploration of consequences and through the development of mathematical and conceptual tools.
Evolution and ethics
Authors: Sober Elliott
Published: September 2018

The fact that human beings are a product of biological evolution has been thought to impinge on the study of ethics in two quite different ways. First, evolutionary ideas may help account for why people have the ethical thoughts and feelings they do. Second, evolutionary ideas may help illuminate which normative ethical claims, if any, are true or right or correct. These twin tasks – explanation and justification – may each be subdivided. Evolutionary considerations may be relevant to explaining elements of morality that are culturally universal; they also may help explain why individuals or societies differ in the ethics they espouse. With respect to the question of justification, evolutionary considerations have sometimes been cited to show that ethics is an elaborate illusion – that is, to defend versions of ethical subjectivism and emotivism. However, evolutionary considerations also have been invoked to justify ethical norms. Although there is no conflict between using evolution both to explain traits that are universal and to explain traits that vary, it is not consistent to claim both that evolution unmasks ethics and justifies particular ethical norms.
Freedom and liberty
Authors: Feinberg Joel
Published: September 2018

There are at least two basic ideas in the conceptual complex we call ‘freedom’; namely, rightful self-government (autonomy), and the overall ability to do, choose or achieve things, which can be called ‘optionality’ and defined as the possession of open options. To be autonomous is to be free in the sense of ‘self-governing’ and ‘independent’, in a manner analogous to that in which sovereign nation states are free. Optionality is when a person has an open option in respect to some possible action, x, when nothing in the objective circumstances prevents them from doing x should they choose to do so, and nothing requires them to do x should they choose not to. One has freedom of action when one can do what one wills, but in order to have the full benefit of optionality, it must be supplemented by freedom of choice (free will), which consists in being able to will what one wants to will, free of internal psychological impediments. Autonomy and optionality can vary independently of one another. A great deal of one can coexist with very little of the other.

Perhaps the most controversial philosophical question about the analysis of freedom concerns its relation to wants or desires. Some philosophers maintain that only the actual wants that a person has at a given time are relevant to their freedom, and that a person is free to the extent that they can do what they want, even if they can do very little else. Other philosophers, urging that the function of freedom is to provide ‘breathing space’, insist that freedom is a function of a person’s ability to satisfy possible (hypothetical) as well as actual wants. A third group consists of those who hold a ‘value-oriented’ theory according to which freedom is not merely the power of doing what one wants or may come to want, rather it is the capacity of doing something ‘worth doing or enjoying’, something that is important or significant to the person said to be free, or to others.
Justice
Authors: Barry Brian , Matravers Matt
Published: September 2018

The idea of justice lies at the heart of moral and political philosophy. It is a necessary virtue of individuals in their interactions with others, and the principal virtue of social institutions, although not the only one. Just as an individual can display qualities such as integrity, charity and loyalty, so a society can also be more or less economically prosperous, artistically cultivated, and so on. Traditionally defined by the Latin tag ‘suum cuique tribuere’ - to allocate to each his own - justice has always been closely connected to the ideas of desert and equality. Rewards and punishments are justly distributed if they go to those who deserve them. But in the absence of different desert claims, justice demands equal treatment.

One division of justice concerns compensation for the infliction of damage and the punishment for the commission of crimes. The other concerns the content of just principles for the distribution of benefits and (non-punitive) burdens. Conventionalists claim that what is due to each person is given by the laws, customs and shared understandings of the community of which the person is a member. Teleologists believe that an account can be given of the good for human beings and that justice is the ordering principle through which a society (or humanity) pursues that good. Justice as mutual advantage proposes that the rules of justice can be derived from the rational agreement of each agent to cooperate with others to further their own self-interest.
Justice, international
Authors: Barry Brian , Matravers Matt
Published: September 2018

Although it has been denied (by, for example, F.A. Hayek 1976) that the concept of distributive justice has application within states, it is not controversial that there can be unjust laws and unjust behaviour by individuals and organizations. It has, however, been argued that it makes no sense to speak of justice and injustice beyond the boundaries of states, either because the lack of an international sovereign entails that the conditions for justice do not exist, or because the state constitutes the maximal moral community. Both arguments are flawed. Without them, we are naturally led to ask what are the implications of the widely-held idea of fundamental human equality, the belief that in some sense human beings are of equal value. This cannot be coherently deployed in a way that restricts its application to within-state relations. In either a utilitarian or Kantian form it generates extensive international obligations. An objection that is often made to this conclusion is that the obligations derived are so stringent that compliance cannot reasonably be asked under current political conditions. But this shows (if true) that current political conditions are incompatible with international justice.
Legitimacy
Authors: Beetham David
Published: September 2018

Legitimacy refers to the rightfulness of a powerholder or system of rule. The term originated in controversies over property and succession, and was used to differentiate children born of a lawful marriage from those who were ‘illegitimate’. From thence the term entered political discourse via controversies over the rightful succession to the restored French throne after the Napoleonic period. However, questions about what makes government rightful have been a central issue of philosophical debate since the ancient Greeks, and in this sense the concept, if not the term, ‘legitimacy’ is as old as political philosophy itself. Its significance lies in the moral, as opposed to merely prudential, grounds for obedience which follow for subjects where power is rightfully acquired and exercised, and in the depth of allegiance which such political authorities can call upon in times of difficulty.

What, then, makes government legitimate? Most thinkers agree that a necessary condition is that power should be acquired and exercised according to established rules, whether these are conventionally or legally defined. However, legal validity cannot be a sufficient condition of legitimacy, since both the rules and the power exercised under them also have to be morally justifiable. Two broad criteria for moral justifiability can be distinguished: (1) political power should derive from a rightful source of authority; (2) it should satisfy the rightful ends or purposes of government. Most philosophical disputes about legitimacy take place either within or between these two broad positions; any adequate account of it must embrace both however.
Liberalism
Authors: Waldron Jeremy
Published: September 2018

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 that political organizations are justified by the contribution they make to the interests of individuals, interests which can be understood apart from the idea of society and politics. They reject both the view that cultures, communities and states are ends in themselves, and the view that social and political organizations should aim to transform or perfect human nature. People have purposes of their own to pursue, either economic or spiritual (or both). Since those purposes do not naturally harmonize with one another, a framework of rules may be necessary so that individuals know what they can count on for their own purposes and what they must concede to the purposes of others. The challenge for political philosophy, then, is to design a social framework that provides this security and predictability, but represents at the same time a safe and reasonable compromise among the disparate demands of individuals.
Political philosophy, nature of
Authors: Plant Raymond
Published: September 2018

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 important contribution to the subject. Central to political philosophy has been a concern with the justification or criticism of general political arrangements such as democracy, oligarchy or kingship, and with the ways in which the sovereignty of the state is to be understood; with the relationship between the individual and the political order, and the nature of the individual’s obligation to that order; with the coherence and identity of the political order from the point of view of the nation and groups within the nation, and with the role of culture, language and race as aspects of this; with the basis of different general political ideologies and standpoints such as conservatism, socialism and liberalism; and with the nature of the basic concepts such as state, individual, rights, community and justice in terms of which we understand and argue about politics. Because it is concerned with the justification and criticism of existing and possible forms of political organization a good deal of political philosophy is normative; it seeks to provide grounds for one particular conception of the right and the good in politics. In consequence many current controversies in political philosophy are methodological; they have to do with how (if at all) normative judgments about politics can be justified.
Population and ethics
Authors: Heyd David
Published: September 2018

Ethical concern with population policies and with the issue of optimal population size is, generally speaking, a modern phenomenon. Although the first divine injunction of the Bible is ‘be fertile and multiply’, systematic theoretical interest in the normative aspects of demography has become associated largely with recent developments which have provided humanity with unprecedented control over population size, mainly through medical and economic means. Once the determination of the number of people in the world is no longer a natural given fact, but rather a matter of individual or social choice, it becomes subject to moral evaluation.

However, the extension of traditional ethical principles to issues of population policies is bedevilled by paradoxes. The principle of utility, the ideal of self-perfection, the idea of a contract as a basis for political legitimacy and social justice, the notion of natural or human rights, and the principle of respect for persons – all these presuppose the existence of human beings whose interests, welfare, rights and dignity are to be protected and promoted. But population policies deal with the creation of people and the decision concerning their number. They relate to the creation of the very conditions for the application of ethical principles.
Power
Authors: Green Leslie
Published: September 2018

The general notion of power involves the capacity to produce or prevent change. In social and political philosophy, narrower conceptions of power specify the nature of these changes. Social power is the capacity to affect the interests of agents. Normative power is the capacity to affect their normative relations, such as their rights or duties.

There are long-standing conceptual disputes about the nature of power. Some emphasize the role of actual or potential conflicts of interest in defining power relations, others take legitimacy and consensus about norms as the basis. There is also a dispute, involving the nature of social explanation, about whether power must rest with agents or with social structures or forces of some kind. The lack of consensus on these matters raises the overarching question of whether the concept of power, which seems to function as a descriptive term, in some way involves evaluation.
Privacy
Authors: Olsen Frances
Published: September 2018

The distinction between private and public is both central to much legal and political thought and subject to serious challenge on philosophical, practical and political grounds by critics of the status quo. Privacy – the state of being withdrawn from the world, free from public attention, interference or intrusion – is a cherished social value that is being offered ever more protection. Increasingly, laws require people to respect the privacy of others: privacy is recognized as a fundamental right in international documents and national constitutions, and recent customs and social norms forbid intrusions that were once accepted. The concept of privacy is also widely abused: it has been used to justify private racial discrimination and state neglect of domestic violence, as well as social abdication of general economic welfare through laissez-faire policies and the so-called privatization of social services. Critique of the public–private distinction is an important part of many critical theories, especially feminism and critical legal theory. These critics object that the public–private distinction is exaggerated, manipulable or incoherent.
Representation, political
Authors: Reeve Andrew
Published: September 2018

Political representation – the designation of a small group of politically active citizens to serve as representatives of the political community as a whole – is a central feature of contemporary states, especially of those that claim to be democratic. But what does it mean to say that one person or one group of people represents a larger group? Representatives are sometimes understood as agents of those they represent, sometimes symbolizing them, sometimes typifying their distinctive qualities or attitudes. Although political representation has something in common with each of these, it has its own special character. The missing idea here may be that the group represented authorizes the representative to make decisions on its behalf. This still leaves open one crucial question, however: how far should political representatives remain answerable to those they represent, and how far should they have the freedom to act on their own judgment?
Republicanism
Authors: Hanson Russell L.
Published: September 2018

Significant divisions exist in all societies and communities of any size. The expression of these divisions in politics takes many forms, one of them republican. The hallmark of republican politics is the subordination of different interests to the common weal, or what is in the interest of all citizens. To ensure this outcome, government in a republic can never be the exclusive preserve of one interest or social order; it must always be controlled jointly by representatives of all major groups in a society. The degree of control exercised by representatives of different social elements may not be equal, and different styles of government are compatible with republican objectives. However, all republican governments involve power-sharing in some way. Even in a democratic republic political majorities must share power with minorities for the common good to be realized.

Maintaining an appropriate balance of political power is the chief problem of republicans. One or another faction may obtain control of government and use it to further its own interests, instead of the common weal. To prevent this republicans have developed a variety of strategies. Some rely on constitutional ‘checks and balances’ to cure the mischief of factionalism. Others seek to minimize factionalization itself by regulating the causes of faction – for example, the distribution of land and other forms of property. Still others promote civic religions in order to bind diverse people together. All these methods accept the inevitability of conflicting interests, and see the need to accommodate them politically. Hence, civic life is at the heart of republicanism.
Revolution
Authors: Schouls Peter A.
Published: September 2018

There have been revolutions in politics, science, philosophy and most other spheres of human life. This entry discusses revolution mainly through concepts pertaining especially to the political realm. Attempts to define political revolution have been controversial; as a consequence there is dispute about whether specific occurrences were revolutions, rebellions, coups d’état or reformations.

If we define revolution as the illegal introduction of a radically new situation and order for the sake of obtaining or increasing individual or communal freedom, we may list those characteristics most often ascribed to it. These characteristics distinguish it from its earlier use where revolution referred to the return of an original state of affairs, as in astronomy; they also allow its distinction from related concepts such as reformation. At least at a superficial level this definition can do justice to early modern (seventeenth and eighteenth) as well as late modern (nineteenth and twentieth century) revolutions. Through these periods there has, however, been sufficient change in concepts closely related to revolution to require the definition’s openness to nuances for it to apply to both periods. It is unclear whether even such a nuanced definition can apply in postmodern thought.
State, the
Authors: Nicholson Peter P.
Published: September 2018

States are inescapable, powerful and fundamentally important in the modern world. They spend a substantial portion of their members’ wealth; they tax, confiscate or compulsorily purchase private property; conscript; impose punishments, including capital punishment; defend their members from aggression and protect their rights; and provide educational, health and other essential social services.

States are also central to modern political philosophy, and figure in its main topics. For instance, the various theories of social justice concern which principle or principles of justice should be followed by states. Again, discussions of the rights of individuals, or of groups, presuppose states to make the preferred rights effective. The answers to traditional questions, such as whether one is morally obliged to obey the laws of a state, or whether freedom is reduced by the state or made possible by it, must depend in part on what a state is taken to be.

The principal features of the modern state are basically agreed upon (population, territory, effective and legitimate government, independence). But there are underlying assumptions needing notice, and many questions about the state, especially concerning its proper activities, are controversial and disputed. Moreover, the value of the state can be challenged, and its future doubted, especially in the light of increasing economic and political globalization and moral cosmopolitanism.
Tradition and traditionalism
Authors: O’Hear Anthony
Published: September 2018

Tradition is that body of practice and belief which is socially transmitted from the past. It is regarded as having authority in the present simply because it comes from the past, and encapsulates the wisdom and experience of the past. For some, the very idea of tradition is anathema. It is characteristic of modernity to reject the authority of the past in favour of the present deployment of reason, unencumbered by tradition or prejudice. While prior to the seventeenth century tradition was largely unquestioned as a source of insight, and in need of no defence, since the Enlightenment the notion of tradition has been defended by traditionalists such as Burke and, more recently, Hayek. Upon inspection, however, traditionalism, if not indefensibly irrational, turns out to be a demonstration of the overlooked rationality contained within traditions. Traditions often turn out upon inspection to be not so much irrational as subtle and flexible deployments of reason in particular spheres.
Work, philosophy of
Authors: Arneson Richard
Published: September 2018

Unlike play, work is activity that has to involve significant expenditure of effort and be directed toward some goal beyond enjoyment. The term ‘work’ is also used to signify an individual’s occupation, the means whereby they gain their livelihood. In modern market economies individuals contract to work for other individuals on specified terms. Beyond noting this formal freedom to choose how one shall work, critics of market economies have maintained that one’s occupation should be a realm of substantive freedom, in which work is freely chosen self-expression. Against this unalienated labour norm, others have held that the freedom of self-expression is one good among others that work can provide, such as lucrative pay, friendly social contact and the satisfaction of the self-support norm, and that none of these various work-related goods necessarily should have priority over others. Some philosophers place responsibility on society for providing opportunities for good work for all members of society; others hold that the responsibility for the quality of one’s occupational life appropriately falls on each individual alone. Finally, some theorists of work emphasize that performance of hard work renders one deserving of property ownership (John Locke) or enhances one’s spiritual development (Mahatma Gandhi).
Hayek, Friedrich August von (1899–1992)
Authors: Kukathas Chandran
Published: September 2018

An Austrian-born British economist who turned political philosopher, Hayek was best known for his critique of socialism and the modern welfare state. Writing as an avowed classical liberal (he repudiated the label ‘conservative’), he attempted to develop his account of the market as a mechanism facilitating economic coordination into a more general theory of law and politics.

Hayek’s liberalism was first formulated as a response to totalitarianism, which he regarded as a tendency manifest in the regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, and inherent in proposals for central planning in society. This was the basis of his early opposition to socialism and his theory of limited constitutional government under the rule of law. The development of his political thought, however, saw him become increasingly critical of government and its interventions in the spontaneous evolution of society. Society was a ‘spontaneous order’ and not the product of human design. The threat to this order or civilization came from mankind’s mistaken confidence in reason’s capacity to take control of social processes to shape society in accordance with particular ideals. Socialism, as well as proposals for social justice, he regarded as variants of this tendency, which he labelled ‘constructivist rationalism’. This social philosophy was underpinned by a philosophy of science which emphasized the subjective character of the data of the social sciences.
Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527)
Authors: Dietz Mary G.
Published: September 2018

Florentine diplomat, dramatist and political thinker, Machiavelli’s treatise, Il principe (The Prince) (1532a), has earned him notoriety as a political immoralist (or at least an amoralist) and a teacher of evil. In The Prince, Machiavelli posits a complex relationship between ethics and politics that associates princely virtù with the capacity to know and act within the political world as it ‘is’, and with the beastly abilities to dispense violence and practise deception. Behind this argument dwells the distinctly Machiavellian insight that politics is a realm of appearances where the practice of moral or Christian virtues often results in a prince’s ruin, while knowing ‘how not to be good’ may result in greater security and wellbeing for both prince and people. Machiavelli warns that the prince’s possibilities for success in this matter are always mediated by fortune; hence the prudent prince is one who is prepared to resist fortune by adapting his procedure to the times and his nature to ‘the necessity of the case’.

A less notorious but equally influential text is the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy) (1531), in which Machiavelli offers a defence of popular liberty and republican government that takes the ancient republic of Rome as its model and emphasizes the role of the people in the ‘public administration’ of the city. However, Machiavelli also argues that a republic is only as successful in self-governance as its citizens are infused with civic virtùand therefore not corrupted. Accordingly, he praises the work of political founders who craft republican laws and institutions, and religious founders who fuse God and patria as one in the people’s hearts. The apparent tension between Machiavelli’s republican sympathies in Discourses and his elitist proclivities in The Prince has helped to fuel a vast interpretive literature concerning his political attitudes, his theory of politics, and the nature and meaning of ‘machiavellianism’ in Western political thought.
Vitoria, Francisco de (c.1486–1546)
Authors: Pagden Anthony
Published: September 2018

Francisco de Vitoria, who spent most of his working life as Prime Professor of Theology at Salamanca, Spain, was one of the most influential political theorists in sixteenth-century Catholic Europe. By profession he was a theologian, but like all theologians of the period he regarded theology as the ’mother of sciences’, whose domain covered everything governed by divine or natural, rather than human, law; everything, that is, which belonged to what we would describe as jurisprudence. Vitoria’s writings covered a wide variety of topics, from the possibility of magic to the acceptability of suicide. But it is on those which deal with the most contentious juridical issues of the period – the nature of civil power and of kingship, the power of the papacy and, above all, the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest of America – that his fame chiefly rests.
Postmodernism and political philosophy
Authors: White Stephen K.
Published: September 2018

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 for political philosophy. The claim of postmodernists that raises the most significant issues is that Western modernity’s fundamental moral and political concepts function in such a way as to marginalize, denigrate and discipline ‘others’; that is, categories of people who in some way are found not to measure up to prevailing criteria of rationality, normality and responsibility, and so on. The West’s generally self-congratulatory attitude towards liberal democracy and its traditions obscures this dynamic. Postmodernism aims to disrupt this attitude, and its proponents typically see their efforts as crucial to a radicalization of democracy.
Rawls, John (1921–2002)
Authors: Freeman Samuel
Published: September 2018

Rawls’ main work, A Theory of Justice (1971), presents a liberal, egalitarian, moral conception – ‘justice as fairness’ – designed to explicate and justify the institutions of a constitutional democracy. The two principles of justice outlined in this text affirm the priority of equal basic liberties over other political concerns, and require fair opportunities for all citizens, directing that inequalities in wealth and social positions maximally benefit the least advantaged. Rawls develops the idea of an impartial social contract to justify these principles: Free persons, equally situated and ignorant of their historical circumstances, would rationally agree to them in order to secure their equal status and independence, and to pursue freely their conceptions of the good.

In Political Liberalism (1993), his other major text, Rawls revises his original argument for justice as fairness to make it more compatible with the pluralism of liberalism. He argues that, assuming that different philosophical, religious and ethical views are inevitable in liberal society, the most reasonable basis for social unity is a public conception of justice based in shared moral ideas, including citizens’ common comception of themselves as free and equal moral persons. The stability of this public conception of justice is provided by an overlapping consensus; all the reasonable comprehensible philosophical, religious and ethical views can endorse it, each for their own specific reasons.
Market, ethics of the
Authors: Miller David
Published: September 2018

Markets are systems of exchange in which people with money or commodities to sell voluntarily trade these for other items which they prefer to have. Most economic transactions in advanced societies are of this kind, and any attempt to replace markets wholesale with a different form of economic coordination seems destined to fail. But questions about the ethics of markets are still of considerable practical concern, for two reasons at least. First, we need to make collective decisions about the proper scope of markets: are there goods and services which in principle should not be distributed and exchanged through market mechanisms – medical care, for instance? Second, markets work within a framework of property rights which sets the terms on which people can exchange with one another, and this too is subject to collective decision: for instance, should a person’s labour be regarded as a commodity like any other, to be bought and sold on whatever terms the parties can agree, or does labour carry special rights that set limits to these terms? Are employees morally entitled to a share of the profits of the companies they work in, to take a concrete issue?

To guide such decisions, we need to apply general ethical principles to market transactions. First, are markets justified on grounds of efficiency, as is often claimed? What criterion of efficiency is being used when such claims are made? Second, can we regard the outcome of market exchanges as just, or, at the other extreme, should we see them as necessarily exploitative? Third, do market exchanges necessarily alienate people from one another and destroy their sense of community? These are very different questions, but an overall assessment of market ethics needs to address each of them, and perhaps others besides.
Globalization
Authors: Scholte Jan Aart
Published: September 2018

Globalization is one of the most hotly contested issues in contemporary social inquiry and public discussion. The debates mainly revolve around six points: definition, measurement, chronology, causes, consequences, and policy responses.

In regard to definition, five broad usages of ’ globalization’ can be distinguished: internationalization, liberalization, universalization, Westernization, and deterritorialization. Although these conceptions overlap to some extent, their emphases are substantially different.

With respect to magnitude, ’ globalists’ suggest that today’ s world is thoroughly globalized, whereas sceptics dismiss every claim of globalization as myth. Most observers agree that the incidence of globalization has been uneven, and that some countries and social circles have experienced globality more than others.

The chronology of globalization depends in good part on the definition adopted. Internationalization, liberalization, universalization and Westernization can all be traced back at least several centuries, if not millennia. On the other hand, deterritorialization has transpired on a large scale only since the third quarter of the twentieth century.

Accounts of the causal dynamics of globalization depend upon one’ s theoretical persuasion. However, most researchers explain globalization in some way as a product of modernity and/or capitalism. Many studies also highlight the enabling effects of certain technological developments and certain regulatory arrangements.

In terms of its consequences for social structure, some analysts treat globalization as radically transformative. Such accounts link globalization to the end of the state, the end of nationality, the end of modernity, and more. In contrast, other assessments downplay any suggestion of social change in connection with globalization. Still others conclude that globalization generates an interplay of changes and continuities in social structure.

Finally, in regard to policy, neoliberal approaches argue that globalization should be guided by market forces. In contrast, reformist strategies maintain that globalization should be deliberately steered with public policies, including in particular through suprastate laws and institutions. From a more radical position, traditionalists seek to ’ de-globalize’ and return to a pre-global status quo ante. Other radicals advocate a continuation of globalization, but in tandem with a revolutionary social transformation, for example, to a post-capitalist society.
Human rights
Authors: Jones Peter
Published: September 2018

Human rights have traditionally been conceived as rights that people possess merely in virtue of being human. People may possess other rights if and because they possess a special status or occupy a particular role, such as citizen, doctor or promisee. But merely being human suffices to make people the bearers of human rights. Human rights are therefore universal rights and they are generally conceived as rights of fundamental moral significance. Historically, human rights have been closely associated with the earlier idea of natural rights, although many more rights are now claimed as human rights than were claimed as natural rights. Because they are possessed by people merely as natural persons, rather than by the grace and favour of governments, and because they constitute peculiarly strong moral entitlements, both natural rights and human rights have been used to set limits to political authority and to forestall the abuse of political power. Since the United Nations promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, human rights have been elaborated and provided for in a host of international declarations and conventions and in the domestic law of many states, so that human rights now form part of international and domestic law and shape the practice of politics both globally and domestically. That has led some philosophers to challenge the traditional understanding of human rights. Advocates of the political conception argue that we should conceive human rights in terms of the role they play in contemporary political practice, so that they are defined by their political purpose rather than by a supposed link to our humanity. Others suggest that philosophers should shift their focus from moral to legal human rights and should recognize that legal human rights cannot be conceived as merely moral human rights translated into law. In spite of these differences, the general idea of human rights is widely embraced in the contemporary world. Yet even those who champion human rights recognize that they present us with some difficult questions, such as how we are to give precision to their content, whether in the face of competing considerations we should always give overriding priority to human rights, and how far we can and should seek to reconcile human rights with cultural differences.