bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Anticlericalism
Authors: Murphy Andrew R.
Published: August 2023

Anticlericalism, a broad term denoting hostility to the social, political, or ecclesiastical influence of religious authorities, has a long and influential history in political theory and practice. Often related to the development of arguments for liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state – and an integral part of many variants of liberal theory – anticlericalism can originate from within religious traditions (in claims that clergy have corrupted and perverted original doctrines or teachings, or improperly arrogated power to themselves) as well as from without (from skeptics or freethinkers who insist on a firm separation of church and state, or decry clerical meddling in political affairs). For their part, political authorities have often displayed a deep hostility toward religious institutions like monasteries, abbeys, and temples (and the religious authorities that run them) due to their purported lack of utility to the public and their hoarding of resources that might be put to use in addressing pressing social needs. Anticlerical rhetoric has often objected more particularly to the clerical control of education (e.g., republican anti‐monarchism during the French Third Republic, 1870–1914).
Appearance/Reality
Authors: Goldman Loren
Published: August 2023

The distinction between appearance and reality is one of the longest‐standing and most controversial topics in political philosophy. The opposition is originally epistemological, predicated on the fact that appearances can mislead: a straight stick may look bent underwater, for example. Transposed into political thought, the potential incongruity between appearance and reality has implications for practically every canonical subject in the tradition, raising questions about knowledge, power, freedom, authenticity, authority, and the nature of political inquiry altogether. Throughout history, claims to “real” knowledge have been used to privilege certain social arrangements over others, often accompanied by the delimitation of this knowledge to a specific class within society. As such, the distinction has been mobilized as both a justification for and critique of power. How the appearance/reality distinction has been taken up by political thinkers varies considerably depending on their concrete concerns, however, and the divide between seeming and being finds expression in a number of recurring binary oppositions: illusion/truth, inauthenticity/authenticity, positive/natural law and subjective/objective, among others. Understanding the political import of appearance/reality thus requires a sense of how this basic distinction maps onto other distinctions, as well as how it has played out in different domains of political theory. The possibilities for discussion are accordingly vast, and this entry introduces only some of the many issues conceivably riding on the appearance/reality dichotomy.
Badiou, Alain (1937–)
Authors: Woodward Keith
Published: August 2023

French radical philosopher, novelist, playwright, and activist, Badiou was born in Rabat, Morocco and studied under Jean Hyppolite and Georges Canguilhem at the École Normale Supérieure in the late 1950s. His philosophical project brings speculative thought – articulated by the decision that “mathematics = ontology” – to bear upon four “conditions” (art, science, love, and politics) that reveal situated‐yet‐universal truths for which philosophy must account. In the context of politics, Badiou employs philosophy as a form of “metapolitics” that can describe situated (rather than “historic”) processes of militant subjectivization and political change.
Balance of Power
Authors: Boucoyannis Deborah
Published: August 2023

The balance of power is one of the oldest and most criticized concepts in international relations. Predicated as it is on power, it is considered a core principle of the realist tradition and has thus elicited theoretical and practical objections directed to the tradition as a whole. Critics thus view it as an alternative to liberalism, institutionalism and constructivism in international relations theory. The concept does not have a single canonical definition – a source of much confusion and critique – but most current meanings converge on the idea that the interaction between sovereign states/units interested in protecting their security prevents the hegemony of any single actor.
Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940)
Authors: Michelbach Philip A.
Published: August 2023

Benjamin's persistent refusal to commit more than his interest and his sympathies to any political stance spans his life – in this his adoption of the gentleman observer as literary totem is apt. Benjamin viewed his philosophical role as that of a critic who must pry out the esoteric truth from the murmurs of everyday historical existence. He combines this with a literal love of the word indebted to the German mode of textual investigation (philo‐logy).

Despite the desire by critics to engage in periodization, Benjamin's work shows a consistent desire to uncover the truth hiding behind ordinary existence. For him the revelation of this truth functions as part of a redemptive critique. This critique remains both philosophical and theological throughout his writings.
Berlin, Isaiah (1909–98)
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: August 2023

Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga in 1909. His parents, Mendel and Marie, were well‐to‐do Jews, his father being a prosperous timber merchant. They were a cultivated family, and not devout, although Polish relatives included followers of the Lubavitcher
rebbe
. World War I forced the family to move to Russia proper, and they experienced the two Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917 in St. Petersburg. In 1920, they were able to return to Latvia, and in 1921 to emigrate to England, where they remained. Mendel Berlin had supplied the British army with plywood during the war, and had ample resources for a new life.
Bioethics and Politics
Authors: Biser Ashley N.
Published: August 2023

The term “bioethics” denotes both a specialized, and increasingly professionalized, academic discipline as well as the more general study of the moral and ethical dilemmas posed by biotechnology. As an academic discipline, bioethics is an interdisciplinary field that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as rapid advances in medicine challenged traditional assumptions about when life begins and ends. Originally an outgrowth of medical ethics and moral philosophy, contemporary bioethics brings the tools of philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, public policy, and a multitude of other disciplines to bear on the ethical dilemmas raised by recent advances in biological research and clinical medicine. In addition to questions about end‐of‐life care and reproductive medicine, bioethicists address dilemmas of distributive justice (i.e., the allocation of scarce medical resources), the treatment of those with disabilities, and the ethics of research on human subjects. More recently, concerns about genetic technologies have come to the fore, and questions about the ethics of human enhancement, cloning, prenatal testing, and genetic discrimination pervade the literature.
Body, The
Authors: Frost Samantha
Published: August 2023

The body is one of those extraordinarily useful concepts for political theorists. It is so because what other political theorists think, say, and do with it in their theories reveals an awful lot about their understanding of the stakes, the purposes, and the ways and means of politics. In fact, more often than not, the body functions as a cipher drawn into the breach of theorists’ political dissatisfaction. It is often depicted as the source of the aspirations or anxieties that drive the projects of political life. And sometimes it is perceived as the model or the material for the kinds of self‐ and civil‐crafting that political life demands. Perhaps the body is such a fertile concept in political theory because the sovereigns, subjects, and citizens who are the actors and objects of politics are happily, miserably – ineluctably – embodied. Whether the body is figured as an albatross or an answer, in political theory it is also a harbinger of order and disorder, of hope and despair, of slavish subjection and sublime political freedom.
Buddhist Political Thought
Authors: Myint Tun
Published: August 2023

This entry discusses Buddhist teaching or the philosophy of Buddhism in practices found in mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Asia, as a political theory. Buddhist political thought dominates the daily lives of several Asian societies. The key difference between Buddhist political thought and Hobbesian political thought lies in how each school perceives the notion and the existence of the individual. Because the epistemic and ontological foundation of political thought in both schools is the existence of the individual, it is important that we properly understand how the individual is perceived to be existing in the world and how associational life emerges in both conceptions.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106–43 BCE)
Authors: Atkins Jed W.
Published: August 2023

Roman advocate, statesman, and philosopher. Cicero, who lived during the tumultuous period that marked the end of republican government at Rome, was the most accomplished orator of his day, held Rome's highest office, and ranks among her most prolific philosophers. His 20 or so surviving philosophical and theoretical works, voluminous personal correspondence, and numerous extant speeches emphasize a number of concepts central to classical republican political thought: civic virtue, the mixed constitution, the rule of law, the dangers of corruption, history as a wellspring for moral exempla and political guidance, natural law, and rhetoric. His writings were of fundamental importance for education and political thought in the west for over 1500 years, from the time of the Latin church fathers to the American Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.
Clash of Civilizations
Authors: Glover Robert W.
Published: August 2023

The “clash of civilizations” is a conceptual construct advanced by late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in the mid‐1990s. Perhaps Huntington's most influential contribution was the idea that the post‐Cold War era would witness a global “clash of civilizations.” In the 1990s, with the Cold War fading into history, scholars and practitioners of global politics sought a new paradigm to inform thinking and action. Virtually all agreed that ideological confrontations between democratic states with market economies and nondemocratic states with socialist economies had become a historical footnote. Yet uncertainty and trepidation existed regarding what would
replace
bipolar confrontation. Against this backdrop, Huntington articulated his “clash of civilizations” thesis. Huntington's stated aim was to offer a framework of similar simplicity (and equal utility) to the now defunct Cold War paradigm.
Coke, Edward (1552–1634)
Authors: Benjamin Seth B.
Published: August 2023

Edward Coke is a seminal figure in the development of Anglo‐American law, particularly with regard both to the formulation of the role of the common law as a bulwark against royal prerogative and the essentials of constitutionalism. Born into a family of relatively modest means in East Anglia, England, his schooling and sharp mind, nevertheless, allowed him to excel in the Latin language and rhetoric that won him a place at Cambridge and became the hallmark of his clarity of thought.
Communism
Authors: Thomas Paul
Published: August 2023

The idea of communism stretches back a long way in the history of western political theory: as far back as Plato, who forbade private property among the guardians in hisRepublic, hostility to private property being a – or, if we are later to follow Marx, the – sine qua non of communism. (“The theory of the communists,” in the words of Marx and Engels'sManifesto of the Communist Party(1848), “may be summed up in a single sentence: the abolition of private property.”)
Communitarianism
Authors: Etzioni Amitai
Published: August 2023

Communitarianism is a social philosophy that, in contrast to theories that emphasize the centrality of the individual, emphasizes the importance of society in articulating the good. Communitarianism is often contrasted with liberalism, a theory which holds that each individual should formulate the good on his or her own. Communitarians examine the ways shared conceptions of the good are formed, transmitted, justified, and enforced. Hence, their interest in communities (and moral dialogues within them), the historical transmission of values and mores, and the societal units that transmit and enforce values – such as the family, schools, and voluntary associations (including places of worship), which are all parts of communities.
Comte, Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier (1798–1857)
Authors: Vernon Richard
Published: August 2023

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) was a philosopher of science and social visionary, whose philosophical and ethical views had significant international influence during his lifetime. Although he is often acknowledged as the founder of sociology – a term that he was the first to use in its modern sense – his influence on political thought declined sharply beyond the later nineteenth century. Commentators on his ideas have generally distinguished between an earlier phase, in which his major work was the
Cours de philosophie positive
, and a later phase defined principally by his
Système de politique positive
.
Confucian Political Thought
Authors: Lee Theresa Man Ling
Published: August 2023

Confucian political thought refers to elements of Confucianism as they pertain to politics, the latter being defined as a philosophical system, a scholastic tradition, a way of life, and – contestably – a religion. As an integrated body of ideas, principles, values, and practices, Confucianism can be traced back to the
ru
tradition, which some scholars believe to have predated Confucius himself. In Confucius’ time,
ru
refers to those who were masters of rituals and ceremonies and occupied a prominent place in society as a result of their skills and knowledge. Thus situated, the emergence of Confucianism marked a new turn in an evolving tradition that came under the influence of Confucius: he was to ground these rituals and ceremonies in ethics, thus giving them an all‐encompassing framework and raising their normative stake.
Connolly, William E. (1938–)
Authors: Howarth David
Published: August 2023

William E. Connolly is an American political philosopher, who has creatively reworked many of the major and minor styles of theorizing in political theory over the last 40 or so years. He attended a commuter college in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, receiving his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1965, and is currently the Krieger‐Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He has published a series of classical books and articles in political theory, which continue to influence and provoke theorists and practitioners in numerous disciplines. Several edited volumes on his work by leading political theorists, and a spate of articles, papers, and symposia exploring his political philosophy, are testimony to its wide and growing influence.
Consent
Authors: Shanks Torrey
Published: August 2023

Consent is both an abstract concept and an everyday practice that spans many realms of human society, including political, legal, economic, and sexual relations. In politics, modern liberal democratic governments profess to govern by the consent of the people. While few of us will ever personally express that consent to the government under which we live, we are likely to be asked to consent in many other areas of our lives. In matters of law and economics, we may sign a marriage certificate or an employment contract. We must give our consent before submitting to actions that pose a risk of bodily harm, whether it is necessary, like surgery, or purely voluntary, like skydiving. Questions of consent figure centrally in distinguishing sex from rape, employment from slavery, and tyrannies from legitimate polities. All of these uses of consent can have profound political significance in matters of equality and justice.
Constitutional Democracy
Authors: Bellamy Richard
Published: August 2023

The conjunction of constitutionalism and democracy is relatively recent. It arose in European thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, appearing in different forms in the wake of the revolutionary moments in England post‐1640 and again in 1688, the USA following independence and the drafting of the constitution in 1787 and in France after 1789. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially after World War II, a democratic regime gradually came to be regarded as needing to be by definition a constitutional regime as well. Yet, democracy may be deemed constitutional in a variety of ways and contemporary constitutional democracies differ greatly in a number of respects. The USA, Germany, Italy, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and Finland may all be constitutional democracies but their political and legal institutions, norms, and practices diverge in ways that reflect very different conceptions of constitutionalism, on the one hand, and democracy, on the other, and of the relationship between these two concepts.
Constructivism
Authors: Cureton Adam
Published: August 2023

The term “constructivism” names a family of political, moral and metaethical views that, in general terms, regard some or all normative claims as validin virtue ofbeing outcomes of a “procedure of construction” in which actual or hypothetical agents react to, choose, or otherwise settle on principles of justice, moral rules, values, etc. Traditionally, moral validity or justifiability was thought to depend on God, the Forms, or some other independent moral order. Various procedures of a different, epistemological, sort were then proposed to help us gain access to the moral facts, which were thought to exist independently of us (e.g., we might need to undergo physical and mental training of the sort described in Plato'sRepublicor learn how to reflect in a “calm, cool hour”). Constructivists, by contrast, think that there are certain procedures that are not designed todiscoverwhich normative claims arealreadyvalid. For them, the validity of some or all reasons, principles, values or other normative claimsconsist inbeing the result of a procedure of construction. For example, Rousseau (1997) held that states are legitimatejust in caseandbecausethey would be agreed to by reasonable people who were concerned to advance their own basic interests in freedom, self‐improvement, and happiness, while Locke (1998) argued that governments are legitimatejust in caseandbecausefree and equal (male, property‐owning) people in a state of equal freedom actually agreed to them so long as those governments remain within the confines of natural law.
Corporativism
Authors: Harris Richard A.
Published: August 2023

Corporativism
, or
corporatism
, as it is commonly termed, refers to a system of political representation in which government mediates among competing classes or interests, particularly capital and labor. It proposes a political economic model in which government plays this mediating role to ameliorate the economic injustice of unfettered capitalism without the convulsion of a socialist revolution. Corporatism may manifest itself as an authoritarian, state‐sponsored strategy under which elites seek to manage socioeconomic conflict. It may also emerge in a more liberal‐democratic mode, whereby stakeholders in national policy participate directly in government decision‐making rather than seeking representation indirectly through elections. In either guise, corporatism presents an alternative to
pluralist
systems of competitive interest representation.
Cosmopolitan Democracy
Authors: Benhabib Seyla , Álvarez David
Published: August 2023

Cosmopolitan democracy (CD) is a political ideal that aims at minimizing illegitimate exclusions from the decision‐making process. Its universalistic character contrasts with other ascriptive determinations of the potential scope of the demos, such as in national democracies based on ethno‐cultural lineage, territorial birthright membership, and naturalization processes.
Counter‐Publics
Authors: Gordy Katherine A.
Published: August 2023

While the exact meaning of counter‐publics is contested, the term generally refers to the multiplicity of publics that cohere around shared discursive practices, rhetorical strategies, modes of being, ideologies, and/or rationalities that are denied access or recognition by dominant public sphere(s). Counter‐publics are often constituted by women, gays and lesbians, racial and religious minorities, workers, those living in the global South, and others who have been structurally and discursively excluded from the dominant (often bourgeois, masculinist, heterosexual, white, and/or “western”) public sphere(s). They tend to be viewed as localized spaces in which to withdraw from the dominant public sphere, although new technologies may inspire greater investigation into globalized counter‐publics.
Critical Realignment Theory
Authors: Caverly Matthew M.
Published: August 2023

Critical realignment theory is a synthesis of perspectives emanating out of political science and history that suggest the existence and impact of “critical elections” as major determinants in the practice of democratic politics. These elections are said to mobilize new voters, bring new issues to bear, promote a new class of political elites, and most profoundly, alter the distribution of voter alignments in a sudden and durable manner. Critical realignment theory is one of the most profound developments in empirical political thought and stands out as a cross‐disciplinary phenomenon between political science and political history. It also served as the initial theoretical contribution for an entire subfield within Americanist political science – now known as American political development. This subfield employs systematic historical analysis in theoretical and methodological ways in order to study American politics.
Cynics
Authors: Zerba Michelle
Published: August 2023

We use the term “cynic” today to describe a person who manifests a jaded pessimism toward life and a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others, but the “Cynics” as historical figures bear little resemblance to this description. The original Cynics were a loosely affiliated group of Greeks of the fourth and third centuriesbcewho pursued a radical version of the philosophical life. They rejected intellectual culture in favor of itinerant poverty, emphasized rigorous self‐training over principled beliefs, and cultivated often shocking forms of exhibitionism designed to call attention to the folly of human institutions.
Darwinism
Authors: Arnhart Larry
Published: August 2023

The history of Darwinian political thought is best understood in the light of three ideas. The first is that Darwinian political thought belongs to the tradition of biological naturalism in political thought that began with Aristotle (384–322bce). The second is that if one takes Darwin'sDescent of Manas the definitive statement of Darwinian moral and political thought, then what has been called “Social Darwinism” is not really Darwinian at all. The third is that it is only in recent years that we have seen the full elaboration of Darwin's evolutionary social theory in the development of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and biopolitical theory.
Dialectic
Authors: Grant John
Published: August 2023

“Dialectic,” or alternatively “dialectics” or “the dialectic,” designates a tradition of thought made up of a diverse and often incompatible group of thinkers. In general, dialectic offers a set of conceptual tools used to make sense of and criticize common political, social, or economic practices. Dialectical critique is devoted to exposing hidden or misrecognized aspects of social life. But far from being an interpretive option that one chooses to apply to a given situation, dialectic is a response to relations that are themselves dialectical. Dialectical relations are specified by having component parts that are mutually constitutive as well as contradictory or antagonistic; they are also productive insofar as they construct a terrain of political contestation and struggle. Thus every version of the dialectic has political aspirations and implications. In this way dialectical thought strives to achieve a moment of praxis in which theory and action are coproductive.
Diogenes of Sinope (ca. 412/403–324/321 BCE)
Authors: Navia Luis E.
Published: August 2023

Diogenes of Sinope is surely the most famous Cynic philosopher of ancient times. Emerging directly from the philosophical succession that originated from Socrates and Antisthenes, Diogenes gave rise to a long tradition of Cynics that survived until late Roman times and that became known, as Emperor Julian called it, “the Army of the Dog.” Despite the paucity of original sources, the literature that has kept his memory alive is among the richest of classical times. Information about him is abundant, mostly in the form of anecdotes of varying degrees of reliability that recount his life and death, and shed light on his ideas and mode of life.
Direct Action
Authors: Terchek Ronald J.
Published: August 2023

Direct action usually refers to unconventional, nonviolent political action that is undertaken when conventional politics is unavailable or inadequate to effect significant change. Gandhi's civil disobedience campaigns in India, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights movement, and the many prodemocracy campaigns in the old Soviet bloc, South Africa, and elsewhere exemplify direct action.
Donation of Constantine
Authors: Bateman C. G.
Published: August 2023

The
Donation of Constantine
is an interpreted excerpt from a document entitled the
Constitutum Constantini
, which was itself taken out of the ninth‐century
Pseudo‐Isidorian Decretals
. The
Decretals
are the first known incarnation of the
Constitutum
: but what source the Frankish clerics, anonymous authors of the pseudo‐Isidorian text, were using to reproduce the
Constitutum
is unknown. The basic import of the
Donation
is the same as the
Constitutum
: both documents allege to be a decree from Emperor Constantine (r. 306–37
ce
) giving to Pope Sylvester (bishop of Rome, 314–35) and his successors sovereignty over the entire western Roman Empire. The incongruent aspect of this “donation,” especially considering the nonpolitical teachings of early Christianity up to the time of Constantine, was that here was an emperor giving over half his empire to a religious leader. The historical record almost completely disproves this because we know Constantine appointed his three sons and a nephew to rule as caesars both under and after him, and specifically that Caesar Constantinus (316–40) and Caesar Constans (323–50) had sovereign control over the entire western empire even after their father's death.
Ecofeminism
Authors: Hall Cheryl
Published: August 2023

Ecofeminism refers to a political theory and practice inspired by both feminism and environmentalism. Ecofeminism starts with the fundamental insight that there are connections between the domination or devaluation of people categorized as “women” and the domination or devaluation of beings or objects categorized as “nature.” Its primary theoretical goal is to work out the precise nature of those connections, and its primary political goal is to make use of this analysis to help create more just, equitable, and ecologically balanced societies.
Egalitarianism
Authors: Ramsay Maureen
Published: August 2023

Egalitarianism is a body of thought in political philosophy. At the most basic level egalitarians believe that people should be treated in the same way or as equals in some respect. However, equality is an essentially contested concept. There is no uncontroversial account of the meaning of equality or of how it should be implemented. On a narrow understanding of equality, the state should simply guarantee equal political and legal rights and secure equal opportunities. On broader understandings, the state should implement more substantive equality, though there are different views about exactly what should be equalized: resources, welfare, capabilities, or opportunities for welfare or advantage. Despite these differences, almost all modern western political theory, contemporary politics, and culture is underpinned by a belief in equality of some sort. The core idea underpinning these beliefs is that of the fundamental moral worth and dignity of all individuals, that each individual is worthy of equal concern and respect. With the exception of those who believe in hierarchies of class, caste, race, ethnicity, or gender and in preferential treatment for those groups, moral equality between people constitutes an “egalitarian plateau” for all contemporary political theory.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803–82)
Authors: Mariotti Shannon L.
Published: August 2023

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an essayist, journal‐keeper, lyceum lecturer, and founder of the American transcendentalist school of thought, an idiosyncratic combination of romanticism and transcendental idealism. Emerson is classified alongside American Renaissance writers of the nineteenth century such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman, as well as other literary figures localized in his adopted town of Concord, Massachusetts, such as Henry David Thoreau. Given how his 1837 speech “The American Scholar” issued what Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., called “America's Intellectual Declaration of Independence,” Emerson's influence has historically cast a long shadow. For better or worse, Emersonian transcendentalism became a defining category that other writers were seen as sympathizing with or reacting against and his work became the standard against which figures such as Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne were measured.
Enlightenment, French
Authors: Hamati‐Ataya Inanna
Published: August 2023

The French Enlightenment is best understood as a body of literature, ideas, and mores that became representative in eighteenth‐century France of a broader European age of self‐acclaimed intellectual and political emancipation. There is a general consensus among historians to date the beginning of this movement toward the end of King Louis XIV's reign, but some of its origins can be traced back to the beginning of the Renaissance period. The French Enlightenment did not produce a unified or dogmatic set of philosophical or political principles, despite its crucial role in transforming the French and European political culture. It is rather characterized by an “ethos” that is best illustrated by the social persona and ideas of the
philosophes
.
Epictetus (mid‐1st–2nd century ce)
Authors: Norris Andrew
Published: August 2023

Epictetus is, with Seneca, one of the two most significant Stoical ethical philosophers whose work has survived in quantity. When Domitian banished the philosophers from Rome, Epictetus settled in western Greece and founded a school, the students of which apparently briefly included the Emperor Hadrian. Epictetus followed Socrates’ example and did not write, preferring to teach by example, his
Discourses
and
Enchiridion
(or “life manual”) being written by his pupil, Arrian. In his lectures, Epictetus maintains a commitment to the Stoic doctrine that the three divisions of philosophy (physics, logic, and ethics) are mutually reinforcing parts of a single philosophical system, but he emphasizes ethics in a way that earlier Stoics apparently did not, and provides one of the best‐preserved and most rigorous accounts of Stoical practical philosophy.
Eros
Authors: Laehn Thomas R.
Published: August 2023

Erōs
, conventionally translated as “desire” or “sexual love,” is a Greek term, which acquired the status of a philosophical concept in Plato's middle dialogues. Plato's explication of
eros
as a distinctively human longing for that which is beautiful, especially in his
Symposium
and
Phaedrus
, allowed for the subsequent conceptualization of two additional, theoretically distinct, types of love:
philia
, or friendship love, in Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics
, and
agape
, or God's love, in the Pauline epistles. In the
Phaedrus
, Socrates defines
eros
as a species of divinely inspired madness that occurs whenever someone descries something beautiful in the world and has a remembrance of the “true,” heavenly beauty glimpsed by every human soul prior to its embodiment.
Étatisme
Authors: Goodliffe Gabriel
Published: August 2023

Étatisme
is an ideal type of political economy describing the relationship of the state to the economy and society, whereby the former directs the process of economic modernization and manages the social relations among the class, corporative, and sectoral actors bound up in this process.
Eurocommunism
Authors: Zirakzadeh Cyrus Ernesto
Published: August 2023

InEurocommunism and the State, communist‐party leader Santiago Carrillo articulated a novel revolutionary strategy that interested many Marxists in France, Italy, and Spain during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Other proponents of Eurocommunism included Enrico Berlinguer, Georges Marchais, and Fernando Claudín. According to the Eurocommunists, industrial capitalism in western Europe had arrived at a monopoly stage of evolution. In addition, liberal‐democratic constitutions – with established rights of contestation and with electoral systems of governmental accountability – enjoyed widespread legitimacy. These conditions meant that the Bolshevik strategy of armed revolution and a single‐party dictatorship would inevitably fail. Communists instead should form broad electoral coalitions.
Existentialism, Cultural Politics of
Authors: McBride William L.
Published: August 2023

Since the origin of the word “existentialism” was no single individual or book, any attempt to define it rigorously would be doomed to failure. But we can begin to delineate its contours by conceiving of it as a revolt against very formal, abstract philosophical thinking (“essentialism”) and toward a prioritizing of lived experience. The title of an early study of existentialism by a French scholar, Jean Wahl, well expresses this spirit:Vers le Concret(Toward the Concrete). For most if not all of those to whom the “existentialist” label has been given, ethical issues, the question of how to live, have been of enormous importance. And for most of them, though in very diverse ways, this practical focus has had important implications, not so much for politics in the narrow sense, but for what may be called cultural politics.
Falangism
Authors: Colás Alejandro
Published: August 2023

Falangism is the political ideology associated to the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional‐Sindicalista (Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National‐Syndicalist Offensive, or FE de las JONS in the Spanish acronym), a political party founded in Madrid on February 11, 1934. It was a phenomenon fundamentally linked to Spanish politics from the interwar period to the Franco dictatorship (1939–75). In essence, Falangism represents an Iberian variant of classical European fascism, albeit one with pronounced national characteristics, including an emphasis on Catholicism as a source of sociopolitical order, a valorization of the country's imperial past in its celebration of a primordial Spanish nationalism, and a strong rural social base.
Feudalism
Authors: Miller Stephen
Published: August 2023

The term feudalism appeared in the seventeenth century. It derives from the Latinfeudumand its cognatefeodalitas, words meaning fiefs and the services tied to them, whose precise meaning varied during the Middle Ages. The writingsConstitutiones FeudorumandConsuetudines Feudorum, on property and service obligations, appeared before 1200 and subsequently were taught for legal training in universities. Scholars currently use the term feudalism to isolate and interpret aspects of the Middle Ages. Medieval people would not have understood the term or have had a conscious idea of their society and economy.
Firestone, Shulamith (1945–2012)
Authors: Randall Vicky
Published: August 2023

Shulamith Firestone wrote what must be seen in retrospect as the founding text of radical feminism, whose direct and indirect influence on the women's liberation movement can hardly be overstated. The daughter of orthodox Jewish parents, she became involved in new left politics while an art student in New York. Reacting to the crassly sexist treatment of women at a national conference in 1967 she helped to set up a succession of radical feminist groups including New York Radical Women and Redstockings, and editedNotes from the First Year,Notes from the Second Year, andNotes from the Third Yearof the movement.The Dialectic of Sex, published when she was only 25, was her attempt to provide a more systematic analysis of women's oppression and the way forward.
Flathman, Richard E. (1934–)
Authors: Mihic Sophia
Published: August 2023

Richard Flathman, a theorist of the philosophy and politics of liberalism, was born in St. Paul Minnesota and is a graduate of Macalester College. He received his PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962 under the supervision of Norman Jacobson. His teaching career began at Reed College, and he taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Washington, and Johns Hopkins University. Among his 11 books and three edited volumes,The Philosophy and Politics of Freedom(1987) won the David and Elaine Spitz Prize for best book in liberal and/or democratic theory,The Practice of Rightshas been reissued (2010 [1976]), and his influential study of the work of Thomas Hobbes (1993) was followed by a critical edition ofLeviathanedited with David Johnston (1997).
Foundationalism
Authors: K. Zuckerwise Lena
Published: August 2023

Foundationalism is an epistemological approach to philosophy and political theory that relies upon incontestable principles, basic beliefs, and/or claims to truth. Often by way of appeals to nature or absolute fact, it is based on the idea that certain truths are not themselves derived from any prior value, but rather that contingent matters are derived from them. In the domain of philosophy, foundationalism is commonly associated with rationalism and empiricism. They use different methods to explain the finality of their conclusions, including deductive reasoning and observation (respectively). In the context of political theory, foundationalism or foundational arguments purport to provide a fixed and stable ground for politics, oftentimes for the sake of justifying the authority of particular kinds of political institutions. Ripstein calls such principles “unjustified justifiers” in his definition of foundationalism as adherence to a set of beliefs that are not themselves subject to the need for proof or explanation. That is, political arguments are based upon incontestable truths or principles that are not bound to any particular set of conditions or values. Equally importantly, there are many foundationalist political thinkers who claim that such basic beliefs are not necessarily formed outside of the world of human affairs, but are in fact constructed by humans themselves. It is thus quite misguided to assume that foundationalism necessarily involves recourse to the natural, transcendental, or any otherworldly domain.
Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939)
Authors: Ferguson Kennan
Published: August 2023

Sigmund Freud remains the most influential and controversial psychologist. While Freud's contributions to psychology are legion, his contributions to political theory are somewhat fewer. The most important of these arises from applications of his conceptualization and formalization of psychology to politics and results in the subdisciplinary approach known as political psychology.
Functionalism
Authors: Husa Jaakko
Published: August 2023

Functionalism denotes the fulfilling of a function, a special kind of action that serves a certain purpose (e.g., blood circulation). In the social sciences, functionalism refers to both a theory and an approach which is closely related to its rival structuralism. Functionalism underlines the interdependence of the patterns and institutions of a society and their interaction in maintaining unity. Functionalism is quintessentially based on an idea of a system which divides functions of different components. Functionalism studies the interrelations of particular phenomena within a systemic framework (e.g., a political system). Generally, the functionalist approach concentrates on functional interactions and adaptations. Crucially, society is conceived as a systemic totality.
Game Theory
Authors: Johnson James
Published: August 2023

The emergence of game theory can be dated to the publication in 1944 of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern'sTheory of Games and Economic Behavior. This work set off a remarkable period of intellectual ferment. Most of the foundational technical advances in the field were made by the end of the 1960s. This has led some practitioners to worry that, at least in terms of internal development, “the well of game theory is relatively dry.” Yet such worries do little to deflate the enthusiasm of others who, surveying its usefulness for analyzing substantive matters, characterize game theory as perhaps “the greatest single advance of the social sciences in the twentieth century.”
Gender and Identity Politics
Authors: Naranch Laurie E.
Published: August 2023

Identity politics is a form of politics grounded in and organized by a shared identity that has been the target of unjust practices. Identity politics emerged in the second half of the twentieth century as a way of organizing political claims on behalf of oppressed social groups typically, but not exclusively, within liberal democracies. Such shared identity may be ethnic, racial, religious, sexual, organized around disabilities, or gender‐based. However, the claim that group identity is relevant to politics has spurred much anxiety and many criticisms about the political dangers of identity politics within nation‐states. Such dangers include charges of separatism or “balkanization,” intragroup policing of the “proper” or “authentic” identity at the cost of individual freedom, and reductions of identity politics to narrowly defined interests that hinder broader political movements. In philosophical terms identity politics has been criticized for restricting the flourishing of the self by focusing on a specific difference as “authentic,” and for reinforcing injurious identities rather than transforming their structural situation in a more fundamental way.
Guicciardini, Francesco (1483–1540)
Authors: Warner John M.
Published: August 2023

Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) was an Italian historian and statesman, a friend and sparring partner of Machiavelli's, a lifelong friend of the Medici, and one of the Renaissance era's most sophisticated republican theorists. Though praised by his contemporaries primarily for his histories – most especially hisHistory of Italy(Storia d'Italia) – he is best known today for his contribution to republican theory as expressed in hisObservations on Machiavelli's Discourses(Considerazioni intorno ai “Discorsi” del Machiavelli), hisCivil and Political Maxims and Reflections(Ricordi civili e politici), and hisDialog on Florentine Government(Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze).
Guild Socialism
Authors: Lamb Peter
Published: August 2023

In early twentieth‐century Britain, guild socialism challenged Fabianism, which had been prominent in British socialism since the 1880 s, and Marxism. The guild socialist movement and theory influenced one another reciprocally. Having introduced innovative schemes for industrial democracy, the movement waned and the theory petered out during the 1920s.
Gutiérrez, Gustavo (1928–)
Authors: Romero Catalina
Published: August 2023

Peruvian Catholic priest Gustavo Gutiérrez is known as the father of theology of liberation for his book
Teología de la Liberación: Perspectivas
(1971) (translated as
Theology of Liberation: Perspectives
, 1973) a reflection on God that arose at the end of the 1960s and now has a universal dimension recognized by the Catholic church. The preferential option for the poor is a central theme throughout Gutiérrez's work, where poverty and the poor get particular attention.
Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976)
Authors: Thiele Leslie Paul
Published: August 2023

Martin Heidegger is one of the most original and important philosophers of the twentieth century. His work had major impacts on diverse fields, including psychology, theology, literary theory, aesthetics, and environmental studies while paving the way for the development of phenomenology, hermeneutics, poststructuralism, and deconstruction. Heidegger's students include many luminaries of political theory, such as Hannah Arendt, Hans‐Geog Gadamer, Karl Löwith, and Herbert Marcuse. In turn, his writings have exerted a formative influence on important thinkers from a wide range of academic fields, including Rudolf Bultmann, Ludwig Binswanger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty, Jean‐Paul Sartre, and Paul Tillich. Heidegger remains a particularly controversial figure for political theorists on account of the ambiguous relation of his philosophy to politics and his membership in, and endorsement of, the National Socialist party and movement.
Heller, Agnes (1929–)
Authors: Tormey Simon
Published: August 2023

Agnes Heller is a Hungarian philosopher and social critic who came to prominence as a member of György Lukács's Budapest School of humanist Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s. After her expulsion from Hungary in 1976, she lived in Australia and the United States producing a stream of works that traverse moral philosophy, politics, ethics, aesthetics, social criticism, and social theory. Since retirement from the New School for Social Research, she has re‐engaged with the politics of her native Hungary, where she mostly resides, continuing to defend humanist liberal values against the neonationalist mainstream.
Hubris
Authors: Marquez Xavier
Published: August 2023

In ancient Greek thought, the term
hubris
refers primarily to actions that dishonor or humiliate other people, rooted in dispositions toward excessive or domineering self‐assertion. Aristotle, for example, defined
hubris
as behavior that gratuitously and intentionally slights the honor of another person, shaming them publicly in order to get pleasure out of that humiliation. Similarly, writers from Homer to Plato understood
hubris
to be manifested in actions lacking in moderation and rooted in an inflated estimate of the honor due to oneself and an inadequate estimate of the honor and status of others, including the gods. The usage of the term in the speeches of the Athenian orators also reflects a concern with what we would today call “abusive” or “bullying” behavior, though neither of these terms fully captures the entire range of meaning of the Greek term.
Human Nature
Authors: McNamara Peter
Published: August 2023

What is human nature? And what place does it have in political thought? These questions are still hotly contested. This entry's inquiry into human nature proceeds as follows. The discussion must be limited to a few influential attempts to come to terms with human nature and its role in political thought. First, this entry considers the classical liberal idea of human nature. Second, it reviews three major challenges (Aristotle, Hobbes, and Rousseau) to the classical liberal view. It highlights each thinker's understanding of human nature, his method for revealing human nature, and the way the understanding of human nature is utilized in his political thought. The final section deals with recent attempts to unify natural and social science on the assumption that biology can replace philosophy as the means for understanding human nature.