bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
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.
A common division of the topic distinguishes between corrective and distributive justice. Corrective justice covers that which is due to a person as punishment, distributive that which is due by way of benefits and burdens other than punishments. Within the sphere of corrective justice there is disagreement about the justification of punishment itself. But there has been – and is – widespread agreement on the criteria for just punishment: just punishments must be properly imposed and the quantum of punishment must reflect the seriousness of the offence.
There has been no such agreement about 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. Theorists of what may be called justice as fairness believe that justice is a thin concept which provides a fair framework within which each person is enabled to pursue their own good.
Nation and nationalism
Authors: Miller David 
Published: September 2018

No one observing political events in the world today could deny the continuing potency of nationalism. Many of the most intractable conflicts arise when one national community tries to break away from another, or when two such communities lay claim to the same piece of territory. Yet to outsiders the basis for such conflicts often seems mysterious. People are prepared to fight and die for their nation, yet what exactly is this ‘nation’ that commands such loyalty? Why should it matter so much that a person is governed by leaders drawn from one community rather than from another?
Philosophers are often inclined to dismiss nationalism as having no rational basis, but as resting merely on tribal instincts and brute emotions. Such a response overlooks the different forms that nationalism has taken: in particular, the contrast between authoritarian nationalism, which allows national cultures to be imposed by force and which may justify acts of aggression against neighbouring peoples, and liberal nationalism, which upholds the rights of individuals to form political communities with those with whom they feel identified and to protect their common culture. We need to examine carefully the arguments that have been advanced by nationalist thinkers in order to decide which form of nationalism, if any, is rationally defensible.
Obligation, political
Authors: Simmons A. John 
Published: September 2018

The problem of political obligation has been one of the central concerns of political philosophy throughout the history of the subject. Political obligations are the moral obligations of citizens to support and comply with the requirements of their political authorities; and the problem of political obligation is that of understanding why (or if) citizens in various kinds of states are bound by such obligations. Most theorists conservatively assume that typical citizens in reasonably just states are in fact bound by these obligations. They take the problem to be that of advancing an account of the ground(s) or justification(s) of political obligation that is consistent with affirming widespread obligations. Other theorists, however, anarchists prominent among them, do not accept the conservative assumption, leaving open the possibility that the best theory of political obligation may entail that few, if any, citizens in actual states have political obligations.
Much of the modern debate about political obligation consists of attempts either to defend or to move beyond the alleged defects of voluntarist theories. Voluntarists maintain that only our own voluntary acts (such as freely consenting to the authority of our governments) can bind us to obedience. Because actual political societies appear not to be voluntary associations, however, voluntarism seems unable to satisfy conservative theoretical ambitions. Some individualists turn as a result to nonvoluntarist theories of political obligation, attempting to ground obligations in the receipt by citizens of the benefits governments supply or in the moral quality of their political institutions. Others reject individualism altogether, defending communitarian theories that base our political obligations in our social and political roles or identities. Individualist anarchists reject instead the conservative ambitions of such theories, embracing a voluntarism which entails that most citizens simply have no political obligations.
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. And it need not be just their number - advances in genetics and reproductive technology may soon bring what sort of people they are to be to some extent under human control.
Property
Authors: Munzer Stephen R. 
Published: September 2018

Most of the great philosophers have expressed views on property, its justification and limits, and especially on the justification of having private property; generally, one must understand these views against the background of the economic and social conditions of their times. Notable theories include first possession (roughly, ‘whoever gets their hands on it justifiably owns it’), labour (‘whoever made it deserves to own it’), utility and/or efficiency (‘allowing people to own things is the most effective way of running society’) and personality (‘owning property is necessary for personal development’).
Few thinkers now defend the first possession theory but all the other three have their contemporary supporters. Some philosophers combine two or more theories into multi-principled or ‘pluralist’ justifications of property ownership. Many express concern about wide gaps between rich and poor and argue for constraints on inequalities in property holdings.
Rights
Authors: Martin Rex 
Published: September 2018

There is widespread consensus that rights are ways of acting or of being treated that are beneficial to the rightholder. Controversy begins, however, when one attempts to specify the notion of rights further.
(1) It is sometimes said, perhaps too casually, that all rights carry with them correlated obligations – things that other persons are supposed to do or refrain from doing when some given person is said to have a right to something. The question is: how is it best to state this relationship between rights and correlated obligations?
(2) Most people think that rights are, in some sense, justified. But there is considerable controversy as to what, precisely, is the proper focus of justification. Some say that rights are practices (certain ways of acting or of being treated) that are established, typically socially established. Thus, the issue for them is whether the fact of social recognition and enforcement is justified (or could be). Others say that rights themselves are claims; hence a right is a justified claim or principle of some sort (whether the practice identified in that claim exists or not). This dispute, between rights as justified practices and rights as justified claims, needs to be explored and, if possible, resolved.
Other topics need addressing beyond the question of the initial characterization of rights. One of them is the question of the function of rights: what good are they anyway? what can one do with rights? Another is the question of how best to justify particular kinds of rights, such as human rights and basic constitutional rights. Is there a substantive theory of critical morality that can do the job? Many people are concerned, especially, with whether utilitarianism (one of the dominant ethical theories in the West today) is up to this task. Finally, mention should be made of one other issue much talked about of late: what kinds of beings can have rights, and under what conditions of possession and dispossession?
Slavery
Authors: Esquith Stephen L. , Smith Nicholas D. 
Published: September 2018

The moral, economic and political value of slavery has been hotly disputed by philosophers from ancient times. It was defended as an institution by Plato and Aristotle, but became increasingly subject to attack in the modern period, until its general abolition in the Western world in the nineteenth century.
In the twentieth century our belief that slavery is fundamentally unjust has become a benchmark against which moral and political philosophies may be tested. Both utilitarians and contractarian philosophers have argued against slavery in general and the enforceability of slavery contracts more specifically, although for very different moral reasons. Others have argued that only by viewing slavery from the standpoint of the slave can its moral significance be understood.
Contractarianism
Authors: Freeman Samuel 
Published: September 2018

The idea that political relations originate in contract or agreement has been applied in several ways. In Plato’s Republic Glaucon suggests that justice is but a pact among rational egoists. Thomas Hobbes developed this idea to analyse the nature of political power.Given the predominantly self-centred nature of humankind, government is necessary for society. Government’s role is to stabilize social cooperation. By exercising enforcement powers, government provides each with the assurance that everyone else will abide by cooperative rules, thereby making it rational for all to cooperate. To fulfil this stabilizing role, Hobbes argued that it is rational for each individual to agree to authorize one person to exercise absolute political power. Neo-Hobbesians eschew absolutism and apply the theory of rational choice to argue that rules of justice, perhaps even all morality, can be construed in terms of a rational bargain among self-interested individuals.
John Locke, working from different premises than Hobbes, appealed to a social compact to argue for a constitutional government with limited powers. All men are born with a natural right to equal freedom, and a natural duty to God to preserve themselves and the rest of mankind. No government is just unless it could be commonly agreed to form a position of equal freedom, where agreement is subject to the moral constraints of natural law. Absolutism is unjust according to this criterion.
Rousseau developed egalitarian features of Locke’s view to contend for a democratic constitution.The Social Contract embodies the General Will of society, not the unconstrained private wills of its members. The General Will wills the common good, the good of society and all of its members. Only by bringing our individual wills into accord with the General Will can we achieve civic and moral freedom.
In this century, John Rawls has recast natural rights theories of the social contract to argue for a liberal egalitarian conception of justice. From a position of equality, where each person abstracts from knowledge of their historical situations, it is rational for all to agree on principles of justice that guarantee equal basic freedoms and resources adequate for each person’s independence.
T.M. Scanlon, meanwhile, has outlined a right-based contractualist account of morality. An act is right if it accords with principles that could not be reasonably rejected by persons who are motivated by a desire to justify their actions according to principles that no one else can reasonably reject.
Social democracy
Authors: Miller David 
Published: September 2018

The idea of social democracy is now used to describe a society the economy of which is predominantly capitalist, but where the state acts to regulate the economy in the general interest, provides welfare services outside of it and attempts to alter the distribution of income and wealth in the name of social justice. Originally ’social democracy’ was more or less equivalent to ’socialism’. But since the mid-twentieth century, those who think of themselves as social democrats have come to believe that the old opposition between capitalism and socialism is outmoded; many of the values upheld by earlier socialists can be promoted by reforming capitalism rather than abolishing it.
Although it bases itself on values like democracy and social justice, social democracy cannot really be described as a political philosophy: there is no systematic statement or great text that can be pointed to as a definitive account of social democratic ideals. In practical politics, however, social democratic ideas have been very influential, guiding the policies of most Western states in the post-war world.
Totalitarianism
Authors: Canovan Margaret 
Published: September 2018

A term adopted in the 1920s by the Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile to describe the ideal fascist state, ‘totalitarianism’ quickly acquired negative connotations as it was applied to the regimes of Hitler in Germany and Stalin in the USSR. Within political science it has generally been used to refer to a distinctively modern form of dictatorship based not only on terror but also on mass support mobilized behind an ideology prescribing radical social change. Controversially, the specific content of the ideology is considered less significant than the regime’s determination to form the minds of the population through control of all communications.
Totalitarianism has attracted the attention of philosophers as well as political scientists because a number of classic philosophical systems have been suspected of harbouring totalitarian aspirations, and also because the model of total power exercised through discourse has been used by critical theorists to mount an attack on modernity in general.
Utopianism
Authors: Sargent Lyman Tower 
Published: September 2018

Utopianism is the general label for a number of different ways of dreaming or thinking about, describing or attempting to create a better society. Utopianism is derived from the word utopia, coined by Thomas More. In his book Utopia (1516) More described a society significantly better than England as it existed at the time, and the word utopia (good place) has come to mean a description of a fictional place, usually a society, that is better than the society in which the author lives and which functions as a criticism of the author’s society. In some cases it is intended as a direction to be followed in social reform, or even, in a few instances, as a possible goal to be achieved.
The concept of utopianism clearly reflects its origins. In Utopia More presented a fictional debate over the nature of his creation. Was it fictional or real? Was the obvious satire aimed primarily at contemporary England or was it also aimed at the society described in the book? More important for later developments, was it naïvely unrealistic or did it present a social vision that, whether achievable or not, could serve as a goal to be aimed at? Most of what we now call utopianism derives from the last question. In the nineteenth century Robert Owen in England and Charles Fourier, Henri Saint-Simon and Étienne Cabet in France, collectively known as the utopian socialists, popularized the possibility of creating a better future through the establishment of small, experimental communities. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and others argued that such an approach was incapable of solving the problems of industrial society and the label ‘utopian’ came to mean unrealistic and naïve. Later theorists, both opposed to and supportive of utopianism, debated the desirability of depicting a better society as a way of achieving significant social change. In particular, Christian religious thinkers have been deeply divided over utopianism. Is the act of envisaging a better life on earth heretical, or is it a normal part of Christian thinking?
Since the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, a number of theorists have argued that utopianism has come to an end. It has not; utopias are still being written and intentional communities founded, hoping that a better life is possible.
War and peace, philosophy of
Authors: Nardin Terry 
Published: September 2018

The war/peace dichotomy is a recurrent one in human thought and the range of experience it interprets is vast. Images of war and peace permeate religion, literature and art. Wars, battles, pacts and covenants appear as outcomes and antecedents in historical narratives. Recurrent patterns of warlike and pacific behaviour invite scientific explanations in terms of underlying biological, psychological or economic processes. War and peace are also often matters of practical concern, predicaments or opportunities that call for individual or collective action. While philosophers have explored all these ways of looking at war and peace, they have paid most attention to the practical aspects of the subject, making it part of moral and political philosophy.
Practical concern with war and peace can go in either of two main directions, one focusing on war and the other on peace. Those who doubt that war can be abolished naturally worry about how it can be regulated. So long as war is possible, there will be principles for waging it. Whether such principles should limit war-making to ends like self-defence or leave the choice to the discretion of political and military leaders is a matter of continuing dispute. Nor is there agreement regarding restrictions on the conduct of war, some holding that belligerents need only avoid disproportionate damage, others that it is morally wrong to harm innocents (for example, noncombatants). In situations of emergency both limits may give way, and moralists have debated whether this relaxation of standards is defensible. Disputes over the principles governing war raise difficult questions about action, intention and the character of morality itself.
If we think that wars can be prevented, it becomes important to focus on the conditions of permanent peace. Some who do this conclude that peace depends on the conversion of individuals to an ethic of nonviolence, others that it requires strengthening the rule of law. According to a powerful version of the latter argument, the absence of law creates a condition in which persons and communities are at liberty to invade one another: a condition that, in Hobbes’s classic metaphor, is a ‘state of nature’ which is also a perpetual state of war. While treaties of peace may terminate particular wars, only political institutions that establish the rule of law within and between communities can provide security and guarantee peace.
Bodin, Jean (1529/30–96)
Authors: Franklin Julian H. 
Published: September 2018

Jean Bodin was one of the great universal scholars of the later Renaissance. Despite political distractions, he made major contributions to historiography and the philosophy of history, economic theory, public law and comparative public policy, the sociology of institutions, as well as to religious philosophy, comparative religion and natural philosophy. Among his most celebrated achievements are his theory of sovereignty, which introduced a new dimension to the study of public law, and his Neoplatonist religion, which opened new perspectives on universalism and religious toleration.
Many of these intellectual positions, moreover, were responses, at least in part, to great political issues of the time. Against doctrines of popular sovereignty and the right of resistance put forward in the course of the religious wars, Bodin sought to show that the king of France was absolute. Against the widespread corruption and laxity that weakened and undermined the monarchy, he argued for administrative reform. And against the party that pressed the king to impose religious uniformity, he cautiously supported religious toleration. In all these respects Bodin’s thought helped to inform the policies of the early Bourbon dynasty esatblished by Henry IV.
Schumpeter, Joseph Alois (1883–1950)
Authors: Swedberg Richard 
Published: September 2018

Schumpeter is best known for his seminal work in economics, but he also made important contributions to the fields of political science and sociology. He aimed to create a broad economic science that he called ‘social economics’ (Sozialökonomik), which was to include not only economic theory but also economic history, statistics and economic sociology. Inspiration for this project came in particular from his colleague Max Weber.
As an economist Schumpeter is primarily remembered for his theory of the entrepreneur and for his emphasis on the dynamic aspects of economic reality: capitalism, as he saw it, meant first and foremost change. But Schumpeter also made a number of interesting observations about theorizing in economics and the role that vision plays in the work of the economist. His trenchant critique of the conventional theory of democracy and advocacy of a more realistic theory is generally recognized as a major contribution to political theory. Many of Schumpeter’s most important ideas on economics and politics can be found in his bookCapitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), which has become something of a classic in the social sciences.