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Political Philosophy
Authority, justice, liberty, and who gets to decide.
- A Theory of JusticeRawls's 1971 systematic statement of justice as fairness, developing the original position thought experiment, the two principles of justice, and the framework that revived political philosophy as a major analytic subfield.Books
- Alasdair MacIntyreScottish-American moral philosopher (1929–2025) whose After Virtue, Whose Justice?FiguresContemporary
- CapitalMarx's three-volume major theoretical work of systematic political economy, analyzing the structure, dynamics, and internal contradictions of capitalist society.Books
- CiceroRoman statesman and orator (106–43 BCE) whose philosophical dialogues — De Officiis, De Finibus, De Natura Deorum, Tusculan Disputations — created a Latin philosophical vocabulary, preserved the systems of Hellenistic schools otherwise lost, and shaped every subsequent Western reception of Greek thought.FiguresRoman
- City of GodAugustine's vast late work in twenty-two books on history, politics, and theology, interpreting human history as the unfolding of two intermingled communities oriented respectively to God and to self.Books
- Discipline and PunishFoucault's 1975 genealogical history of the European penal system that analyzed the transformation from the spectacle of public execution to the disciplinary techniques of the modern prison, developing the concepts of discipline, surveillance, and the Panopticon.Books
- Jean-Jacques RousseauGenevan-born philosopher, novelist, composer, and educational theorist (1712–1778) whose Social Contract reframed political legitimacy in terms of the general will, whose Discourse on Inequality argued that civilization had corrupted natural human freedom, and whose Émile founded modern educational theory.FiguresEnlightenment
- Jeremy BenthamFounder of utilitarianism and of the principle that actions are right as they tend to promote happiness.Figures1748–1832
- John LockeThe English philosopher whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding founded modern empiricism and whose Two Treatises of Government provided the philosophical foundation of liberal political theory.FiguresEnlightenment
- John RawlsThe American philosopher whose A Theory of Justice (1971) revived political philosophy as a major analytic subfield and whose subsequent work on political liberalism and the law of peoples produced the most influential single body of work in twentieth-century English-language political theory.Figures20th Century
- John Stuart MillThe English philosopher, economist, and reformer whose work on utilitarian ethics, the philosophy of liberty, the logic of inductive reasoning, and the subjection of women shaped Victorian and modern liberal thought.Figures19th Century
- Jürgen HabermasThe German philosopher and sociologist who led the second generation of the Frankfurt School, developed the theory of communicative action and discourse ethics, and remains the most institutionally influential living German philosopher.Figures20th Century
- JusticeGiving each what is due — the Roman formula, suum cuique tribuere.Concepts
- Karl MarxThe German philosopher, economist, and revolutionary whose materialist transformation of Hegelian dialectic and analysis of capitalism produced one of the most influential intellectual frameworks of the modern era.Figures19th Century
- LibertyFreedom from interference (negative) or capacity to act (positive); the axis of modern political debate.Concepts
- Martha NussbaumBuilt the capabilities approach, and argued that emotions are judgements rather than interruptions of reason.Figuresb. 1947
- Michel FoucaultThe French philosopher and historian whose archaeological and genealogical investigations of madness, medicine, the prison, and sexuality produced the most influential single body of work in late-twentieth-century continental philosophy.Figures20th Century
- Niccolò MachiavelliFlorentine diplomat whose Prince and Discourses founded modern political realism.Figures1469–1527
- Robert NozickAuthor of Anarchy, State, and Utopia and the libertarian reply to Rawls.Figures1938–2002
- Simone de BeauvoirThe French philosopher, novelist, and feminist whose The Second Sex (1949) reshaped twentieth-century thought about gender and whose existentialist ethical writings developed the framework of situated freedom and ambiguity.Figures20th Century
- Social ContractThe idea that political authority is grounded in (hypothetical) agreement among the governed — Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls.Concepts
- Summa TheologiaeAquinas's vast unfinished masterwork of systematic theology, comprising over three thousand articles structured as Scholastic disputations and constituting the most ambitious single work of Christian theology in the Western tradition.Books
- The Second SexDe Beauvoir's 1949 foundational work of modern feminist philosophy, systematically analyzing the historical, biological, psychoanalytic, economic, and lived dimensions of women's situation as 'the Other' of the male subject.Books
- Thomas HobbesEnglish philosopher (1588–1679) whose Leviathan grounded political authority in the rational consent of self-interested individuals, established the modern social-contract tradition, and provided the most rigorous early-modern statement of materialist metaphysics in English.FiguresEarly Modern