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Political Philosophy

An introduction to the political concepts of major thinkers in western political philosophy.
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Topics include:
  • Regimes
  • Justice
  • Freedom
  • Equality
  • Obligation
  • Social Contract
  • State of Nature
  • Role of the State
  • Ethics
Image of the School of Athens with Plato and Aristotle in the center.

Philosopher Resources

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Plato (Approx. 427 B.C.E.-347 B.C.E.)

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Aristotle (384-322B.C.E)

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Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

 

Machiavelli (1469-1527)

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

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Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

 

John Locke (1632-1704)

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Montesquieu (1689-1755)

 

Voltaire (1694-1778)

 

David Hume (1711-1776)

 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

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Adam Smith (1723-1790)

 

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

 

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

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Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

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The Federalists (works 1788)

 

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

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John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

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Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)

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Karl Marx (1818-1883)

 

Frederick Engels (1820-1878)

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

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Max Weber (1864-1920)

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Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

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John Rawls (1921-2002)

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Robert Nozick (1938-2002)

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Related Works

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The Clouds by Aristophanes

Line image of a bust of Plato

Recommended Reading

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Political Philosophy by Stephen B. Smith

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An Introduction to Political Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff

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The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner

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Online Resources

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Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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McMaster University: History of Economic Thought

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The Basics of Philosophy

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Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Some Texts from Early Modern Philosophy

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Online Library of Liberty

 

Social Theory Re-Wired

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Open Online Courses

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Yale: Introduction to Political Philosophy

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Online Videos

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School of Life  (Various Short Videos)

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Moral Foundations of Politics (Professor Shapiro, Yale)

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Labor Theory of Value

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Important Concepts

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Historical Materialism

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Labor Theory of Value  (Investopedia)

 

Labor Theory of Value (Prychitko)

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A Priori and A Posteriori (Baehr)

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The Problem of Dirty Hands (Coady)

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Enlightenment (Bristow)

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The Natural Law Tradition (Murphy)

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Social Contract Theory (C. Friend)

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Contemporary Approaches to Social Contract (D'Agostino)

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Understanding the General Will (Dagger)

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State of Nature (Lacewing)

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Political Legitimacy (Peter)

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Other Philosopher's and Interesting Thinkers

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Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

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Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

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Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)

 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

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Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

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Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

 

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

 

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

 

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

 

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830)

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David Ricardo (1772-1823)

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Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

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Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

 

August Comte (1798-1857)

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Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

 

Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)

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Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

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Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)

 

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

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Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)

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John Dewey (1859-1952)

 

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

 

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985)

 

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

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Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

 

Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)

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Leo Strauss (1899-1973)

 

Karl Popper (1902-1994)

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Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

 

H.L.A. Hart (1907-1992)

 

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

 

Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997)

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Simone Weil (1909-1943)

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Robert A. Dahl (1915-2014)

 

Joseph Cropsey (1919-2012)

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Noam Chomsky (1928-present)

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Jurgen Habermas (1929-present)

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Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

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Sara Ruddick (1935-2011)

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Margaret Gilbert (1942-present)

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Susan Haack (1945-present)

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Susan Moller Okin (1946-2004)

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James Tully (1946-present)

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Martha Nussbaum (1947-present)

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bell hooks (1952-present)

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Cornel West (1953-present)

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Judith Butler (1956-present)

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"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato"

(Alfred North Whitehead, 1979)

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