Political Philosophy

Intermediate

Undergraduate level. These articles introduce the formal machinery, work through the standard results, and set out the main positions with the objections that stuck to them.

The Social Contract TraditionPlanned
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau derive the state from an agreement made out of a stateless condition, and disagree about what that condition is like
16 min
Rawls: The Original Position and the Two PrinciplesPlanned
Choosing principles behind a screen that hides your talents, class, and conception of the good
18 min
Nozick and Entitlement TheoryPlanned
The argument that justice depends on how holdings arose, so any fixed pattern can be kept only by blocking voluntary transfers
14 min
The Capabilities ApproachPlanned
Sen and Nussbaum measure advantage by what people are able to do and be rather than by resources or satisfaction
20 min
Libertarianism, Liberalism, Socialism, ConservatismPlanned
What separates the four once you sort them by their commitments on property, equality, and inherited practice
15 min
Marx on Alienation, Class, and IdeologyPlanned
Labour that confronts the worker as alien, class defined by relation to productive resources, and beliefs that serve an existing order
16 min
Democracy and Its JustificationsPlanned
Whether majority rule is defended by the quality of its outcomes or by the equal standing it expresses
14 min
Republicanism and Non-DominationPlanned
Freedom as the absence of arbitrary power rather than the absence of actual interference
20 min
Punishment and the Right to PunishPlanned
Backward-looking desert against forward-looking deterrence, and the separate question of who may inflict either
17 min
Civil DisobediencePlanned
Public lawbreaking that accepts the penalty, and the conditions offered for when it is justified
12 min
TolerationPlanned
The puzzle of putting up with what you judge to be wrong, and where a neutral state draws the line
13 min