Political Philosophers
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- Confucious
- First to relate ethics to political order
- Chanakya
- Founder of independant thought in India
- Mozi
- Eponymous founder of the Mohist school, advocated a strict utilitarianism
- Socrates
- Founder of Western Politcal Philosophy
- Plato
- Most famous student of Socrates
- Aristotle
- Wrote his Politics as an extension of his Nicomachean Ethics
- Mencius
- Of the Confucian school; first theorist to argue for rulers to be ruled
- Han Feizi
- Major figure of the Chinese Fajia
- Niccolo Machiavelli
- First analysis of how consent is negotiated b/n rules; precursor to the idology of epistemological structure of commands and law
- Thomas Hobbes
- First articulated the social contract justifying the action of rulers, even when in contrast to people
- Benedict Spinoza
- Rational Egoism: rational interest of self is conformance to pure reason
- John Locke
- Described social contract theory based on citizens' rights in the state of nature
- Baron de Montesquieu
- Analyzed protection of liberty by a "balance of powers" in division of state
- David Hume
- Criticized the social contract theory of John Locke; a realist in recognizing the role of force to forge the existence of states and that consent of the governed was merely hypothetical.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Analyzed the social contract as an expression of the general will, and controversially argued in favor of absolute democracy where the people at large would act as sovereign.
- Immanuel Kant
- Argued that participation in civil society is undertaken not for self-preservation, as per Thomas Hobbes, but as a moral duty. First modern thinker who fully analyzed structure and meaning of obligation. Argued that an international organization was needed to preserve world peace.
- Adam Smith
- Founder of modern economics
- Thomas Paine
- Enlightenment writer who defended liberal democracy, the American Revolution, and French Revolution in Common Sense and The Rights of Man.
- Jeremy Bentham
- The first thinker to analyze social justice in terms of maximization of aggregate individual benefits. Founded the philosophical/ethical school of thought known as utilitarianism.
- John Stuart Mill
- A utilitarian, and the person who named the system; he goes further than Bentham by laying the foundation for liberal democratic thought in general and modern, as opposed to classical, liberalism in particular. Articulated the place of invididual liberty in an otherwise utilitarian framework.
- Karl Marx
- In large part, added the historical dimension to an understanding of society, culture and economics. Created the concept of ideology in the sense of (true or false) beliefs that shape and control social actions. Analyzed the fundamental nature of class as a mechanism of governance and social interaction.
- John Dewey
- Co-founder of pragmatism and analyzed the essential role of education in the maintenance of democratic government.
- Antonio Grams
- Instigated the concepts hegemony and social formation. Fused the ideas of Marx, Engels, Spinoza and others within the so-called dominant ideology thesis (the ruling ideas of society are the ideas of its rulers).
- Herbert Marcuse
- One of the principle thinkers within the Frankfurt School, and generally important in efforts to fuse the thought of Freud and Marx. Introduced the concept of repressive desublimation, in which social control can operate not only by direct control, but also by manipulation of desire. Analyzed the role of advertising and propaganda in societal consensus.
- Friedrich Hayek
- Advanced an analysis under which any collectivism could only be maintained by a central authority. Advocated free-market capitalism in which the sole role of the state was to maintain the rule of law.
- John Rawls
- Revitalised the study of normative political philosophy in Anglo-American universities with his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, which uses a version of social contract theory to answer fundamental questions about justice and to criticise utilitarianism.
- Robert Nozick
- Criticized Rawls, and argued for Libertarianism, by appeal to a hypothetical history of the state and the real history of property.