Introduction and Background

 

 

[1.] What is Political Philosophy?[1]

 

It's the area of philosophy that attempts to answer questions about political societies (PS)

 

1. What is a PS? (a)    How does one arise? (b)    What binds people in a PS together?

2. How is a PS morally justified? ·         attempts to answer the challenge of the anarchist

3. How should a PS be structured? ·         this q'n may run together w/ qn.2

4. What should a PS do? ·         I.e., what is the legitimate scope of political authority? ·         qn's of social justice, incl'g distribution of wealth

 

Political philosophy is:

·         only somewhat descriptive -- attempting to say (describe!) how things actually are

[primarily qn.1; the more descriptive political philosophy becomes, the more it resembles political science]

·         largely normative/prescriptive -- it attempts to discover how things should be

·         partly conceptual analysis -- it attempts to discover the content of concepts relevant to PSs

 

Our approach to the subject will be largely historical; we will be reading primary texts in order to discover how various philosophers answered these questions. The philosophers we will read include: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Rawls, Robert Nozick and Martha Nussbaum.