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Pluralism (political Philosophy)
Pluralism as a political philosophy is the diversity within a political body, which is seen to permit the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions, and lifestyles. While not all political pluralists advocate for a pluralist democracy, this is the most common stance, because democracy is often viewed as the most fair and effective way to moderate between discrete values. Political theorist Isaiah Berlin, a strong supporter of pluralism, wrote: "let us have the courage of our admitted ignorance, of our doubts and uncertainties. At least we can try to discover what others ... require, by ... making it possible for ourselves to know men as they truly are, by listening to them carefully and sympathetically, and understanding them and their lives and their needs... ." Pluralism thus tries to encourage members of society to accommodate their differences by avoiding extremism (adhering solely to one value, or at the very least refusing to recognize others as legitimat ...
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Political Philosophy
Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and Political legitimacy, legitimacy of political institutions, such as State (polity), states. This field investigates different forms of government, ranging from democracy to authoritarianism, and the values guiding political action, like justice, equality, and liberty. As a normative field, political philosophy focuses on desirable norms and values, in contrast to political science, which emphasizes empirical description. Political ideologies are systems of ideas and principles outlining how society should work. Anarchism rejects the coercive power of centralized governments. It proposes a stateless society to promote liberty and equality. Conservatism seeks to preserve traditional institutions and practices. It is skeptical of the human ability to radically Social change, reform society, arguing that drastic changes can destroy the wisdom of past generations. Li ...
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Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English Ethics, moral philosopher. His publications include ''Problems of the Self'' (1973), ''Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'' (1985), ''Shame and Necessity'' (1993), and ''Truth and Truthfulness'' (2002). He was knighted in 1999. As Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, Williams became known for his efforts to reorient the study of moral philosophy to psychology, history, and in particular to the Ancient Greek philosophy, Greeks.Mark P. Jenkins, ''Bernard Williams'', Abingdon: Routledge, 2014 [2006], 3.Colin Koopman, "Bernard Williams on Philosophy's Need for History," ''The Review of Metaphysics'', 64(1), September 2010, 3–30. Described by Colin McGinn as an "analytic philosophy, analytical philosopher with the soul of a general humanist," he was sceptical about attempts to crea ...
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John Gray (philosopher)
John Nicholas Gray (born 17 April 1948) is an English political philosopher and author with interests in analytic philosophy, the history of ideas, and philosophical pessimism. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to ''The Guardian'', '' UnHerd'', ''The Times Literary Supplement'' and the ''New Statesman'', where he is the lead book reviewer. He is an atheist. Gray has written several influential books, including '' False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism'' (1998), which argues that free market globalisation is an unstable Enlightenment project currently in the process of disintegration; '' Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals'' (2002), which attacks philosophical humanism, a worldview which Gray sees as originating in religions; and '' Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia'' (2007), a critique of utopian thinking in the modern world. ...
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Utopian
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', which describes a fictional island society in the New World. Hypothetical utopias focus on, among other things, equality in categories such as economics, government and justice, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying according to ideology. Lyman Tower Sargent argues that the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. To quote: The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia. Utopian and dystopian fiction has become a popular literary category. Despite being common parlance for something imaginary, utopianism inspired and was inspired by some reality-based fields and concepts such as architecture, file sharing, social networks, universal ...
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Historicism
Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying the process or history by which they came about. The term is widely used in philosophy, anthropology, and sociology. This historical approach to explanation differs from and complements the approach known as functionalism, which seeks to explain a phenomenon, such as for example a social form, by providing reasoned arguments about how that social form fulfills some function in the structure of a society. In contrast, rather than taking the phenomenon as a given and then seeking to provide a justification for it from reasoned principles, the historical approach asks "Where did this come from?" and "What factors led up to its creation?"; that is, historical explanations often place a greater emphasis on the role of process and contingency. Historicism is often used to help contextualize theories and narratives, and may be a use ...
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Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for free-market capitalism, which became dominant in policy-making from the late 20th century onward. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is most often used pejoratively. In scholarly use, the term is often left undefined or used to describe a multitude of phenomena. However, it is primarily employed to delineate the societal transformation resulting from market-based reforms. Neoliberalism originated among European liberal scholars during the 1930s. It emerged as a response to the perceived decline in popularity of classical liberalism, which was seen as giving way to a social liberal desire to control markets. This shift in thinking was shaped by the Great Depression and manifested in policies designed to counter the volatility of free markets. One motivation for the development of policies designed to mitigate the volatility of capitalist free markets was a desire to avoid repeating the eco ...
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Marxism
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, and social transformation. Marxism originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, and as a result, there is no single, definitive " Marxist theory". Marxism has had a profound effect in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts. In addition to the various schools of thought, which emphasize or modify elements of classical Marxism, several Marxian concepts have been incorporated into an array of social theories. This has led to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy, the defining cha ...
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Liberal Conservatism
Liberal conservatism is a political ideology combining conservative policies with liberal stances, especially on economic issues but also on social and ethical matters, representing a brand of political conservatism strongly influenced by liberalism. The ideology incorporates the classical liberal view of minimal government intervention in the economy, according to which individuals should be free to participate in the market and generate wealth without government interference. However, liberal conservatives also hold that individuals cannot be thoroughly depended on to act responsibly in other spheres of life; therefore, they believe that a strong state is necessary to ensure law and order and that social institutions are needed to nurture a sense of duty and responsibility to the nation. Liberal conservatives also support civil liberties, along with some socially conservative positions. They differ on social issues, with some being socially conservative and others socia ...
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John Kekes
John Kekes (; born 22 November 1936) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University at Albany, SUNY. Education Kekes received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Australian National University. Work Kekes is the author of a number of books on ethics, including ''The Examined Life'' (Penn State University Press, 1988), ''The Morality of Pluralism'' (Princeton University Press, 1996), ''Moral Wisdom and Good Lives'' (Cornell University Press, 1997), ''The Art of Life'' (Cornell University Press, 2005), ''The Roots of Evil'' (Cornell University Press, 2007), ''Enjoyment'' (Oxford University Press, 2009), and ''The Enlargement of Life: Moral Imagination at Work'' (Cornell University Press, 2010). Kekes is also a noted conservative thinker. His works on political philosophy include ''Against Liberalism'' (Cornell University Press, 1988), ''A Case for Conservatism'' (Cornell University Press, 1998), ''The Illusions of Egalitarianism'' (Cornell University Press, 2007) and ''The Art o ...
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Michael Oakeshott
Michael Joseph Oakeshott (11 December 1901 – 19 December 1990) was an English philosopher. He is known for his contributions to the philosophies of history, religion, aesthetics, education, and law.Fuller, T. (1991) 'The Work of Michael Oakeshott', ''Political Theory'', Vol. 19 No. 3. Early life and education Oakeshott was born in Chelsfield, London, on 11 December 1901, the son of Joseph Francis Oakeshott, a civil servant with the Inland Revenue,Paul Franco, Leslie Marsh, ''A Companion to Michael Oakeshott'', pp. 16 and member of the Fabian Society, and Frances Maude, daughter of George Thistle Hellicar, a well-off Islington silk-merchant. His sister Violet married economist and social reformer Gilbert Slater. His uncle Harold's first wife was women's rights activist Grace Oakeshott, though there is no evidence that Michael knew her. He attended St George's School, Harpenden, a new co-educational and 'progressive' boarding school from 1912 to 1920. He enjoyed his schoo ...
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A Priori Knowledge
('from the earlier') and ('from the later') are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics,Some associationist philosophers have contended that mathematics comes from experience and is not a form of any ''a priori'' knowledge () tautologies and deduction from pure reason. Galen Strawson has stated that an argument is one in which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science." () knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge. The terms originate from the analytic methods found in '' Organon'', a collection of works by Aristotle. Prior analytics () is about deductive logic, which comes from d ...
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Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, and raised in Abilene, Kansas. His family had a strong religious background, and his mother became a Jehovah's Witness. Eisenhower, however, belonged to no organized church until 1952. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and later married Mamie Doud, with whom he had two sons. During World War I, he was denied a request to serve in Europe and instead commanded a unit that trained tank crews. Between the wars he served in staf ...
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