ፍትህ ለሁሉም / Justice for All
John Rawls was arguably the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century. He wrote a series of highly influential articles in the 1950s and ’60s that helped refocus Anglo-American moral and political philosophy on substantive problems about what we ought to do. His first book, A Theory of Justice [TJ] (1971), revitalized the social-contract tradition, using …
John Rawls (b. 1921, d. 2002) was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His theory of justice as fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system. His theory of political liberalism explores the legitimate use of political power in a democracy and envisions how civic unity might …
James Mill (1773–1836) was a Scots-born political philosopher, historian, psychologist, educational theorist, economist, and legal, political, and penal reformer. Well-known and highly regarded in his day, he is now all but forgotten. Mill’s reputation now rests mainly on two biographical facts. The first is that his first-born son was John Stuart Mill, who became even …
Robert Nozick (1938–2002) was a renowned American philosopher who first came to be widely known through his 1974 book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974),[1] which won the National Book Award for Philosophy and Religion in 1975. Pressing further the anti-consequentialist aspects of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, Nozick argued that respect for individual rights is the key standard …
In 1974 libertarian ideas had virtually no presence within the academic establishment. Free-market economists F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman had not yet won their Nobel prizes (Hayek’s would come later that year and Friedman’s two years after that), and the reigning political philosopher was Nozick’s own colleague John Rawls, whose monumental treatise, A Theory of …
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) is typical, though quite wrongly, considered a coarse social Darwinist. After all, Spencer, and not Darwin, coined the infamous expression “survival of the fittest”, leading G. E. Moore to conclude erroneously in Principia Ethica (1903) that Spencer committed the naturalistic fallacy. According to Moore, Spencer’s practical reasoning was deeply flawed insofar as he purportedly …
Despite his egoism and individualism, Spencer held that life in the community was important. Because the relation of parts to one another was one of mutual dependency, and because of the priority of the individual ‘part’ to the collective, society could not do or be anything other than the sum of its units. This view …
In much the same way that Russell used logic in an attempt to clarify issues in the foundations of mathematics, he also used logic in an attempt to clarify issues in philosophy. As one of the founders of analytic philosophy, Russell made significant contributions to a wide variety of areas, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political theory. His …
Since Man has mastered speech, the meta question has been asked: what is philosophy, in general, and political philosophy, in particular? The question of its function follows. Ancient and modern philosophers have devoted a substantial part of their life to an attempt to answer the meta question. Their theoretical framework, i.e. their approaches, have diverged widely. How …
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) profoundly influenced the shape of nineteenth-century British thought and political discourse. His substantial corpus of works includes texts in logic, epistemology, economics, social and political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, religion, and current affairs. Among his most well-known and significant is A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy, On Liberty, Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women, Three Essays on …