ፍትህ ለሁሉም / Justice for All
At least in anglophone countries, Spinoza’s reputation as a political thinker is eclipsed by his reputation as a rationalist metaphysician. Nevertheless, Spinoza was a penetrating political theorist whose writings have enduring significance. In his two political treatises, Spinoza advances a number of forceful and original arguments in defense of democratic governance, freedom of thought and …
This is Hobbes’s picture of human nature. We are needy and vulnerable. We have easily led astray in our attempts to know the world around us. Our capacity to reason is as fragile as our capacity to know; it relies upon language and is prone to error and undue influence. When we act, we may …
Although Hobbes offered some mild pragmatic grounds for preferring monarchy to other forms of government, his main concern was to argue that effective government—whatever its form—must have absolute authority. Its powers must be neither divided nor limited. The powers of legislation, adjudication, enforcement, taxation, war-making (and the less familiar right of control of normative doctrine) …
Before St. Thomas Aquinas the church fathers and other medieval thinkers held that the state was ordained by God and the government was the instrument devised by God to punish the evildoers. This view was the product of the unfamiliarity with Aristotelian thought. Since Thomas was the spokesman of Aristotelianism he revived Aristotle’s ideas on …
The political philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), along with the broader philosophical teaching of which it is part, stands at the crossroads between the Christian gospel and the Aristotelian political doctrine that was, in Aquinas’ time, newly discovered in the Western world. In fact, Aquinas’ whole developed system is often understood to be simply a modification of Aristotelian philosophy …
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) is best known to posterity as a prominent statesman and orator in the tumultuous period of the late Roman republic. As well as being a leading political actor of his time, he also wrote voluminously. Among his writings, around a dozen philosophical works have come down to us. Philosophy was …
Marcus Tullius Cicero expressed principles that became the bedrock of liberty in the modern world. He insisted on the primacy of moral standards over government laws. These standards became known as natural law. Above all, Cicero declared, the government is morally obliged to protect human life and private property. When the government runs amok, people …
Aristotle was simply too versatile of a scholar for us to go into all of his theories right now, so we’re just going to focus on one main area: politics. Aristotle wrote a lot about politics and ethics because to him, politics and ethics were inseparable. So, before we can talk about politics, we need …
THOUGH PLATO WAS THE FIRST to elaborate a Socratic philosophy of politics, his student Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) was the first to articulate a practically-oriented political science, meant to be of use to legislators, statesmen, and citizens. Like his teachers, Aristotle did much to promote philosophy as an ally to the city and a guide …
Plato’s Republic centers on a simple question: is it always better to be just than unjust? The puzzles in Book One prepare for this question, and Glaucon and Adeimantus make it explicit at the beginning of Book Two. To answer the question, Socrates takes a long way around, sketching an account of a good city on the …