Explaining Political Philosophy

Explaining Political Philosophy

Political philosophy, or political theory, as it is also known, is

about human condition, or, what humans are like. There are roughly

four main kinds of political philosophy around today-Libertarianism,

Socialism, Liberalism and Communitarianism. Political theory is an

attempt to understand people, what we are like as individuals, what

society and the state are like, and how we as humans, the state and

society all interact with one and other.

A social contract theory is the method of justifying political

principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be

made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons. For

some philosophers this contract is reality, whereas for others it is

regarded as imaginary. The kinds of people that are in the state of

nature deter the kind of civil society and state we have.

Plato believed that people hadn't developed their reasoning

facilities, and therefore they need to be led. Plato calls these

leaders "philosopher-kings". Plato believes that conflicting interests

of different parts of society can be harmonized. The best, rational

and righteous, political order, which he proposes, leads to a

harmonious unity of society and allows each of its parts to flourish,

but not at the expense of others. The theoretical design and practical

implementation of such order, he argues, are impossible without

virtue. A group of elite theorists developed Plato's idea of the

"philosopher-kings" and the ordinary folk in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries. Three of these theorists, Vilfredo Pareto,

Geatano Mosca, and Robert Michels, all argued that for ei...

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Arts and Science" (1750), the "Discourse on Inequality" (1754), and

the "Social Contract" (1762). Rousseau argues that people are

naturally strong; he envisages the state of nature as a kind of

paradise. Individuals would not be bound to each other by any kinds of

ties; instead they would be able to wander the forests content with

meeting others occasionally to procreate. Rousseau believed that in

the state of nature people would have the important attribute of

self-love. This self-love takes up two forms, the first, "amour de

soi-meme" (roughly translated as self-confidence), and the second

"amour propre" (translated as vanity). In Rousseau's state of nature

self-confidence would be required, for example to go out hunting for

deer, and as society develops people naturally begin to compare

themselves with others.