Questions tagged [political-philosophy]
Describing questions about the philosophy of politics and society which investigate concerns like liberty, justice and equality.
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Philosophers on alternatives to capitalism and communism
Philosopher Karl Marx envisioned an economic system called communism to fight the abuses suffered by working class people during the industrial era. The exploitation of man by man
and the excessive ...
user22051
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Are there philosophically serious moral arguments against eugenics?
First, I'm sure there are, but I have yet to read much in this area. It seems that most moral arguments are or quickly become historical arguments about violent or judicial racism, which may then ...
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What is the Difference Between Human Rights and Natural Rights?
When people discuss the human rights and natural rights, there seems to be a distinction between the two, where standard interpretations of human rights (such as the Universal Declaration of Human ...
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Does philosophy shed any light on how parties can fruitfully debate without an agreed source of truth?
A hallmark of recent political developments is extreme partisanship, where each side has near total distrust of the other. To exacerbate this situation there has been a breakdown in agreement over ...
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Paradox relating to the act of resolving systematic discrimination
I live in India, here at birth we are assigned something called 'caste' based on our genealogy. For a long time in India, it was often that certain castes had access to much more resources than other ...
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Morality of Interfering in Foreign Elections
What kinds of moral theories, or even just considerations, come into play for state-level action in trying to influence another nation's political election process, in terms of information/propaganda? ...
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Do decolonialists have to attack science and modernity?
I’m a professional scientist (mathematician, actually). I’m not a philosopher.
I’ve got a lot of friends well-versed in philosophy, and they all seem to point toward modernity as a byproduct of ...
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Is "Don't blame me; I voted for ___" a bad argument?
Is there a fallacy in the argument, "Don't blame me; I voted for ..."? Or is a voter's entire responsibility for their contribution to whatever current state of political affairs they experience ...
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How can I start learning about political philosophy?
I'm interested in learning about political philosophy. What are the best ways to start? Are there any websites for beginners? Are there any books such as the "For Dummies" series? Are there any audio ...
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What views of government were based on Kantian ethics?
Historically, what kinds of government and politics have been influenced by the maxims of Kant's "categorical imperative"?
Take for example, the maxim that one should only act in such a way that the ...
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Is it wrong to fly on holiday?
I have the impression that more and more colleagues disapprove of me flying for holidays. That made me ponder, but I'm not convinced that I'm making a moral mistake. I argue that my actions cannot be ...
user14511
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Legitimacy of peer review
Many matters in academia, such as who gets funding, what gets published and who gets employed are settled by a relatively small group of people. This applies quite broadly, from the arts to the ...
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Industrial Society and its Future [closed]
Ted Kaczynski, also known as the “Unabomber,” was born on May 22, 1942, in Illinois. A mathematics prodigy, Kaczynski taught at the University of California at Berkeley before retreating to a ...
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Burke on the social contract
What did Burke say about the social contract in Reflections on the Revolution in France or elsewhere, and how much did he develop his idea of a 'social contract for the ages'? How does this fit within ...
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Do historians have responsibility in how they decide to depict something?
Do historians have responsibility in how they decide to depict something?
Isn't it possible that historical interpretations could be utilized for rationalizing e.g. war?
Presumably there's also "...
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Is mathematics politically and culturally neutral?
Lately, there have been many people who say that mathematics itself is racist, that it is simply a creation of dead white Greek men. As a mathematician, I strongly disagree, and believe that ...
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My CO2 emissions in the light of Russia burning thousands of tons of it a day
According to the news, Russia is burning off, or "flaring," about 4.34 million cubic meters of gas a day because it does not sell it to Europe. That's apparently an equivalent of 9,000 ...
user14511
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Accepted Interpretation of Machiavelli's "the ends justify the means."?
Prior to reading The Prince, I had heard of the aphorism:
The ends justify the means
This was Machiavelli's identifying line to many people, and in my conversations with them, I got the impression ...
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How much ethics did Machiavelli convey in The Prince?
My philosophy teacher and I are having a little disagreement regarding The Prince:
He argues that although the book's context is a letter to Lorenzo de' Medici advising him and recommending a course ...
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What are prominent attacks of Rawls' "veil of ignorance" argument? Which liberal philosophers have advanced it?
In John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, he argues that morally, society should be constructed politically as if we were all behind a veil of ignorance; that is, the rules and precepts of society should be ...
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What were Plato's view on slavery, in particular with respect to his proposed Utopia?
In the Dialogues(specifically The Republic), when he is discussing his Utopia, At one point, he does say that children should not be treated differently based on their parent's status in life. However,...
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Does Plato see tyranny as final?
Plato's Republic famously describes the decay of the regimes, a process by which a society decays from the best regime, that of aristocracy, to the lowest, that of tyranny. However, the purpose of ...
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Does the idea of a welfare state fundamentally conflict with an open immigration policy?
Progressives and liberals in the US (myself included) typically support two ideas:
That immigration should be open so that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay and provided a so-called "...
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Are there contemporary arguments against democracy as inherently flawed?
Consider the following idea: In the modern democratic form of government where the person or group in power are chosen through elections, and in a situation where the current elected government is ...
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Is it logical to seek revenge?
People believe revenge or "violence" to be illogical, impractical and immoral; illogical because the "violence" is executed in impulsive rage, impractical because the wheel of &...
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What consequences has Locke's theory of knowledge had on modern political thought?
According to John Locke's notion of tabula rasa, there are no innate ideas in the mind. All human knowledge comes from sensible experience. Assuming this principle, it follows that there is no innate ...
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Generalize Article I of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
I find Article I of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be fascinatingly insightful and concise:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with ...
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How has Foucault Philosophy of Surveillance been critiqued?
One of the horrors of the communist police-states of Eastern Europe was the incredible amount of information that the police force kept on the general population. This was often not gathered just by ...
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How should the fair distribution of some goods depend on other-regarding preferences?
I am a welfare economist, working on fairness in economics, and I would like your opinion on some distributional dilemma.
Suppose we have the following situation:
A country is endowed with some ...
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How much if any suspension of civil liberties can be ethically justified during a "state of war"? [closed]
We constantly see civil liberties getting sacked because the country/state/city/town is in a state of war (let it be curfews or bugging civilian mobile phones). How much is ok? At what level is it ...
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How does Hannah Arendt define "freedom?"
Looking at this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/
By freedom Arendt does not mean the ability to choose among a set of possible alternatives (the freedom of choice so dear to the liberal ...
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When studying philosophy, is there a prioritization of primary or secondary sources/texts?
How do/did philosophers like Zizek, Cornel West, Derrida, Sartre study philosohy? Did they focus on primary sources or secondary? Both at the same time? I am currently reading a primary source and ...
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Why is John Rawls taken more seriously than Ayn Rand?
I just listened to a lecture on ethics and justice, and John Rawls' "a theory of justice" was presented as the most significant work of political philosophy in recent times. The lecturer then went on ...
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Why does poverty still exist in the world that discovered advanced technologies? [closed]
For example some individuals may say 'a poor life of an individual is because that he doesn't work enough'.
The world advanced as much as inventing many advanced technologies such as gun, calculator, ...
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Can society exist without hierarchy?
If we consider "a society" to be a group of individuals within the same species who cooperate for the benefit of the group as a whole, then it is reasonable to say that all human societies are ...
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difference between power and authority
I'm trying to precisely define some political and philosophical concept and i realize i can't figure out what the difference is between Authority and Power.
a few researches gave me that :
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What does Foucault mean by discursive practices or discursive constitutions in definition of discourse?
Foucault uses the concept of discursive practices or discursive constitutions in the definition of discourse.
What does he mean by this concept? How are discursive practices different from ...
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Can public funding panels properly represent the interests of the public?
The public funds a large number of projects in the arts, humanities and sciences. How this funding is distributed is decided by a small group of people who given the power to make a decision on behalf ...
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Is a work ethic, ethical?
Having a work ethic means being disciplined and hard-working among other things. But I'm hard-pressed to see this as being part of the notion of ethics in the usual or philosophical sense.
Who coined ...
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Pendulum Theory / Cyclical Theory in Philosophy?
In political science, the Cyclical Theory states that societal attitudes (Liberal-Conservative spectrum) move like a pendulum moving from one extreme to the other.
Are there any philosophers who ...
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Authors on the Credibility and Corruption of Modern Science
During the Renaissance and Industrial eras science was a way to remove superstition, religious misconception, and irrational fears. The scientific method was proved to be valid and available to ...
user22051
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Is it advisable to study political philosophy without having a firm & detailed acquaintance of European history?
As I'm beginning to read the classical texts on political theory - Platos Republic & Rousseaus Social Contract I'm beginning to be aware of just how shaky my knowledge of European History is.
On ...
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Can literacy + numeracy tests for voters improve democracy?
There have been many examples in History of various types of census for voters. The examples would include land ownership, income, age, gender, race, literacy, etc. Many of those have been detrimental ...
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Who said postmodernism is a Right-wing philosophy?
The vast majority of texts I've read (probably all of them) link postmodernism with the Left-wing in politics. However, postmodernism attacks modern science, which was/is the main force against ...
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Is work a virtual fable?
Technology is by definition an invention to save time - to accomplish a given task in a smaller period of time.
The growth of technology has been exponential.
However no lessening of the time people ...
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Can "freedom toward death" have 'freedom' translated out of it?
The term "freedom toward death" appears in Heidegger's Being and Time, e.g. p255
to be itself in the passionate anxious freedom toward death, which is
free of the illusions of the they, factical, ...
user6917
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Can a subculture be appropriated?
All the examples of cultural appropriation I see involve taking some element out of wider culture, and implementing it in their own.
If subcultures are a subset of elements from within a larger ...
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Was Bertrand Russell correct in characterising the United States as 'a Nazi State'? [closed]
In his book, War Crimes in Vietnam, published in 1967 Russell several times calls the United States a Nazi State:
The United States government is conducting a war of annihilation in the Vietnam. ...
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To what extent are the concerns of philosophy divorced from those of real life? [closed]
There's a thread that asks whether the slogan "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is a valid argument. I'd like to have answered it, but couldn't because I don't have enough mojo here.
Yet ...
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