Robert Nozick (1938–2002) was a renowned American philosopherwho 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 in1975. Pressing further the anti-consequentialist aspects of JohnRawls’ A Theory of Justice, Nozick argued that respectfor individual rights is the key standard for assessing state actionand, hence, that the only legitimate state is a minimal state thatrestricts its activities to the protection of the rights of life,liberty, property, and contract. Despite his highly acclaimed work inmany other fields of philosophy, Nozick remained best known for thelibertarian doctrine advanced in Anarchy, State, andUtopia.
Political philosophy
Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and legitimacy of political institutions, such as states. The 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.
John Rawls
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 endure despite the diversity of worldviews that free institutions allow. His writings on the law of peoples set out a liberal foreign policy that aims to create a permanently peaceful and tolerant international order.
Personal Knowledge : Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy
This study, first published in 1958, offers Michael Pol…
Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfect…
How can we establish a political/legal order that in pr…
Alfred Korzybski
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski was a Polish-American philosopher and independent scholar who developed a field called general semantics, which he viewed as both distinct from, and more encompassing than, the field of semantics. He argued that human knowledge of the world is limited both by the human nervous system and the languages humans have developed, and thus no one can have direct access to reality, given that the most we can know is that which is filtered through the brain's responses to reality. His best known dictum is "The map is not the territory". Many of his ideas were presented in his book Science and Sanity (1933).
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss was a twentieth-century German Jewish émigréto the United States whose intellectual corpus spans ancient, medievaland modern political philosophy and includes, among others, studies ofPlato, Maimonides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Nietzsche.Strauss wrote mainly as a historian of philosophy and most of hiswritings take the form of commentaries on important thinkers and theirwritings. Yet as he put it: “There is no inquiry into thehistory of philosophy that is not at the same time aphilosophical inquiry” (PL, p. 41). While much of hisphilosophical project involved an attempt to rethink pre-modernphilosophy, the impetus for this reconsideration and the philosophicalproblems that vexed Strauss most were decidedly modern. Straussespecially worried about the modern philosophical grounds forpolitical and moral normativity as well as about the philosophical,theological, and political consequences of what he took to be modernphilosophy’s overinflated claims for the self-sufficiency ofreason.
Anarchy and modern convenience
A major part of anarchy and socialism is the concept of anti-work. An obsession with work is a colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist construct. As such, the anti-work movement—a focus on working less overall and sharing labor more equally—is an important part of decolonization, feminism, and anti-capitalism. A common criticism of this is that reducing the amount everyone works to something like 20 hours a week instead of 40+ means we would have to give up a lot of conveniences.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
The foundation for a general system of morals, this 174…
Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life – Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider
Read the free, open access editionBuy: Amazon, Bookshop, Narrow Gauge Book Co-op, UC Press
Buddhist philosophy
Buddhist philosophy is the ancient Indian philosophical system that developed within the religio-philosophical tradition of Buddhism. It comprises all the philosophical investigations and systems of rational inquiry that developed among various schools of Buddhism in ancient India following the parinirvāṇa of Gautama Buddha, as well as the further developments which followed the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia.
The politics of decentralization and the libertarian allure of Mastodon – Structural Integrity
I am currently reading the fabulous “Hayek’s Bastards” by Quinn Slobodian. It made me think about decentralisation in Mastodon (yes, the federated social network). And it made me think about the lack of a coherent progressive vision for the digital age. I will explain what that book has to do with both. But let’s go back to the political meaning of “decentralisation” in digital discourse first.
Political science
Political science[a] is the social scientific study of politics. It deals with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and laws. Specialists in the field are political scientists.
Mystified magicians of the mind
My conversation with neuroscientist Paul Cisek
Anti-democratic attitudes are highly contagious, new psychology study finds
The rise of anti-democratic sentiments might be driven by social contagion. Researchers have discovered that citizens often adapt their personal support for authoritarian rule to align with the political views of those around them.
