Political Philosophy
Notes
Political philosophy asks how people should live together — what gives a state legitimacy, what it owes its members, and what threatens or sustains social cohesion.
The Foundation of Society
Social Contract examines the basis of legitimate political authority: why individuals would surrender natural freedoms in exchange for the protections and obligations of collective life. Different starting assumptions about human nature yield radically different contracts.
Rights, Equality, and Justice
Rights, Justice and Equality covers what individuals are owed by institutions and by each other. Rights are grounded in moral agency, not utility. A just society is one we would design behind a veil of ignorance — structured to protect the worst-off. Inequality is a normative problem, not merely a descriptive one. And free speech is the mechanism through which citizens contest and revise collective decisions.
Power and Social Control
Political Power and Norms addresses how power actually operates — not only through laws and force but through the norms that individuals internalize and reproduce. When social control is diffuse and naturalized, it becomes invisible. Functionalism reads social institutions as machines: each part serves a purpose, and the question is always for whom.
The Limits of Market Logic
Consumption and Commodification traces the extension of market logic into non-market domains. When friendship, care, or civic participation are commodified, the intrinsic motivations that made them valuable are crowded out. Political philosophy debates what markets may legitimately touch.
Representing All Voices
Neutrality examines whether the state can genuinely represent all members of a pluralist society. Exclusive neutrality tries to cancel competing forces; inclusive neutrality tries to balance all voices. Neither is straightforward.
Books
Philosophers
Thomas Hobbes (philosopher) Simone weil (philosopher) Plato (philosopher) Machiavelli (philosopher) Karl Marx (philosopher) Jose Ortega (philosopher) John Locke (philosopher) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (philosopher) Georg Hegel (philosopher) Adam Smith (philosopher)
Courses
Modern Political Thinking (course)