Alan Ryan | |
---|---|
Born | Alan James Ryan May 9, 1940 |
Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
Spouse(s) | Kate Ryan |
Era | Contemporary philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Analytic |
Institutions | |
Doctoral students | Jeremy Waldron |
Main interests | Political philosophy |
Alan James Ryan FBA (born 9 May 1940) is a British philosopher. He was Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford. He was also Warden of New College, Oxford from 1996 to 2009. [2] He retired as Professor Emeritus in September 2015 [3] [4] and lives in Summertown, Oxford. [5]
Ryan was born on 9 May 1940 in London, England. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, [6] [7] Balliol College, Oxford, and University College, London. Elected a fellow of New College in 1969, he later taught at Princeton University, and returned to New College, Oxford, in 1996 to take up the Wardenship. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1986.
A political theorist and historian of political thought, Ryan is a recognized authority on the development of modern liberalism, especially the work of John Stuart Mill, having contributed directly to the 'Reversionary' school, which led to a re-examination of Mill's work from the 1970s. His academic work also takes in broader themes in political theory, including the philosophy of social science, the nature of property, the history of political thought, and liberalism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Ryan has held positions at the Universities of Oxford, Essex, Keele and Princeton University and University of Virginia School of Law. [3] He was also a Visiting Professor of Political Science at The University of Texas at Austin, Australian National University, The New School and many others.
Ryan is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books , the London Review of Books , and The Times Literary Supplement , and continues to write on political theory and the history of political thought. [8]
Classical liberalism is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on limited government, economic freedom, and political freedom. It was developed in the early 19th century, building on ideas from the previous century as a response to urbanization and to the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America.
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of laws by authority: what they are, if they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect, what form it should take, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever.
Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner is a British intellectual historian. He is regarded as one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought. He has won numerous prizes for his work, including the Wolfson History Prize in 1979 and the Balzan Prize in 2006. Between 1996 and 2008 he was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. He is currently the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities and Co-director of The Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London.
John Nicholas Gray is an English political philosopher and author with interests in analytic philosophy and the history of ideas. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer. He is an atheist.
Classical republicanism, also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism, is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity, especially such classical writers as Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. Classical republicanism is built around concepts such as civil society, civic virtue and mixed government.
While the term "political science" as a separate field is a rather late arrival in terms of social sciences, analyzing political power and the effects that it had on history has been occurring for centuries. However, the term "political science" was not always distinguished from political philosophy, and the modern discipline has a clear set of antecedents including moral philosophy, political economy, political theology, history, and other fields concerned with normative determinations of what ought to be and with deducing the characteristics and functions of the ideal state. Political science as a whole occurs all of the world in certain disciplines, but can also be lacking in other specific aspects of the term.
Richard E. Flathman was the George Armstrong Kelly Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at Johns Hopkins University. He is known for having pioneered, with Brian Barry, David Braybrooke, Felix Oppenheim, and Abraham Kaplan, the application of analytic philosophy to political science. He was a leading advocate of liberalism and a champion of individuality. He defended a conception of social freedom according to which it is "negative, situated, and elemental."
Charles Wade Mills was a philosopher who was a professor at Graduate Center, CUNY, and Northwestern University. Born in London, Mills grew up in Jamaica and later became a United States citizen. He was educated at the University of the West Indies and the University of Toronto.
John Petrov Plamenatz was a Serbian political philosopher from Montenegro, who spent most of his academic life at the University of Oxford. He is best known for his analysis of political obligation and his theory of democracy.
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights, liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy.
Professor Glen Francis Newey was a political philosopher, last acting as a Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Leiden. He previously taught in Brussels at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and until 2011 was Professor in the School of Politics, International Relations & Philosophy at Keele University, Staffordshire, England. He was a prominent member of the "Realist" school of political philosophers which also includes such figures as Bernard Williams, John N. Gray, and Raymond Geuss. Newey also wrote extensively about toleration, casting doubt on whether it remains a coherent political ideal in modern liberal-democratic societies.
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom.
Alessandro Ferrara is an Italian philosopher, currently professor of political philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and former president of the Italian Association for Political Philosophy. He also teaches legal theory at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.
Classical Realism is an international relations theory from the realist school of thought. Realism follows the assumptions that: states are the main actors in the international relations system, there is no supranational international authority, states act in their own self-interest and states want power for self-preservation. Classical realism can be differentiated from the other forms of realism since it places specific emphasis on human nature and domestic politics as the key factor in explaining state behavior and the causes of inter-state conflict. Classical realist theory adopts a pessimistic view of human nature and argues that humans are not inherently benevolent but instead they are self-interested and act out of fear or aggression. Furthermore, it emphasizes that this human nature is reflected by states in international politics due to international anarchy.
John William Nevill Watkins was an English philosopher, a professor at the London School of Economics from 1966 until his retirement in 1989 and a prominent proponent of critical rationalism.
Sharon A. Lloyd is Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Political Science at the University of Southern California. She co-founded the USC Center for Law and Philosophy, and directs the USC Levan Institute's Conversations in Practical Ethics Program. Lloyd's work, especially on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, has been considered some of the most significant work published in recent years.
Gillian Peele is a British academic in the field of British, American and comparative politics. She is an emeritus fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, having retired from teaching in 2016, and in August 2021 began serving a five year term as an independent member on the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) of the United Kingdom.
The Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) is a department of the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford in England.
Prof Alan Ryan, Warden of New College, Oxford, 1996–2009, 73.
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