Jurisprudence is the philosophy and theory of law. It is concerned primarily with what the law is and what it ought to be. That includes questions of how persons and social relations are understood in legal terms, and of the values in and of law. Work that is counted as jurisprudence is mostly philosophical, but it includes work that also belongs to other disciplines, such as sociology, history, politics and economics.
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.
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government. By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called "civil". Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance.
Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and strain of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the Old Right that opposed the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s as well as with paleolibertarianism and right-wing populism.
Social conservatism is a political philosophy and a variety of conservatism which places emphasis on traditional power structures over social pluralism. Social conservatives organize in favor of duty, traditional values and social institutions, such as traditional family structures, gender roles, sexual relations, national patriotism, and religious traditions. Social conservatism is usually skeptical of social change, instead tending to support the status quo concerning social issues.
This Index of ethics articles puts articles relevant to well-known ethical debates and decisions in one place - including practical problems long known in philosophy, and the more abstract subjects in law, politics, and some professions and sciences. It lists also those core concepts essential to understanding ethics as applied in various religions, some movements derived from religions, and religions discussed as if they were a theory of ethics making no special claim to divine status.
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, historian, and politician who wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, historiography, and aesthetics. A political liberal in most regards, he opposed both laissez-faire and free trade. Croce had considerable influence on other Italian intellectuals, from Marxists to Italian fascists, such Antonio Gramsci and Giovanni Gentile, respectively.
Irving Babbitt was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 and 1930. He was a cultural critic in the tradition of Matthew Arnold and a consistent opponent of romanticism, as represented by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Politically he can, without serious distortion, be called a follower of Aristotle and Edmund Burke. He was an advocate of classical humanism but also offered an ecumenical defense of religion. His humanism implied a broad knowledge of various moral and religious traditions. His book Democracy and Leadership (1924) is regarded as a classic text of political conservatism. Babbitt is regarded as a major influence over American cultural and political conservatism.
Russell Amos Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, and literary critic, known for his influence on 20th-century American conservatism. His 1953 book The Conservative Mind gave shape to the postwar conservative movement in the U.S. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism. He was also an accomplished author of Gothic and ghost story fiction. He is often considered one of the most significant conservative men of letters of the twentieth century.
Power: A New Social Analysis by Bertrand Russell is a work in social philosophy written by Bertrand Russell. Power, for Russell, is one's ability to achieve goals. In particular, Russell has in mind social power, that is, power over people.
Neoconservatism and paleoconservatism are two major branches of the American conservative political movement. Representatives of each faction often argue that the other does not represent true conservatism. Disputed issues include immigration, trade, the United States Constitution, taxation, budget, business, the Federal Reserve, drug policy, foreign aid and the foreign policy of the United States.
Claes Gösta Ryn is an American conservative academic and educator, who hails from Sweden.
Traditionalist conservatism, often known as classical conservatism, is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of transcendent moral principles, manifested through certain natural laws to which society should adhere prudently. Traditionalist conservatism is based on Edmund Burke's political views. Traditionalists value social ties and the preservation of ancestral institutions above excessive individualism.
Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, politics is observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Politics consists of "social relations involving authority or power. The definition of "politics" from "The Free Dictionary" is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power. Politics study include political philosophy, which seeks a rationale for politics and an ethic of public behavior, and public administration, which examines the practices of governance.
Leonidas Donskis was a Lithuanian-Jewish philosopher, political theorist, historian of ideas, social analyst, and political commentator, professor of politics and head of "VDU Academia Cum Laude" at Vytautas Magnus University, Honorary Consul of Finland in Kaunas and deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. He was also the member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2009 to 2014.
Articles in social and political philosophy include:
Grace Lee Boggs was an American author, social activist, philosopher, and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s, she and James Boggs, her husband of some forty years, took their own political direction. By 1998, she had written four books, including an autobiography. In 2011, still active at the age of 95, she wrote a fifth book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, with Scott Kurashige and published by the University of California Press. She is regarded as a key figure in the Asian American, Black Power, and Civil Rights movements.
The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism is a 1982 book by philosopher Michael Novak, in which Novak aims to understand and analyze the theological assumptions of democratic capitalism, its spirit, its values, and its intentions. Novak defines democratic capitalism as a pluralistic social system that contrasts with the unitary state of the traditional society and the modern socialist state. He analyzes it as a differentiation of society into three distinct yet interdependent power centers: a political sector, an economic sector, and a moral-cultural sector. Democracy needs the market economy and both need a pluralistic liberal culture. Against the continuing growth of democratic capitalism, modern socialism has contracted from a robust utopian program into vague "idealism about equality" and overwrought criticism of capitalism, most notably in the "liberation theology" of Latin America. Novak ends with the "beginnings of a theological perspective on democratic capitalism" illuminated by the journey from Marxism to realism of Reinhold Niebuhr.
Cultural radicalism was a movement in first Danish, but later also Nordic culture in general. It was particularly strong in the Interwar Period, but its philosophy has its origin in the 1870s and a great deal of modern social commentary still refer to it.
Traditionalist conservatism in the United States is a political, social philosophy and variant of conservatism based on the philosophy and writings of Aristotle and Edmund Burke.
