Modern Social Contract Theory provides an exposition and evaluation of major work in social contract theory from 1950 to the present. It locates the central themes of that theory in the intellectual legacy of utilitarianism, particularly the problems of defining principles of justice and of showing the grounds of moral obligation. It demonstrates how theorists responded in a novel way to the dilemmas articulated in utilitarianism, developing in their different approaches a constructivist method in ethics, a method that aimed to vindicate a liberal, democratic and just political order. A distinctive feature of the book is its comparative approach. By placing the works of Barry, Buchanan and Tullock, Harsanyi, Gauthier, Grice, Rawls, and Scanlon alongside one another, similarities and differences are brought out, most notably in the way in which principles are derived by each author from the contractual construction as well as the extent to which the obligation to adopt those principles can be rationally grounded. Each theory is placed in its particular intellectual context. Special attention is paid to the contrasting theories of rationality adopted by the different authors, whether that be utility theory or a deliberative conception of rationality, with the intention of assessing how far the principles advanced can be justified by reference to the hypothetical choices of rational contracting agents. The book concludes with a discussion of some principal objections to the enterprise of contract theory, and offers its own programme for the future of that theory taking the form of the empirical method.

The resurgence of interest in Cicero's political philosophy in the last twenty years demands a re-evaluation of Cicero's ideal statesman and its relationship not only to Cicero's political theory but also to his practical politics. Jonathan Zarecki proposes three original arguments: firstly, that by the publication of his De Republica in 51 BC Cicero accepted that some sort of return to monarchy was inevitable. Secondly, that Cicero created his model of the ideal statesman as part of an attempt to reconcile the mixed constitution of Rome's past with his belief in the inevitable return of sole-person rule. Thirdly, that the ideal statesman was the primary construct against which Cicero viewed the political and military activities of Pompey, Caesar and Antony, and himself.

Challenging the simplistic story by which feminism has become complicit in neoliberalism, this book traces the course of globalization of women's economic empowerment from the Global South to the Global North and critically examines the practice of empowering low-income women, primarily migrant, indigenous and racialised women. The author argues that women's economic empowerment organizations become embedded in the neoliberal re-organization of relations between civil society, state and market, and in the reconfiguration of relations between the personal and the political. Also examined are the contractual nature of institutional arrangements in neoliberalism, the ontological divide between economy and society, and the marginalisation of feminist economics that persists in the field of women's economic empowerment. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of social sciences, gender studies, sociology, and economics. This book is based on the author's doctoral dissertation at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

In this, the first major philosophical study of contingent pacifism, Larry May offers a new account of pacifism from within the Just War tradition. Written in a non-technical style, the book features real-life examples from contemporary wars and applies a variety of approaches ranging from traditional pacifism and human rights to international law and conscientious objection. May considers a variety of thinkers and theories, including Hugo Grotius, Kant, Socrates, Seneca on restraint, Tertullian on moral purity, Erasmus's arguments against just war, and Hobbes's conception of public conscience. The guiding idea is that the possibility of a just war is conceded, but not at the current time or in the foreseeable future due to the nature of contemporary armed conflict and geopolitics - wars in the past are also unlikely to have been just wars. This volume will interest scholars and upper-level students of political philosophy, philosophy of law, and war studies.

The story of Sosipatra of Pergamum (4th century C.E.) as told by her biographer, Eunapius of Sardis in his Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, is a remarkable tale. It is the story of an elite young girl from the area of Ephesus, who was educated by traveling oracles (daemons), and who grew up to lead her own philosophy school on the west coast of Asia Minor. She was also a prophet of sorts, channeling divine messages to her students, family, and friends, and foretelling the future. Sosipatra of Pergamum is the first sustained, book length attempt to tell the story of this mysterious woman. It presents a rich contextualization of the brief and highly fictionalized portrait provided by Eunapius. In doing so, the book explores the cultural and political landscape of late ancient Asia Minor, especially the areas around Ephesus, Pergamum, Sardis, and Smyrna. It also discusses moments in Sosipatra's life for what they reveal more generally about women's lives in Late Antiquity in the areas of childhood, education, family, household, motherhood, widowhood, and professional life. Her career sheds light on late Roman Platonism, its engagement with religion, ritual, and "magic," and the role of women in this movement. By thoroughly examining the ancient evidence, Heidi Marx recovers a hidden yet important figure from the rich intellectual traditions of the Roman Near East.

Animal rights is now a concept that has achieved wide name-recognition. Vegetarianism, and even veganism, is now commonplace, representing a massive transformation in public attitudes. Fifty years ago, the concept of animal rights was almost unheard of and the animal protection movement lay dormant. Even vegetarians were regarded as, at best, cranks and, at worst, dangerous critics of the social order. Yet the late 1960s and early 1970s were a formative time for the contemporary animal rights movement. One of the most important and influential intellectual moments for animal rights occurred at this time at Oxford University among like-minded scholars who would become known as the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights is about this little known group-a loose friendship group of primarily postgraduate philosophy students who attended the University of Oxford for a short period of time in the late 1960s. The book traces the early development of the Oxford Group and its influence on animal rights theory and activism. It also serves as a case study of how the emergence of important work and the development of new ideas can be explained, as well as how the intellectual development of participants in a friendship group is influenced by their participation in a creative community. For example, would Peter Singer have written his landmark book Animal Liberation-or anything about animal ethics-without being exposed to the other members of the Oxford Group? How would the discipline of animal ethics differ if the group had not produced their edited collection of articles, Animals, Men and Morals? Drawing on previously unpublished correspondence among and interviews with the surviving Oxford Group members, Robert Garner and Yewande Okuleye explore the social and political milieu in which the group formed to understand how such intellectual movements coalesce.

This book attempts to open up a path towards a phenomenological theory of values (more technically, a phenomenological axiology). By drawing on everyday experience, and dissociating the notion of value from that of tradition, it shows how emotional sensibility can be integrated to practical reason. This project was prompted by the persuasion that the fragility of democracy, and the current public irrelevance of the ideal principles which support it, largely depend on the inability of modern philosophy to overcome the well-entrenched skepticism about the power of practical reason. The book begins with a phenomenology of cynical consciousness, continues with a survey of still influential theories of value rooted in 20th century philosophy, and finally offers an outline of a bottom-up axiology that revives the anti-skeptical legacy of phenomenology, without ignoring the standards set by contemporary metaethics.

This is the first comprehensive volume to offer a state of the art investigation both of the nature of political ideologies and of their main manifestations. The diversity of ideology studies is represented by a mixture of the range of theories that illuminate the field, combined with an appreciation of the changing complexity of concrete ideologies and the emergence of new ones. Ideologies, however, are always with us. The Handbook is divided into three sections: The first reflects some of the latest thinking about the development of ideology on an historical dimension, from the standpoints of conceptual history, Marx studies, social science theory and history, and leading schools of continental philosophy. The second includes some of the most recent interpretations and theories of ideology, all of which are sympathetic in their own ways to its exploration and close investigation, even when judiciously critical of its social impact. This section contains many of the more salient contemporary accounts of ideology. The third focuses on the leading ideological families and traditions, as well as on some of their cultural and geographical manifestations, incorporating both historical and contemporary perspectives. Each chapter is written by an expert in their field, bringing the latest approaches and understandings to their task. The Handbook will position the study of ideologies in the mainstream of political theory and political analysis and will attest to its indispensability both to courses on political theory and to scholars who wish to take their understanding of ideologies in new directions.

In this timely and important work, eminent political theorist John Dunn argues that democracy is not synonymous with good government. The author explores the labyrinthine reality behind the basic concept of democracy, demonstrating how the political system that people in the West generally view as straightforward and obvious is, in fact, deeply unclear and, in many cases, dysfunctional. Consisting of four thought-provoking lectures, Dunn's book sketches the path by which democracy became the only form of government with moral legitimacy, analyzes the contradictions and pitfalls of modern American democracy, and challenges the academic world to take responsibility for giving the world a more coherent understanding of this widely misrepresented political institution. Suggesting that the supposedly ideal marriage of liberal economics with liberal democracy can neither ensure its continuance nor even address the problems of contemporary life, this courageous analysis attempts to show how we came to be so gripped by democracy's spell and why we must now learn to break it.

Liberal democracy needs a clear-eyed, robust defense to deal with the increasingly complex challenges it faces in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately much of contemporary liberal theory has rejected this endeavor for fear of appearing culturally hegemonic. Instead, liberal theorists have sought to gut liberalism of its ethical substance in order to render it more tolerant of non-liberal ways of life. This theoretical effort is misguided, however, because successful liberal democracy is an ethically demanding political regime that requires its citizenry to display certain virtues and habits of mind. Against the grain of contemporary theory, philosopher Richard Rorty blends American pragmatism and romanticism to produce a comprehensive vision of liberal modernity that features a virtue-based conception of liberal democracy. In doing so, Rorty defends his pragmatic liberalism against a host of notable interlocutors, including Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Hilary Putnam, Richard J. Bernstein, and Jean Bethke Elshtain.

As political discourse had been saturated with the ideas of "post-truth", "fake news", "epistemic bubbles", and "truth decay", it was no surprise that in 2017 The New Scientist declared: "Philosophers of knowledge, your time has come." Political epistemology has old roots, but is now one of the most rapidly growing and important areas of philosophy. The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology is an outstanding reference source to this exciting field, and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 41 chapters by an international team of contributors, it is divided into seven parts: Politics and truth: historical and contemporary perspectives Political disagreement and polarization Fake news, propaganda, and misinformation Ignorance and irrationality in politics Epistemic virtues and vices in politics Democracy and epistemology Trust, expertise, and doubt. Within these sections crucial issues and debates are examined, including: post-truth, disagreement and relativism, epistemic networks, fake news, echo chambers, propaganda, ignorance, irrationality, political polarization, virtues and vices in public debate, epistocracy, expertise, misinformation, trust, and digital democracy, as well as the views of Plato, Aristotle, Mozi, medieval Islamic philosophers, Mill, Arendt, and Rawls on truth and politics. The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology is essential reading for those studying political philosophy, applied and social epistemology, and politics. It is also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as international relations, law, political psychology, political science, communication studies, and journalism.