political-philosophy

This Element provides an opinionated survey of the ideal and non-ideal theory debate in political philosophy. It adopts a minimal conception of ideal theory as “theorizing that aims to characterize ideal or perfect justice” and then investigates four major questions. First, does ideal theory provide a benchmark for evaluating what is more just than what? Second, does it provide a target for long-…

The development of human political philosophy, over a long period of history, has revolved around an implicit premise: that human beings can understand and optimize the social systems in which they live through reason, institutions, and theoretical design. Under this premise, political philosophy has gradually evolved into multiple theoretical paths—from classical political thought to modern inst…

This paper considers the thought and personal history of Carl Schmitt, who was a German legal scholar, philosopher, and member of the Nazi Party. Schmitt's thought emphasizes concrete order and captures politics sharply. The fact that he joined the Nazi Party after having strongly criticized them can also be interpreted as a consistent devotion to concrete order. The scarcity of his defense durin…

_European Journal for Philosophy of Science_. forthcomingScience advising committees are an integral part of many public policies and, therefore, affect the political legitimacy of such policies. The role of science advising in the policymaking process is complicated by the fact that science and science policy advising are value-laden. Thus, an account of what values are appropriate for use in sc…

For over two thousand years, Confucianism has built up sophisticated approaches exploring social, political, and environmental harmony. As a valuable cultural resource and one of the main drivers of societal norms across much of East Asia, Confucian philosophy has been going through a global academic revival over the last three decades. It has insights that can help us reflect on the root causes …

This textreflects on a trajectory of philosophical formation not as a chronological reconstruction, but as a process of intellectual production situated within specific material and institutional conditions. Drawing on a critical autobiographical reading, the text examines the transition from an initially disciplined but unreflective academic practice toward a research orientation organized aroun…

_Вісник Національного Юридичного Університету Імені Ярослава Мудрого Серія: Філософія, Філософія Права, Політологія, Соціологія_ 3 (66):159-173. 2025This article presents an attempt at a comparative analysis of two alternative ideals of Christian morality, based on the spiritual legacy of John of Damascus and Dorotheus of Gaza, both representatives of the later period of Patristic literature. Key…

The Marc Sanders Foundation has announced that its 2026 Prize in Political Philosophy has been awarded to Adam Kern (University of San Diego) and Jacob Nebel (Princeton University). They received the prize for their piece, “Migration and Social Population Ethics“. Here’s the abstract: This paper explores how societies should evaluate choices that affect the size or the composition of their popula…

This essay investigates a largely overlooked dimension of Iran’s post-revolutionary statecraft: the philosophical affinity between Kant’s critical project and the constitutional architecture of the Islamic Republic. It begins with the historical dispute over Spinoza and the Enlightenment (Jacobi, Mendelssohn, Kant) and argues that Iran’s leadership, having witnessed the 20th century’s twin failur…

The Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP) has established the Bhimrao Ambedkar Prize in Global Pragmatism. It is the first prize from an American scholarly organization named in honor of Bhimrao (B.R.) Ambedkar. Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891-1956) was a well-known and highly respected political figure, philosopher, and civil rights leader in India. He studied economics at Columbia (f…

_Law and Philosophy_. forthcomingThere is now a considerable body of analytic work examining the norms of criminal conviction at trial, integrating contemporary legal theory, political philosophy and epistemology to consider when a judge or jury should doubt the guilt of an accused. This paper takes up a neglected adjacent issue: when can citizens doubt a conviction returned by a criminal court? …

_Political Philosophy_ 3 (1):109-135. 2026Queues are pervasive in our world, determining our entitlement or order of access to goods ranging from hospital appointments and organ transplants to concert tickets and supermarket tills. This paper argues that queues have an important role to play in understanding what we owe to each other. I provide a framework outlining the conceptual nature and mora…

_Social Philosophy Today_ 40:97-111. 2024Robert Nozick is most prominently known as the hero of the anti-taxation movement and chief libertarian. However, in his later writings he introduced a rule that could justify estate taxation of up to 100 percent, the subtraction rule. This paper shows that this subtraction rule is not only compatible with the core pillars of his entitlement theory, but al…

A political philosopher on why denying the right to resistance poses a far greater threat to a society than embracing it.

Thomas Hobbes described a dark place called the ‘state of nature’. But he also showed us how to avoid falling into it.

This paper argues that the political order of the past decades rested on a fundamental error: the assumption that the world is, in principle, repairable. International institutions, interventions, and governance models operated under the implicit ontology that political interventions are reversible, translatable, or integrable. This assumption is not merely optimistic, but empirically, historical…

_Philosophy and Public Affairs_. forthcomingIn The Democratic Marketplace, Lisa Herzog offers a damning indictment of democratic capitalism. Among other things, she argues that capitalism has led to increased inequality, fosters an unhealthy culture of competition, that it is bad for the environment, and that it is ultimately bad for democracy itself. To save democracy we must pursue various refo…

_Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory_ 25 (1):126-127. 2026This conclusion reaffirms the central thesis of the volume: the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DoCD) is a persistent and pervasive system of domination, shaping legal, theological, and cultural structures that perpetuate Indigenous dispossession and white supremacy. Drawing upon scholarship and activism presented at the 2023 Syracu…

These days, I’m feeling more aligned with Catholicism than I have since my first communion. I’m not alone in that I’ve had my ups and downs with the church of my childhood. On the one hand, as a “cradle Catholic”, I’ve received the sacraments, often get to Sunday mass, and am the product of a Catholic education, right through Georgetown University, with its Jesuit history. My father was a “daily …

_Political Philosophy_ 3 (1):79-108. 2026This paper revisits the debate on ideal and nonideal theory by taking seriously Charles Mills’s suggestion that it should be understood as a dispute between idealism and materialism. I argue that by understanding different sides of the debates as relying on idealist or materialist assumptions, respectively, we can better make sense of disagreements where t…