History of political thought

Overview

Among the many contributions to political philosophy, a continuous thread can be traced from the analytical theorising of the thinkers of Ancient Greece through the writings of the philosophers of The Enlightenment and the teachings of the founders of the French and American revolutions, to the current ideologies of Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism and their offshoots. Since the contributions of the political philosophers of China and India are not a significant part of that thread, they are conventionally omitted from courses and treatises on the history of economic thought, and given separate treatment elsewhere. Among the topics that are debated throughout what is regarded as the mainstream thread, are the relations between individual and community, and between community and state. Although many issues remained unresolved, an unprecedented degree of ideological convergence began to develop during the latter decades of the 20th century, culminating in a situation that Francis Fukuyama dramatised as "the end of history". However a controversy gathered strength in the 21st century concerning a state's "duty of care" toward its citizens, and the rôle of the international community when an individual state fails to discharge that duty.

Ancient Greece

The thread begins with the discussions of the advantages of social cooperation that took place in Ancient Greece, culminating in the political analyses of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. It centres on the city-state (polis)) of Ancient Athens at a time when an assembly of all of its citizens had been made its legislative body: a body to which its magistrates and administrators were made responsible. That was the form of democracy that was praised by the Athenian aristocrat Pericles in his famous funeral speech. At the time of Plato's political commentaries, it had made some regrettable decisions, and lost a war against Sparta and its allies, but had survived as the first fully-functional democratic city-state. Plato considered Athenian democracy to be an imperfect society because it put power in the hands of those who were ill-qualified to exercise it. Ruling, in his view, was a specialised skill that required unusual intelligence and self-discipline - and much of the Socratic dialogue in The Republic is concerned with the selection and training of an elite body of "Guardians" who would be given the duty of taking decisions that they deem to benefit the community. To gain their popular acceptance, he suggested the use of a public relations campaign to persuade the populace to believe the "Noble Lie" that the powers of the guardians had been divinely bestowed. Aristotle regarded Plato's Republic as the negation of politics, observing that "man is by nature a political animal that cannot reach its full potential without reasoned discourse. He believed, nevertheless, that deliberative politics was only possible for a select elite - excluding women and slaves.