Political Philosophy: Methodology Political philosophy begins with the question: what ought to be a person’s relationship to society? The subject seeks the application of ethical concepts to the social sphere and thus deals with the variety of forms of government and social existence that people could live in – and in so doing, it also provides a standard by which to analyze and judge existing

Alexander Polyhistor (1st cn. B.C.E.) Known in his own time as a prolific writer, historian and philosopher, Alexander Polyhistor’s existing writings are fragmentary and are often cited from secondary or paraphrased sources. In addition to having recorded the geographies of ancient Greek and Roman empires and transcribing the writings of Hellenistic Jewish scholars that would otherwise be lost, Alexander Polyhistor is recognized for his interpretation

Legal Hermeneutics The question of how best to determine the meaning of a given text (legal or otherwise) has always been the chief concern of the general field of inquiry known as hermeneutics. Legal hermeneutics is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics and takes as its subject matter the nature of legal meaning. Legal hermeneutics asks the following sorts of questions: How do we come to decide

Political Realism Political realism is a theory of political philosophy that attempts to explain, model, and prescribe political relations. It takes as its assumption that power is (or ought to be) the primary end of political action, whether in the domestic or international arena. In the domestic arena, the theory asserts that politicians do, or should, strive to maximize their power, whilst on the international

Global Ethics: Capabilities Approach The capabilities approach is meant to identify a space in which we can make cross-cultural judgments about ways of life. The capabilities approach is radically different from, yet indebted to, traditional ethical theories such as virtue ethics, consequentialism and deontology. This article begins with a background on global ethics. This situates the capabilities approach as a possible solution to the problems

Francis Bacon (1561—1626) Sir Francis Bacon (later Lord Verulam and the Viscount St. Albans) was an English lawyer, statesman, essayist, historian, intellectual reformer, philosopher, and champion of modern science. Early in his career he claimed “all knowledge as his province” and afterwards dedicated himself to a wholesale revaluation and re-structuring of traditional learning. To take the place of the established tradition (a miscellany of Scholasticism,