ABSTRACT
Political philosophy has a unique standing within the domain of philosophy. From an analytical perspective it is a by-way, a branch of ethics which investigates that portion of our lives wherein citizens interact with each other through the medium of the state. It is a normative study, examining values such as freedom and justice, together with the institutional structures which manifest or deny them. From a historical perspective, it has been amongst the central concerns of the great dead philosophers as it has been the central focus for some of the most impressive philosophical work of modern times. Any list of the great books of philosophy would include Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics , Hobbes’s Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise and Rousseau’s Second Discourse and Social Contract, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, a selection of the work of Marx, including the first volume of Capital, and Mill’s On Liberty, as well as, amongst contemporary writings, Rawls’s pre-eminent A Theory of Justice. This should be puzzling at first sight, but a moment’s reflection will dispel the mystery. No-one can escape the clutches of the state. Daily, it demands things of us and these demands are often pressing and onerous, sometimes lethal. They force the most docile of citizens to review the credentials of the state, the extent of its proper powers, the constitutional form of its decision-making powers, and the nature of justice, its distinctive virtue. The only discipline which can promise illumination when these problems press hard is that of philosophy, so it should be no great surprise that the finest philosophers have bent their minds to the task.
