Political philosophy

The political philosophy is the part of the Philosophie which studies the relative questions with the political power, with the State, the Gouvernement, the Loi, the Politique, the Paix, the Justice inter alia. She is regarded as one of the branches of the Philosophie practices beside the Philosophie of the right and the moral Philosophie.

Nowadays, political science became inseparable from the political Philosophie.

History

Antiquity

The initial debate which founds the political philosophy as an essential field of the philosophy finds in the dialog '' Phédon '' of Plato, when Socrate indicates that in his youth, it was led to give up the Sciences of nature to be interested in the Opinions of the Cité. What it is agreed to call, with Socrate its the second navigation , sign the starting point of Philosophy like Political Philosophie . This starting point is already carrying an ambiguity, which one can find at the beginning of works of Aristote, the '' Métaphysique '' and the Politique . Indeed, each one is known as science first . The first of the tasks of the political philosophy will be thus to justify its PRIMA on the things which are beyond Nature (méta your phusikè).

The Middle Ages

It is only with the Middle Ages, at the time of the reception of the texts and the comments of the thought of Aristote, that one will come from there to speak about Philosophie first or Science about the first principles in connection with the texts about Aristote in which the Stagirite analyzes the polysemia of the directions of the Être and the question of the ousia (of the gasoline). What one will call Métaphysique (in Greek: “méta your phusikè” , “what is beyond nature” ) will consequently curiously be detached from the political studies, in contradiction with the matter even of Aristote, at the beginning of its political works, in which he says that the Philosophie first is political philosophy.

Modern time

Without losing eyes this native difficulty, one can say that political philosophy today is still mainly turned towards the examination and the discussion of the Théories of the social contract, developed with XVIIe and XVIIIe centuries by John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Emmanuel Kant.

One of works currently with accompanying notes contemporary political philosophy is explicitly located from this point of view known as “contractualist”: it is about the Théorie of justice of John Rawls (1971). Other ways nevertheless were open with, in France, of work like those of Michel Foucault, of Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Jacques Rancière, Jean-Pierre Dupuy or Yves Michaud. There still, it is sometimes starting from the redécouverte and of the discussion of classic authors that took shape new prospects - as for example the analyzes of Claude Lefort show it on the work of Nicolas Machiavel, author of the Prince (1512).