Part A: Foundations and values
Introduction to political philosophy
Key takeaways
- Political philosophy is the systematic study of the state, government, law, liberty, justice and the legitimate exercise of political power.
- It asks not only how institutions work but how they ought to be designed and justified.
- Hobbes justified an absolute sovereign as the escape from a violent state of nature; Locke rested government on the consent of the governed to protect life, liberty and property; Rousseau located legitimate authority in the general will.
- The discipline runs from Plato and Aristotle through the social-contract, modern liberal and critical traditions to postmodern approaches that question the universal claims of earlier theories.
Public finance decisions are never made in a political vacuum, they rest on assumptions about legitimacy, fairness and the proper role of the state. This unit opens with the philosophical foundations every later paper in this diploma's public-sector content assumes.
Definition of political philosophy
Political philosophy is the systematic study of the state, government, law, liberty, justice and the legitimate exercise of political power, asking not just how institutions work but how they ought to be designed and justified.
Origins of political philosophy
The discipline traces to classical antiquity, Plato and Aristotle asking what constitutes a just city and the best form of rule, and has developed continuously since through successive traditions, each responding to the political conditions of its own era.
Key political philosophers and their political thoughts
From ancient to postmodern political philosophy
The discipline has moved through classical (Plato, Aristotle), social-contract (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), modern liberal and critical traditions to postmodern approaches that question the universal claims earlier theories made, reflecting how each era's political challenges reshaped the questions philosophy asked.
Exam tip
Be ready to attribute a specific idea to the correct philosopher (Hobbes's state of nature, Locke's consent of the governed, Rousseau's general will), exam questions frequently test this pairing directly.
Self-check
(a) A government justifies its authority on the basis that citizens have consented to be governed and that its role is to protect life, liberty and property. Identify the philosopher this reasoning traces to. (2 marks)
(b) Distinguish Hobbes's view of legitimate authority from Locke's. (3 marks)
(c) State Rousseau's account of where legitimate authority derives from. (2 marks)
(d) Explain what political philosophy studies beyond how institutions actually work. (3 marks)
Show worked answer
(a) John Locke (2 marks).
(b) Hobbes argued individuals consent to an absolute, largely unconstrained sovereign to escape a violent state of nature; Locke held that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed specifically to protect natural rights, life, liberty and property, and can be limited or replaced if it fails to do so, Hobbes justifies near-absolute authority, Locke justifies conditional, rights-protecting authority (3 marks).
(c) Legitimate authority derives from the general will of the people, expressed through a social contract (2 marks).
(d) Political philosophy also asks how institutions ought to be designed and justified, questions of legitimacy, fairness and the proper exercise of power, not only descriptive questions of how they currently operate (3 marks).