Curated category
Political philosophy
- TotalitarianismTotalitarianism is a word that began as an insult, became a battle cry, and ended up contested by the very scholars who once wielded it most confidently.
- Freedom of speechFreedom of speech is a principle that asks something radical of us: to defend the right to say things we find wrong, offensive, or dangerous.
- Political philosophyPolitical philosophy asks the hardest questions human beings have ever tried to answer. What gives a government the right to rule? When is a law unjust?
- RepublicanismRepublicanism is a political ideology built on a radical premise: that sovereignty belongs to the people, not to a king, a dynasty, or a divine right.
- SecularismSecularism, in 1851, did not yet have a name. In Britain that year, a writer reaching for an alternative to a word he found too aggravating settled on a new…
- Social democracySocial democracy sits in an odd place. It is a broad, centre-left ideology inside the wider socialist movement, yet in modern practice it runs a…
- WhiggismWhiggism began not in a philosopher's study but in the chaos of civil war. When Parliament and King Charles I went to war in the English Civil Wars of the…
- Dignitas (Roman concept)Dignitas, a Latin word from ancient Rome, had no clean translation in English. Not dignity alone, not prestige, not charisma.
- Redistribution of income and wealthRedistribution of income and wealth is, at its core, the transfer of income and wealth from some individuals to others through mechanisms a society has…
- Divine right of kingsIn the year 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket died after being murdered by knights loyal to King Henry II of England. This violent event marked a turning point…
- ImperiumImperium was the word ancient Romans used for the kind of power that could not be argued with. It came from imperare, the Latin verb meaning to command, and…