CH2: POLITICAL IDEAS AND IDEOLOGIES - THINKERS

Destutt de Tracy

French philosopher who coined the term ideology as the science of ideas

Michael Oakeshott

defined ideologies as abstract systems of thought that distort political reality as it tries to explain the incomprehensible

Daniel Bell

US sociologist who argued that ethical and ideological questions are irrelevant as societies compete for power simply by promising higher levels of economic growth and material affluence

John Locke

English political thinker who championed early liberalism; deemed natural/God-given rights to life, liberty, and property as inalienable

C.B. Macpherson

Canadian political scientist who forwarded the concept of possessive individualism which views the individual as the sole proprietor of one's personhood and capacities, owing nothing to society and other individuals

Tom Paine

English-born American political thinker who viewed the state as a necessary evil

Joseph de Maistre

the most influential spokesman for a counterrevolutionary and authoritarian conservatism; espoused the restoration of hereditary monarchy, which he regarded as divinely sanctioned; only absolute monarchy could guarantee 'order in society'

Benjamin Disraeli

British politician who articulated a widespread fear of social revolution with the growing gap in the UK between the rich and the poor; reform from above is better than revolution from below

Edmund Burke

Anglo-Irish political thinker who criticized the recasting of French politics into the abstract tenets of liberty, egality, and fraternity; argued that wisdom is derived from experience and tradition

Friedrich von Hayek

Austrian economist and political philosopher who fused liberal and conservative elements which had a formidable impact on the New Right

Karl Marx

German political thinker whose works espoused class analysis and advanced socialist ideals; argued ideology as mental production weaponized by the elite to control the proletariat

Herbert Marcuse

German political theorist who viewed industrial society as an all-encompassing system of repression; focused not on proletariat but on marginalized groups such as students, women, ethnic minorities, etc.; works inspired Neo-Marxism

Georg Lukacs

Hungarian Marxist who advanced a humanistic approach of Marxism; focused on reification or the dehumanization of workers into commodities

Antonio Gramsci

Italian Marxist who argued that capitalism is not just maintained by economic domination but also by ideological hegemony

Eduard Bernstein

German political thinker who furthered revisionism of classical Marxism; championed evolutionary socialism which advocates a peaceful transition to socialism

John Rawls

US political philosopher who advanced a theory on justice as fairness which posits that social inequality is justifiable only if it is for the benefit of the least advantaged

Adolf Hitler

German Nazi dictator who fused expansionist German nationalism or Aryanism with virulent anti-Semitism as articulated in his work, Mein Kampf

Mary Wollstonecraft

UK social theorist and feminist who advocated the equal rights of women especially to education on the basis of the notion of personhood; influenced by Lockean liberalism

James Lovelock

English environmentalist who advanced the Gaia hypothesis which states that the Earth is a living organism primarily concerned with its own survival

Ayatollah Khomeini

Iranian politician who argued that politics is religion; religion forms the organizing principles of public existence