A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy

Political philosophy has become an active and central area of research in the past two or three decades. The editors have taken a broad view of the range of issues that are relevant to political philosophy, and the Companion covers the contributions of economics, history, law, political science and sociology as well as philosophy - analytic and continental. In general, political philosophers are not just interested in the routines that govern politics but also in the various systems which politics may be used to shape. They are concerned with all the institutions that help to determine what John Rawls describes as the 'basic structure' of society. To provide a comprehensive guide to current thinking in political philosophy, Robert Goodin and Philip Pettit have divided the book into three parts: Disciplinary Contributions, Major Ideologies and Special Topics. In addition, the Companion's 41 chapters have been contributed by some of today's most distinguished academics, drawn from several different disciplines. The first part of the book consists of a series of extended essays on the contribution that a number of different disciplines have made and are making to current debates. Analyses of political ideologies form the next section, followed by discussions of major concepts ranging from virtue and equality to sociobiology and environmentalism that form the subject matter of philosophical debate.