A political theorist is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including political philosophy. Theorists may be academics or independent scholars.
A political theorist is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including political philosophy. Theorists may be academics or independent scholars.
The writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero constitute one of the most renowned collections of historical and philosophical work in all of classical antiquity. Cicero was a Roman politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, philosopher, and constitutionalist who lived during the years of 106–43 BC. He held the positions of Roman senator and Roman consul (chief-magistrate) and played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. He was extant during the rule of prominent Roman politicians, such as those of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Marc Antony. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.
Cicero is generally held to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome. He introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy, and also created a Latin philosophical vocabulary; distinguishing himself as a linguist, translator, and philosopher. A distinguished orator and successful lawyer, Cicero likely valued his political career as his most important achievement. Today he is appreciated primarily for his humanism and philosophical and political writings. His voluminous correspondence, much of it addressed to his friend Atticus, has been especially influential, introducing the art of refined letter writing to European culture. Cornelius Nepos, the 1st-century BC biographer of Atticus, remarked that Cicero's letters to Atticus contained such a wealth of detail "concerning the inclinations of leading men, the faults of the generals, and the revolutions in the government" that their reader had little need for a history of the period.
George Douglas Howard Cole (25 September 1889 – 14 January 1959) was an English political theorist, economist, historian, and novelist. As a believer in common ownership of the means of production, he theorised guild socialism (production organised through worker guilds). He belonged to the Fabian Society and was an advocate for the co-operative movement.
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (July 17, 1931 – May 6, 2023) was an American political theorist. She was best known for her seminal study The Concept of Representation, published in 1967.
Pitkin's diverse interests ranged from the history of European political thought from ancient to modern times, through ordinary language philosophy and textual analysis, to issues of psychoanalysis and gender in political and social theory.
Carl Schmitt (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, author, and political theorist. He held various positions on Nazi councils including serving on the Prussian State Council, the Academy for German Law, and as the president of the National Socialist Association of Legal Professionals.
Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism. His works covered political theory, legal theory, continental philosophy, and political theology. However, they are controversial, mainly due to his intellectual support for, and active involvement with, Nazism. In 1933, Schmitt joined the Nazi Party and utilized his legal and political theories to provide ideological justification for the regime. He later lost favour among senior Nazi officials and was ultimately removed from his official positions within the party.
Walter Bryce Gallie (5 October 1912 – 31 August 1998) was a Scottish social theorist, political theorist, and philosopher. He put forth the notion of essentially contested concepts. In 1940 he married Welsh-speaking novelist Menna Patricia Humphreys, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
James Mill (born James Milne; 6 April 1773 – 23 June 1836) was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. He also wrote The History of British India (1817) and was one of the prominent historians to take a colonial approach. He was the first writer to divide Indian history into three parts: Hindu, Muslim and British, a classification which has proved surpassingly influential in the field of Indian historical studies.
Mill was the father of John Stuart Mill, a noted philosopher of liberalism and utilitarianism, and a colonial administrator at the East India Company.
Norman Geras (/ˈɡɛrəs/ GHERR-əs; 25 August 1943 – 18 October 2013) was a political theorist and Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Manchester. He contributed to an analysis of the works of Karl Marx in his book Marx and Human Nature and the article "The Controversy About Marx and Justice". His "Seven Types of Obloquy: Travesties of Marxism", appeared in the Socialist Register in 1990.
Bernard Bosanquet FBA (/ˈboʊzənˌkɛt, -kɪt/; 14 June 1848 – 8 February 1923) was an English philosopher and political theorist, and an influential figure on matters of political and social policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work influenced but was later subject to criticism by many thinkers, notably Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Bernard was the husband of Helen Bosanquet, the leader of the Charity Organisation Society, and the brother of scientist and music theorist Robert Bosanquet and Admiral Day Bosanquet.
Sir Robert Filmer (c. 1588 – 26 May 1653) was an English political theorist who defended the divine right of kings. His best known work, Patriarcha, published posthumously in 1680, was the target of numerous Whig attempts at rebuttal, including Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government, James Tyrrell's Patriarcha Non Monarcha and John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. Filmer also wrote critiques of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, Hugo Grotius and Aristotle.