50 Fun Facts About Political Philosophy

Which pair of political labels comes from where deputies sat in France's National Assembly in 1789?

Left and right began as a seating plan: defenders of the old regime gathered on one side of the chairman, partly to escape the shouting from the other side of the hall.

Which 1651 book by Thomas Hobbes, named after a sea monster in the Book of Job, defends absolute rule?

Leviathan was written during the English Civil War, and its title page shows the state as a crowned giant whose body is made up of hundreds of tiny people.

Which Florentine diplomat wrote The Prince, advising rulers that it is safer to be feared than loved?

Niccolò Machiavelli wrote it after losing his government post and never saw it in print: the book appeared five years after his death, and his name became a byword for cunning.

In Plato's Republic, which group does Socrates say must become rulers before an ideal city can exist?

Philosophers alone grasp what is truly good, the argument runs. Plato later tried coaching a real ruler, the young tyrant of Syracuse, who proved an unwilling student.

John Locke wrote of life, liberty and estate; which phrase ends the Declaration of Independence's trio?

The pursuit of happiness closes Jefferson's most famous sentence. Scholars argue over whether he was reworking Locke, for whom protecting property was the whole point of government.

Which 1848 pamphlet by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels closes with a call for the world's workers to unite?

The Communist Manifesto was commissioned by a small league based in London, and Marx ran so late with the draft that its leaders sent him an ultimatum.

Which word did Thomas More coin in 1516 for an imaginary island, from Greek meaning no place?

Utopia is a pun: More pointed out that it sounds like the Greek for good place. His first name for the island was Nusquama, Latin for nowhere.

Which American writer's night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax led to his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience?

Henry David Thoreau withheld the tax in protest at slavery and the Mexican–American War. His essay later shaped the campaigns of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Which word for rule by the talented did Michael Young's 1958 satire popularise as an insult?

Meritocracy began as a warning, not praise: Young was mocking an exam-sorted school system in which a person's worth came down to IQ plus effort.

Which ideology is named after a bundle of rods and an axe carried before magistrates in ancient Rome?

Fascism took its name from Mussolini's movement, yet the fasces long stood for lawful authority: a pair of them decorates Abraham Lincoln's chair at the Lincoln Memorial.

Thomas Hobbes called life in which imagined condition solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short?

State of nature was his name for it, and he pictured it as a war of all against all. Only handing power to one strong ruler, he argued, would let people stop fearing their neighbours.

Which Greek thinker, tutor to the young Alexander the Great, famously called man a political animal?

Aristotle meant that people can only flourish inside a city-state, the polis. The title of his book on the subject gave English the word politics.

Which English-born pamphleteer wrote Common Sense in 1776, urging the American colonies to break from Britain?

Thomas Paine published it anonymously, and the 47-page pamphlet became an instant sensation that was read aloud in taverns and meeting places.

Which Scottish thinker's 1776 book The Wealth of Nations described an invisible hand guiding trade?

Adam Smith used his most famous image only once in the whole book, in a passage about merchants who prefer to invest at home.

Which French baron's 1748 book The Spirit of Law argued for splitting government power into branches?

Montesquieu published the book anonymously and the Catholic Church banned it, yet its scheme of divided powers went on to shape the United States Constitution.

Which English writer's 1792 book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman demanded a full education for girls?

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote it in reply to a French report saying girls needed only domestic training. She died days after the birth of her daughter, the future author of Frankenstein.

Which thought experiment did John Rawls make famous in his 1971 book A Theory of Justice?

The veil of ignorance was Rawls's own coinage: people who cannot know whether they will end up rich or poor, he argued, will choose rules that are fair to everyone.

In Plato's Republic, Glaucon tells of a shepherd who finds which object that lets its wearer turn invisible?

A ring lets the shepherd seduce a queen and seize a throne unseen. Glaucon tells the tale to ask whether anyone would stay honest with no risk of being caught.

Which form of government, whose Greek name means rule of the best, has oligarchy as its corrupted version?

Aristocracy at first had nothing to do with titles or birth: the Greeks who coined it meant rule by the most able citizens, and frowned on power simply being inherited.

John Locke, a physician by training, is often called the father of which political tradition?

Liberalism owes Locke its claim that rulers govern only with the people's consent. He published the book making that case anonymously, just after England's Glorious Revolution.

Which English thinker's 1859 essay On Liberty holds that power may be used over others only to prevent harm?

John Stuart Mill credited much of the essay to his wife Harriet, who died just before it was finished. A 2022 analysis of its style backed her claim to be co-author.

Which Dublin-born MP, often called the founder of conservatism, attacked the French Revolution in 1790?

Edmund Burke was no simple defender of authority: years earlier he had criticised the British government for the way it taxed its American colonies.

Which French visitor was sent to study American prisons in 1831 and came home to write Democracy in America?

Alexis de Tocqueville spent nine months roaming as far as the Michigan frontier and New Orleans, and he did hand in his report on penitentiaries before the famous book.

Which theory of how government began links Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, who each gave a different version?

Social contract theories begin by imagining life with no government at all. Hobbes found that prospect so grim that he thought people would give a sovereign absolute authority to escape it.

Which doctrine, championed in print by England's James I, held that a monarch answers to no earthly authority?

Divine right of kings meant that trying to depose a monarch defied God's will. James wrote his textbooks on it while ruling Scotland, before he inherited the English throne.

Which German-born thinker coined the phrase the banality of evil while reporting on Adolf Eichmann's trial?

Hannah Arendt covered the trial for The New Yorker. She had fled Germany herself when Hitler rose to power and lived for a time as a stateless refugee.

Which word, built from Sanskrit for holding firmly to truth, did Gandhi give his nonviolent resistance?

Satyagraha grew out of a newspaper contest: Gandhi's South African news-sheet asked readers to name the movement, and a relative of his won the prize with a word Gandhi then adjusted.

Which circular prison design by Jeremy Bentham did Michel Foucault make a symbol of modern surveillance?

The Panopticon let one unseen guard watch every cell, so inmates would behave as if always observed. Bentham first sketched it while visiting his brother in the Russian Empire.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who declared that property is theft, was the first person known to adopt which label?

Anarchist was the label he chose, and many now call him the father of the movement. He was largely self-taught, having educated himself while working as an artisan.

Which Chinese doctrine, first used by the Zhou to justify toppling the Shang, said bad rulers forfeit power?

The Mandate of Heaven turned floods and famines into political threats: disasters were read as signs that a ruler had lost his claim to the throne, and revolts often followed them.

Under which shared pen name did Hamilton, Madison and Jay publish The Federalist Papers in 1787 and 1788?

Publius was Hamilton's choice, borrowed from a Roman who helped overthrow a monarchy and found a republic. Rivals of the new Constitution answered under their own Roman names.

Which phrase made famous by Rousseau did France's 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man say the law expresses?

General will meant, for Rousseau, what a people wants for its shared good rather than the sum of private wishes. Obeying it, he claimed, is how citizens obey only themselves and stay free.

Which Vienna-born thinker warned in The Open Society and Its Enemies that unlimited tolerance destroys itself?

Karl Popper tucked his famous paradox into a chapter note rather than the main text, as part of his attack on Plato's case for rule by a wise despot.

Which Austrian economist's 1944 book The Road to Serfdom warned that central planning leads to tyranny?

Friedrich Hayek saw wartime paper rationing make the book so scarce that he nicknamed it unobtainable. A Reader's Digest abridgement then carried it to a mass audience.

Which German sociologist defined the state in 1919 by its monopoly on the legitimate use of force?

Max Weber gave the definition in a lecture to students in Munich, delivered in January 1919 while revolution was sweeping a defeated Germany.

Which American political scientist argued in a 1989 essay that the Cold War's close marked the end of history?

Francis Fukuyama first floated the idea in a journal essay whose title ended in a question mark, a doubt that the book version three years later quietly dropped.

Which Athenian historian wrote the Melian Dialogue, a founding text of political realism?

Thucydides fought in the war he described: sent to relieve the city of Amphipolis, he arrived after it had surrendered to Sparta, and Athens punished him with exile.

Which North African bishop wrote The City of God after the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410?

Augustine of Hippo was answering Romans who blamed the disaster on Christianity and the neglect of the old gods. He replied that those gods had never kept Rome safe, and that the city that matters is a heavenly one.

Which 13th-century Dominican friar, once held prisoner by his own family, set out conditions for a just war?

Thomas Aquinas was locked in the family castles for almost a year by relatives who wanted to stop him joining the Dominicans. His brothers even hired a prostitute to tempt him.

Which Greek Cynic, famed for living in a large jar in Athens, called himself a citizen of the world?

Diogenes gave political thought an early form of cosmopolitanism with that boast, and probably the word itself. Athenians reportedly replaced his jar when a youth broke it.

Which 1795 work by Immanuel Kant proposed a federation of free states, each with a republican constitution?

Perpetual Peace held that a league of republics would stop fighting one another, a claim scholars now test as democratic peace theory. Its proposals were echoed in the United Nations.

Which Harvard thinker answered his colleague John Rawls in 1974 by defending a minimal night-watchman state?

Robert Nozick was reclaiming an insult: the night-watchman label was coined in 1862 by a German critic mocking limited government, the only kind Nozick thought could be justified.

Which Martinique-born psychiatrist wrote The Wretched of the Earth while backing Algeria's war of independence?

Frantz Fanon went beyond sympathy and joined Algeria's National Liberation Front. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the book's preface, defending its case for violence against colonial rule.

Which Dutch jurist, who escaped prison hidden in a chest of books, is called the father of international law?

Hugo Grotius owed the 1621 escape to his wife and a maidservant, who smuggled him out of Loevestein Castle in the chest that usually brought him reading matter. He fled to Paris.

Which Chinese school of thought, adopted by the Qin state under Shang Yang, helped it conquer China?

Legalism won the empire but lost the argument: the Qin dynasty's brutal reputation led later dynasties to proclaim Confucianism instead, while keeping the bureaucracy Qin had built.

Which English historian wrote in an 1887 letter that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely?

Lord Acton was writing to an Anglican bishop, rejecting the idea that popes and monarchs deserve gentler judgment than other men. Great men, he added, are almost always bad men.

Which Oxford thinker's 1958 lecture Two Concepts of Liberty separated negative freedom from positive freedom?

Isaiah Berlin knew unfreedom at first hand: born in Riga, he watched the Russian Revolution unfold in Petrograd as a boy before his family moved to England.

Which royalist author of Patriarcha did John Locke refute line by line in his First Treatise of Government?

Robert Filmer could not answer back: he had died decades earlier, and his book, which traced royal power to the heirs of the biblical Adam, was printed only in 1680.

Which Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, traditionally credited to Kautilya, was considered lost until 1905?

The Arthashastra ranges over politics, economic policy and military strategy. Tradition credits it to the minister who helped Chandragupta Maurya to power, though many scholars date it centuries later.

Which part of John Rawls's theory allows inequalities of wealth only if they help society's least advantaged?

The difference principle ranks last among Rawls's rules: equal basic liberties come first, then fair equality of opportunity, and only then the test of whether a gap helps the worst-off.