Reddit reviews Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction

Your post is deeply flawed, and I'll do my best to explain how as diplomatically as possible.

>Everyone deserves exactly what they bargained for.

Are you saying that if I'm bargaining at a Ford dealership for a new a truck, I automatically deserve it? I'm assuming you mean something else, but I don't know what.

> This "fair share" argument is used commonly and is false right from the get go. Everyone has their own idea on what "fair share" means, and the progressive plan to implement "fair share" usually involves some sort of forced redistribution of wealth which is wrong from the beginning.

So by your own logic, the rich also don't deserve their wealth. I mean, if everybody's idea of fair share is purely subjective, then we simply cannot take anybody's word for it, rich or poor. "Fair share" becomes a non-starter for any discussion. So how can you possibly argue it's "wrong from the beginning" if we have no standard of what "fair share" even means? Why is it wrong?

>It's robin hooding except instead of taking it from the extremely rich, it's taken from everybody.

This claim is a non-sequitur. How did you get from the notion that "fair share" is arbitrary to this idea? It simply doesn't follow.

The reasoning at work in your posts is sloppy and, at points, self-contradictory. Perhaps it would help to take some time to deepen your knowledge of political principles A good primer that covers some arguments from various parts of the political spectrum might be helpful. This. It's edited by Canada's own Will Kymlicka, one of the the most renowned contemporary political philosophers.

Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism by Joseph Heath is a good popular introduction to a huge number of economic issues worth reading whether you hate capitalism or not.

Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction by Will Kymlicka is a terrific exploration of every major branch of contemporary political philosophy, with the exception of those dealing with animal or environmental issues. Kymlicka explains utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, Marxism, feminism, and other topics and critiques them from his liberal egalitarian perspective. The introduction's use of technical terms shouldn't scare people away, as they are explained in the body of the book. Those who have never read any philosophy, however, would be better starting off with Political Philosophy: A Beginners' Guide for Students and Politicians by Adam Swift, which is more of an actually introductory book.

The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan is a very well-argued and entertaining (by academic standards, at least) critique of the idea that contemporary democracies are capable of choosing good economic policies.

I am reading or have read all these books. Heath and Kymlicka are Canadian, Caplan is American, and Swift is British.

edit: punctuation

I used to have a view pretty similar to this, but then I read the chapter on multiculturalism from this book, and it changed my mind. The chapter is under 40 pages long. If I sent it to you, would you consider reading it?

You could also try and approach your problem through the lens of some of the communitarian conceptions. Very roughly put (as there are many, many subcategories of the concept), a communitarian denies that notions such as 'happiness', 'meaning', 'preference' or 'pleasure' of the individual can be fully apprehended and situated within the liberal/libertarian actor. Communitarianism focuses on the communities of practice and attitudes, and tries to make claims on what and how any given individual within his or her community define themselves and extract their sense of self (including, for instance, something as seemingly 'liberal' as a preference) from their environment. It means that the line between the individual and the world he/she is situated within doesn't allow for this strict division between subject/object, and such radical notions of selfishness despite apparent examples that humans also are able to put their selfish interests on hold.

It's a huge, huge topic, but I think you would find some very interesting reading there that might soothe your qualms pertaining whether you might have grown into a cynic or not.
I'd advise you to try and read the Stanford article on the matter. After that, you could try and get your hands on Will Kymlicka's "Contemporary Political Philosophy" which has great chapters on communitarianism and citizenship theory (another field between community and individual). Finally, reading the 'granddaddy' of communitarianism, Aristotle, one more time never hurts.

For political theory/philosophy, Will Kymlicka's Contemporary Political Philosophy is a decent introduction. You can find a free copy on LibGen.

In terms of the current state of UK politics, The Candidate by Alex Nunns gives a detailed account of the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the politics he represents.

I'm sorry, I fail to see the relevance of your question. Here you can find many political philosophers and their ideas discussed, and I dispute none of them mentioned therein as political philosophers.

No one of note takes the NAP seriously enough to critique. For example, a rudimentary search on google scholar for "non aggression principle" or "NAP" returns irrelevant results concerning psychology, biology and international relations and inbetween those a few self-published papers by mises libertarians like Kinsella or Block.

The right-libertarian philosopher Matt Zwolinski, associated with the "bleeding heart libertarians" crowd, has a post arguing against the NAP here (and Kevin Vallier here) where he argues that the NAP might simultaneously be too counter-intuitively restrictive and too counter-intuitively permissive a principle, but again, no serious papers on the subject.

A basic point (which Zwolinski partially makes) is that the NAP is either incompattible with the libertarian / anarchocapitalist (or any other political) project, if it can not authorize any initiation of force (where by force is meant acting or threatening to act on another's physical body or some similar day-to-day definition of violence), or insofar as it authorizes the initiation of force in defence of property titles (and construes this force as defensive in the special sense that it responds to an infringement on one's -property- rights and not in the sense that it responds to previously excercised force in the day-to-day sense), it is parasitic on a prior theory of justice (such as a theory of property rights) which must (in order to avoid obvious circularity) make no reference back to the NAP. However arguing for that theory of property rights succesfully would already authorize the use of force in defense of those titles, and thus the NAP would then appear to be redundant within the libertarian project, and more than this, under this interpretation the NAP would be seen to be trivially consistent with any and all political projects. The rawlsian blogger Matt Bruenig sort of makes similar points here. It's obvious the NAP isn't popular with people named "Matt". Yet again, no published papers on this, since academic philosophers don't think this argument requires any special attention to it (i.e., they don't take it seriously enough to write a paper on how wrong it is).

A good critical introduction to libertarianism in general is the fourth chapter of Kymlicka's Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (here is a preview I could find on scribd)

Note: This is generally a very good introduction to polphil, which is sometimes used as a textbook in universities that teach the subject. The chapter on libertarianism introduces the two best arguments for deontological libertarianism, made by Nozick and Gauthier, and then proceeds to outline the major arguments that have been made against them to date. These indicate some serious problems with libertarianism that aspiring libertarians should take care to resolve. It mentions Flew, so you might be interested in subsection 4. "Libertarianism as Liberty". At any rate, it's a book worth reading to acclimate yourself with how polphilosophers argue.

There is also Cohen's "Self-ownership, freedom and equality" and his reply to Narveson. If you are interested but can't find any of those, send a PM my way, and we'll see what can be done to remedy that.

Hey, political science / philosophy majors of the DT, I have a question.

Suppose I wanted to take a bog-standard course in liberal political philosophy. Sure, I could read all the primary works: Hobbes, Locke, Mill, etc. But if I wanted to read a textbook, what textbook would I read?

For comparison, if I wanted to learn about pre-Socratic philosophy, I could read something like this. If I wanted to learn about modern philosophy (Descartes to Kant), I could read this.

If I wanted to learn about political philosophy, what would I read? Is it this book?

Bonus: what about moral philosophy and ethics? I could read Parfit and work backwards, but that is a bit too difficult to recommend to other people.

This post is relevant only if you are interested in politics in the sense of the question of what politics ought to consist in, what policies ought to be pursued and so on, as well as what others have thought about it in the past. If your main interest is in the current political climates and policies pursued in the USA and other countries in the world then consider looking at political economics/public choice theory.

I wouldn't recommend wikipedia. It's not that it's wrong. I just don't recommend it. I'm from the UK and have never heard NPR so I can't speak to it (I'm imagining it as similar to BBC Radio 4). Again I wouldn't necessarily use it as one of your main resources because these things take a false "balanced" view of things and end up with a splintered perspective, though no doubt there are hundreds of interesting shows and they definitely contribute to a more well-rounded, learned and cultured personality.

A very good introduction to (liberal) political philosophy is Contemporary Political Philosophy by Will Kymlicka. This goes in depth on the arguments for (and against) libertarianism, communitarianism, feminism, utilitarianism, all from the perspective of a contemporary egalitarian.

From there I'd recommend digging straight into actual works of political theory (e.g. Anarchy, State and Utopia, A Theory of Justice, not to mention works by Dworkin, Cohen and so on). If you are interested in specific ideas like property, liberty, equality and so on: what they mean, how one applies them, the different normative perspectives and positions surrounding them than I (and others) can give more specific reading lists. Equally if you have a particular interest in the historical side of things (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau and so on) then focus on that once you have the basics.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Contemporary-Political-Philosophy-Will-Kymlicka/dp/0198782748
This is an excellent general overview of the major theories. Well written, fun to read. For my money this is a great starting point.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/reading

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/5y49nz/as_a_hs_sophomore_i_would_like_to_venture_into/den54ll/

https://www.amazon.com/Law-Legislation-Liberty-statement-principles/dp/0415522293/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Documents-Definitive-Collected/dp/0226320553/ref=la_B000AQ6W60_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503059047&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465051006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503059077&sr=1-1&keywords=nozick

https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Political-Philosophy-Will-Kymlicka/dp/0198782748/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503059099&sr=1-4&keywords=contemporary+political

https://www.amazon.com/New-History-Western-Philosophy/dp/0199656495/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503059282&sr=1-1&keywords=new+history+of+philosophy

http://econlog.econlib.org/

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/

I haven't read that much contemporary political philosophy, but if you're looking for the theoretical part and not a novel I would recommend:Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction by Kymlicka

It's a good place to start, I would think. There are also tons of very good articles on the subject such as Huntington's Clash of Civilizations (note that it's more from a political analyst than a philosophers).

Start here with the Political Compass. It will give you some insights on where you fall in regard to: right, left, authoritarian, and librarian. I think the point is not so much as labeling, rather helping you visualize the magnitude.

No offense, just from reading the summary of some of your political beliefs, you may want to do some more reading. Here is one of the books we used in my political theory classes. If you think you are libertarian, start by reading some Robert Nozick. He is one of the more prominent libertarian thinkers.