---
title: "History of political thought"
chunk: 8/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_political_thought"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:11.308994+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

A pair of overlapping political perspectives arising toward the end of the 20th century are republicanism (or neo- or civic-republicanism) and the capability approach. The resurgent republican movement aims to provide an alternative definition of liberty from Isaiah Berlin's positive and negative forms of liberty, namely "liberty as non-domination." Unlike the American liberal movement which understands liberty as "non-interference", "non-domination" entails individuals not being subject to the arbitrary will of any other person. To a republican the mere status as a slave, regardless of how that slave is treated, is objectionable. Prominent republicans include historian Quentin Skinner, jurist Cass Sunstein, and political philosopher Philip Pettit. The capability approach, pioneered by economists Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen and further developed by legal scholar Martha Nussbaum, understands freedom under allied lines: the real-world ability to act. Both the capability approach and republicanism treat choice as something which must be resourced. In other words, it is not enough to be legally able to do something, but to have the real option of doing it.

=== Social liberalism ===

In Anglo-American academic political philosophy, the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971 is considered a milestone. Rawls used a thought experiment, the original position, in which representative parties choose principles of justice for the basic structure of society from behind a veil of ignorance. Rawls also offered a criticism of utilitarian approaches to questions of political justice. Robert Nozick's 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which won a National Book Award, criticized the social liberalism of Rawls from a libertarian perspective, gaining much academic respectability.

=== Traditionalism ===

Julius Evola called for a return to pre-Renaissance values of tradition and aristocracy while discussing possible ways to survive the inevitable collapse of the modern civilization and to bring forth a new order.

== See also ==
Divine right of kings
History of economic thought
History of feminism
History of political science
Intellectual history

== References ==

== Further reading ==

Collins, Jacob.  The Anthropological Turn: French Political Thought after 1968 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) online book review
Fiala, Andrew, ed. The Bloomsbury Companion to Political Philosophy (2015)
Klosko, George, ed. Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy (2012)
Korab-Karpowicz, W. Julian. On the History of Political Philosophy: Great Political Thinkers from Thucydides to Locke (Routledge, 2015)
Matravers, Derek, Jonathan Pike, and Nigel Warburton, eds. Reading political philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill (2000) essays by experts
Ryan, Alan. On Politics, a new history of political philosophy (2 vols., 2012), 1152 pp, Herodotus to the present
Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2 vols., 1978)
Strauss, Leo, and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of political philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2012 reprint)

== External links ==
History of Political Thought Poster with visual overview.