Talk:Political philosophy

"Monarchy" not a Good Description of Plato's Republic

This is my first discussion on wikipedia so I'm sorry if its not formatted well or doesn't do what it's meant to do. But I made this account because I wanted to argue my point for changing a word in this article.

Under the section of Ancient Greece (1.1.3), monarchy is used to describe the Philosopher's Republic. I think that monarchy is a sort of loaded word for what Plato is advocating for.

The typical reader would probably collate "monarchy" with oligarchy, wealth, power, etc. Which is fair, since the linked article for monarchy itself even says such:

"The succession of monarchs in many cases has been hereditical, often building dynastic periods. However, elective and self-proclaimed monarchies have also happened. Aristocrats, though not inherent to monarchies, often serve as the pool of persons to draw the monarch from and fill the constituting institutions (e.g. diet and court), giving many monarchies oligarchic elements."

They might also think of a male-dominated kingdom, which Plato says that the Republic would not be (specifically saying at one point that women would be allowed to be part of all parts of the Republic). While the titles of the Republic are not discussed, I am not sure there would be any outside of the customary philosopher king, which could hardly be considered a king as is typically thought.

The only argument that I can think of for calling it a monarchy would be that the person at the top is called the "philosopher king", but outside of naming conventions I'm not sure we could reliably call it a monarchy.

EDIT: In addition, I feel that the philosopher king ruling for life (which might not be totally correct, I cannot remember currently) may not be a great argument for it being a monarchy either. Individuals can lead countries for life without the nation being a monarchy, like with the title of "dictator" in Rome it would probably be used as a distinct title in the Republic (if being used as a title at all, which may be too much of an incentive similar to land and gold). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdes11 (talk • contribs) 06:44, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Plato says that in the Republic the philosopher king, as well as the guardian class, would not be able to interact with gold (or money generally) nor own land. Neither would the soldier class. The only landowners would be in the lowest class (everyone else). So it doesn't fully adhere to the connotation of the word "monarchy" (and even less to the denotation I think).

The philosopher kings/leadership wouldnt follow Wikipedia's given definition of a monarchy, so I think that the term should maybe be replaced so that readers are not misled from the claims of Plato's Republic. Its important that people have a better understanding of these I think, maybe create an article describing the philosopher's republic as described by Plato in Republic (as well as Timaeus slightly) if there isn't one already, and if there is perhaps we should link it here instead of monarchy.

edited again because I made some misspellings and formatting errors

Fdes11 (talk) 04:41, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Maybe aristocracy could be another working description of what he advocates for? It's what is used in the actual article of Plato's Republic. I am not sure of that either though. frank (talk) 00:05, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Information Literacy and Scholarly Discourse

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 June 2023 and 26 July 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lemonsc27 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Chorton2233 (talk) 17:04, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Introduction to social and political philosophy

Meaning,types and important 105.113.41.38 (talk) 12:14, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Removal of the last section.

It may be best to omit the last section, as it appears somewhat disjointed. The "list of political philosophers" link alone is adequate. StarkReport (talk) 01:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I have incorporated the information in the list into the article. Trakking (talk) 09:13, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for integrating the list's content into the body. The article feels more cohesive and reads much better now. StarkReport (talk) 14:19, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Changes to the article

I was thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. Major parts of the article are currently unreferenced. Additionally, the article has the maintenance tags 1x excessive quote and 4x citation needed.

In its current form, the article's title should be "History of political philosophy" rather than "Political philosophy": the readable prose size of the history section is over ten times as long as the readable prose size of the rest combined. We are in a curious situation where this history section is almost three times as long as the corresponding history article, which it is supposed to summarize (see WP:SUMMARYSTYLE). A better approach would be to move all the historical details to the history article and leave only a concise summary here. This would leave more space here to discuss other issues, such as the definition of political philosophy and its relation to similar fields (like ethics, political science, and social philosophy). This could also cover the relation to political theory: various reliable sources claim that it is a distinct field, so we can't simply state as an uncontested fact that it is a synonym.

Overview sources often discuss basic concepts (like justice, equality, liberty, rights, authority, political obligation, and legitimacy), which would also be good here. There could be one section dedicated to the main schools of thought and ideologies (such as liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, anarchism, totalitarianism, individualism, and communitarianism). Another prominent topic in overview sources is methodology, which should probably get either a section or a subsection.

There are more things to consider, but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:27, 5 April 2025 (UTC)