The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy

The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy, Second Edition, is a comprehensive, definitive reference work, providing an up-to-date survey of the field, charting its history and key figures and movements, and addressing enduring questions as well as contemporary research. Features unique to the Companion are as follows:

• Extensive coverage of the history of social and political thought, including separate chapters on the development of political thought in the Islamic world, India, and China as well as in modern Germany, France, and Britain
• A focus on the core concepts and the normative foundations of social and political theory
• A section devoted exclusively to distributive justice, the central issue of political philosophy since Rawls’ Theory of Justice
• Several chapters on global justice and international issues.

The Companion’s 74 commissioned chapters, by leading scholars from throughout the world, are divided into eight thematic sections: The History of Social and Political Theory; Political Theories and Ideologies; Normative Foundations; Distributive Justice; The National State and Beyond; Political Concepts; Approaches; and Issues in Social and Political Philosophy.

Expanded, updated, and revised throughout, this Second Edition includes new chapters on Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE); Political Epistemology; Race and Ethnicity; Power; Foucault; and New Diversity Theory.

Gerald F. Gaus was, before his death in 2020, the James E. Rogers Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona and an intellectual giant in the field of political philosophy. The author of ten books and more than 100 papers, he was best known for his work in the public reason tradition. An obituary collaboratively written by his colleagues and former students noted that Gaus was interested in teaching us about ＂the complexities of our social world, rather than looking for opportunities to reinforce our biased ways of understanding it.＂

Fred D’Agostino is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at The University of Queensland (Australia) where he has been President of the Academic Board and Executive Dean of Arts. He was editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy and of PPE: Politics, Philosophy and Economics. His best known work is Free Public Reason (OUP, 1996) and he has worked in political philosophy and scientific method. His recent work has been on complexity and on the scholarly and scientific disciplines.

Ryan Muldoon is Professor of Philosophy and Director of PPE at the University at Buffalo. He is the author of Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World: Beyond Tolerance (Routledge, 2016). His work focuses on diversity and dynamism in liberal political philosophy.