Social philosophy

Branch of philosophy

Social philosophy examines questions about the foundations of social institutions, behavior, power structures, and interpretations of society in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations.[1] Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social contexts for political, legal, moral and cultural questions, and the development of novel theoretical frameworks, from social ontology to care ethics to cosmopolitan theories of democracy, natural law, human rights, gender equity and global justice.[2]

## Subdisciplines

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There is often a considerable overlap between the questions addressed by social philosophy and ethics or value theory. Other forms of social philosophy include political philosophy and jurisprudence, which are largely concerned with the societies of state and government and their functioning.

Social philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy all share intimate connections with other disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. In turn, the social sciences themselves are of focal interest to the philosophy of social science.

Social philosophy is broadly interdisciplinary, looking at all of phenomenology, epistemology, and philosophy of language from a sociological perspective; phenomenological sociology, social epistemology and sociology of language respectively.[3][4]

## Relevant issues

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Some social philosophy is concerned with identity, and defining strata that categorize society, for example race and gender. Other social philosophy examines agency and free will, and whether people socialized in a particular way are accountable for their actions.[5]

It also looks at the concepts of property, rights, and authority, examining actions in terms of both ethical values and their wider social effect; it applies situational ethics to broader political concepts.

Sociology of language considers communication in the context of social relations, for example speech acts or performative utterances are social actions in themselves.

Other relevant issues considered by social philosophy are:

* The will to power
* Modernism postmodernism
* Cultural criticism

## Social philosophies

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See also: List of political ideologies

* Communitarianism
* Conflict theory
* Conservatism
* Critical theory
* Individualism
* Positivism
* Progressivism
* Structural functionalism
* Social constructionism
* Symbolic interactionism

## Social philosophers

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A list of philosophers that have concerned themselves, although most of them not exclusively, with social philosophy:

* Theodor Adorno
* Giorgio Agamben
* Hannah Arendt
* Alain Badiou
* Mikhail Bakunin
* Jean Baudrillard
* Walter Benjamin
* Jeremy Bentham
* Edmund Burke
* Judith Butler
* Thomas Carlyle
* Chanakya
* Cornelius Castoriadis
* Noam Chomsky
* Confucius
* Simone de Beauvoir
* Guy Debord
* Émile Durkheim
* Terry Eagleton
* Friedrich Engels
* Julius Evola
* Michel Foucault
* Sigmund Freud
* Erich Fromm
* Giovanni Gentile
* Henry George
* Erving Goffman
* Jürgen Habermas
* G. W. F. Hegel
* Martin Heidegger
* Thomas Hobbes
* Max Horkheimer
* Ivan Illich
* Carl Jung
* Ibn Khaldun
* Peter Kropotkin
* Jacques Lacan
* R. D. Laing
* Henri Lefebvre
* Emmanuel Levinas
* John Locke
* Georg Lukács
* Herbert Marcuse
* Karl Marx
* Marshall McLuhan
* John Stuart Mill
* Huey P. Newton
* Friedrich Nietzsche
* Michael Oakeshott
* Antonie Pannekoek
* Plato
* Karl Popper
* Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
* John Rawls
* Wilhelm Röpke
* Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* John Ruskin
* Bertrand Russell
* Jean-Paul Sartre
* Alfred Schmidt
* Arthur Schopenhauer
* Roger Scruton
* Socrates
* Pitirim A. Sorokin
* Thomas Sowell
* Herbert Spencer
* Oswald Spengler
* Charles Taylor
* Alexis de Tocqueville
* Max Weber
* John Zerzan
* Slavoj Žižek

## See also

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* Outline of sociology
* Social simulation
* Social theory
* Sociological theory
* Sociology
* Critical theory
* Feminist theory
* Critical race theory

## References

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1. ^ "Definition of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY".
2. ^ "Overview - Journal of Social Philosophy - Wiley Online Library". onlinelibrary.wiley.com.
3. ^ "Social Philosophy". www.sheffield.ac.uk. 2023-12-14. Retrieved 2024-04-13.
4. ^ "Social Philosophy". Cavite State University Main Campus.
5. ^ "What is social philosophy? - The University of Nottingham". www.nottingham.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-04-13.

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Social philosophy

Concepts|

* Agency
* Anomie
* Convention
* Cosmopolitanism
* Customs
* Cultural heritage
* Culturalism
* Inter
* Mono
* Multi
* Culture
* Counter
* Familialism
* History
* Honour
* Human nature
* Identity
* Formation
* Ideology
* Institutions
* Invisible hand
* Loyalty
* Modernity
* Morality
* Public
* Mores
* National character
* Natural law
* Reification
* Ressentiment
* Rights
* Sittlichkeit
* Social alienation
* Social norms
* Spontaneous order
* Stewardship
* Traditions
* Values
* Family
* Volksgeist
* Worldview

Schools|

* Budapest School
* Catholic social teaching
* Distributism
* Communitarianism
* Confucianism
* Conservatism
* Social
* Frankfurt School
* Personalism

Philosophers|

| Ancient|

* Augustine
* Cicero
* Confucius
* Lactantius
* Laozi
* Mencius
* Mozi
* Origen
* Philo
* Plato
* Plutarch
* Polybius
* Tertullian
* Thucydides
* Xunzi

|

Medieval|

* Alpharabius
* Aquinas
* Avempace
* Bruni
* Dante
* Gelasius
* Ibn Khaldun
* Maimonides
* Muhammad
* Photios
* Plethon
* Ibn Tufayl

Early modern|

* Calvin
* Erasmus
* Guicciardini
* Locke
* Luther
* Milton
* Montaigne
* Müntzer

18th and 19th
centuries|

* Arnold
* Bentham
* Bonald
* Burke
* Carlyle
* Comte
* Condorcet
* Emerson
* Engels
* Fichte
* Fourier
* Franklin
* Hegel
* Helvétius
* Herder
* Hume
* Jefferson
* Kant
* Kierkegaard
* Le Bon
* Le Play
* Marx
* Mill
* Nietzsche
* Owen
* Renan
* Rousseau
* Royce
* Ruskin
* Smith
* Spencer
* de Staël
* Stirner
* Taine
* Thoreau
* Tocqueville
* Vico
* Vivekananda
* Voltaire

20th and 21st
centuries|

* Adorno
* Agamben
* Arendt
* Aron
* Badiou
* Baudrillard
* Bauman
* Benoist
* Berlin
* Butler
* Camus
* de Beauvoir
* Debord
* Deleuze
* Dewey
* Du Bois
* Durkheim
* Eco
* Evola
* Foucault
* Fromm
* Gandhi
* Gehlen
* Gentile
* Gramsci
* Guénon
* Habermas
* Han
* Heidegger
* Hoppe
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* Kirk
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* Kropotkin
* Land
* Lasch
* MacIntyre
* Marcuse
* Maritain
* Negri
* Niebuhr
* Nussbaum
* Oakeshott
* Ortega
* Pareto
* Polanyi
* Radhakrishnan
* Röpke
* Santayana
* Scruton
* Shariati
* Simmel
* Skinner
* Sombart
* Sowell
* Spengler
* Taylor
* Voegelin
* Walzer
* Weber
* Weil
* Zinn
* Žižek

Works|

* De Officiis (44 BC)
* Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)
* A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
* Democracy in America (1835–1840)
* Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
* The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)
* The Second Sex (1949)
* One-Dimensional Man (1964)
* The Society of the Spectacle (1967)
* The History of Sexuality (1976)
* The Culture of Narcissism (1979)
* A Conflict of Visions (1987)
* The Closing of the American Mind (1987)
* Gender Trouble (1990)
* The Malaise of Modernity (1991)
* Intellectuals and Society (2010)

See also|

* Agnotology
* Axiology
* Critical theory
* Cultural criticism
* Cultural pessimism
* Ethics
* Historism
* Historicism
* Humanities
* Philosophy of culture
* Philosophy of education
* Philosophy of history
* Political philosophy
* Social criticism
* Social science
* Social theory
* Sociology

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Ethics

Normative|

* Consequentialism
* Deontology
* Care
* Particularism
* Pragmatic
* Role
* Suffering-focused
* Utilitarianism
* Virtue

Applied|

* Animal
* Artificial intelligence
* Bio
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* Media
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* Professional
* Programming
* Research
* Sexual
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* Terraforming
* Uncertain sentience

Meta|

* Absolutism
* Axiology
* Cognitivism
* Realism
* Naturalism
* Non-naturalism
* Subjectivism
* Ideal observer theory
* Divine command theory
* Constructivism
* Euthyphro dilemma
* Intuitionism
* Nihilism
* Non-cognitivism
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* Value monism – Value pluralism

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Concepts|

* Authority
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* Honour
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* Morality
* Norm
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* Anscombe
* Frankena
* MacIntyre
* Hare
* Singer
* Parfit
* Nagel
* Adams
* Taylor
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* Korsgaard
* Nussbaum

Works|

* Nicomachean Ethics (c. 322 BC)
* Ethics (Spinoza) (1677)
* Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726)
* A Treatise of Human Nature (1740)
* The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
* An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780)
* Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
* Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
* Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820)
* Either/Or (1843)
* Utilitarianism (1861)
* The Methods of Ethics (1784)
* On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
* Principia Ethica (1903)
* A Theory of Justice (1971)
* Practical Ethics (1979)
* After Virtue (1981)
* Reasons and Persons (1984)
* What We Owe the Future (2022)

Related|

* Axiology
* Casuistry
* Descriptive ethics
* Ethics in religion
* Evolutionary ethics
* Fundamental rights
* History of ethics
* Human rights
* Ideology
* Moral psychology
* Moral universalism
* Pacifism
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* Philosophy of law
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* Torture
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Epistemology|

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Free will|

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Metaphysics|

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Mind|

* Behaviorism
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