What We Are Reading Today: What Is Political Philosophy?

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Updated 27 July 2022
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What We Are Reading Today: What Is Political Philosophy?

Author: Charles Larmore

What is political philosophy? What are its fundamental problems? And how should it be distinguished from moral philosophy? In this book, Charles Larmore redefines the distinctive aims of political philosophy, reformulating in this light the basis of a liberal understanding of politics.

Because political life is characterized by deep and enduring conflict between rival interests and differing moral ideals, the core problems of political philosophy are the regulation of conflict and the conditions under which the members of society may thus be made subject to political authority.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Origins of the Just War

Updated 06 February 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: Origins of the Just War

“Origins of the Just War” reveals the incredible richness and complexity of ethical thought about war in the three millennia preceding the Greco-Roman period, establishing the extent to which ancient just war thought prefigured much of what we now consider to be the building blocks of the Western just war tradition. 

In this book, Rory Cox traces the earliest ideas concerning the complex relationship between war, ethics and justice. He shows that the history of the just war is considerably more ancient and geographically diffuse than previously assumed.