Chinese Political Thought. In many respects, the political thought of the Chinese resembled that of the Hindus rather than that of the other Oriental peoples. China was isolated, fairly free from warfare, and never united under a monarch powerful enough to crush freedom of thought and local independence. The worship of Heaven, the supreme deity, … Read more

Hindu Political Thought. India, with an area as extensive as Europe minus Russia, and with a large and diverse population, has had an active political history. The existence of autonomous oligarchic city-states is recorded in the earliest Hindu tradition. As early as the fourth century B.c. a Hindu empire was established which included a more … Read more

Oriental Political Thought. The Oriental empires Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia were prevented by the general conditions of their social environment from creating a systematic political philosophy. A simple and predominantly rural economic system, superstitious and inflexible religious dogmas, social classes crystallized into castes, and minute regulation of everyday life gave a fixity and sanctity … Read more

Primitive Political Ideas. From the earliest times men have had ideas concerning the external control to which they submitted their lives and actions. While our knowledge of early thought is scant, yet certain principles that primitive men believed to underlie their political institutions may be discovered by reasoning back from later periods, by investigating the … Read more

Value of Political Thought.Political theory has been accused not only of being barren in practical results but even of being fertile with disaster to actual politics. Burke said that one sure symptom of an ill-conducted state was the tendency of the people to revert to theories. Leslie Stephen believed that political philosophy was generally the … Read more

Sources of Our Knowledge of Political Thought. Knowledge concerning the political thought of the past must be drawn from many sources. The theory of the state at any given time was not a simple and unanimous set of principles. On some questions there was such a consensus of political opinion as to justify one in … Read more

Conservative and Critical Political Thought. Since political thought usually aims either to support or to attack existing political institutions and methods, it may be classified broadly as either conservative or critical. Theories of the conservative type arise from the attempts of men to explain and justify the political system under which they live and to … Read more

Problems of Political Thought. If an analysis be made of the questions with which political thought has been concerned, it is found that emphasis was placed at various periods upon widely different types of problems. In the medieval period controversy centered in the contest for supremacy between spiritual and temporal authorities; in the seventeenth and … Read more

Political Thought and Political Institutions. Political thought is the immanent philosophy of a whole age which determines its actions and shapes its life. There was abundant political thought in the middle Ages. The conflict between the church and the state; the relation of church to common people, learned persons, feudal landlords and students of educational … Read more

The origins of political thought are in ancient Rome and Greece. Starting in approximately 600 B.C.E, thinkers in these societies began to consider questions of how to organize societies, as part of their more broad considerations of how ethics and how to live the good life. Origin of Political Thought All living creatures except man … Read more