History of political thought
The political philosophy of thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are traditionally elevated as exceptionally important and influential in such works.
[11][12] From around 770 BCE, China began to experience a time of peace and prosperity, which allowed the rise of the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought, the most influential of which was that of Confucius.
[13] His thinking was firmly based in traditional Chinese worldview, which saw the values of loyalty, duty, and respect as paramount.
[14] However, Confucius also believed the state should employ a meritocratic class of administrators and advisers, recruited by civil service exams.
[15] Among later Chinese thinkers, Mozi agreed with his ideas of meritocracy and leading by example, but opposed the family-model of governance with the belief that it would be nepotistic.
[16] An alternative Chinese philosophy called Legalism argued that instead of virtue, authoritarian discipline was crucial for the governance of the state.
The main change that Christianity wrought was to moderate the Stoicism and theory of justice of the Roman world, and emphasize the role of the state in applying mercy as a moral example.
The political conceptions of Islam such as kudrah, sultan, ummah, simaa -and even the "core" terms of the Qur'an, i.e. ibada, din, rab and ilah- is taken as the basis of an analysis.
The British philosopher-anthropologist Ernest Gellner considered Ibn Khaldun's definition of government, "an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself", the best in the history of political theory.
That work, as well as The Discourses, a rigorous analysis of the classical period, did much to influence modern political thought in the West.
Thomas Hobbes, well known for his theory of the social contract, goes on to expand this view at the start of the 17th century during the English Renaissance.
In it Locke proposes a state-of-nature theory that directly complements his conception of how political development occurs and how it can be founded through contractual obligation.
During the Enlightenment period, new theories about what the human was and is and about the definition of reality and the way it was perceived, along with the discovery of other societies in the Americas, and the changing needs of political societies (especially in the wake of the English Civil War, the American Revolution and the French Revolution) led to new questions and insights by such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu and John Locke.
[citation needed] Political and economic relations were drastically influenced by these theories as the concept of the guild was subordinated to the theory of free trade, and Roman Catholic dominance of theology was increasingly challenged by Protestant churches subordinate to each nation-state, which also (in a fashion the Roman Catholic Church often decried angrily) preached in the vulgar or native language of each region.
Under Joseph Stalin these ideas would be further developed into Marxism-Leninism and put into practice in the Soviet Union and later the Eastern Bloc.
