The work of the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1926–84) has implications for political philosophy even though it does not directly address the traditional issues of the field. Much of Foucault’s writing is not so much philosophy as it is philosophically informed intellectual history. Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical (1963; The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception), for example, examines the notion of illness and the beginnings of modern medicine in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (1975; Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison) studies the origins of the practice of punishing criminals by imprisonment.

One of Foucault’s aims was to undermine the notion that the emergence of modern political liberalism and its characteristic institutions (e.g., individual rights and representative democracy) in the late 18th century resulted in greater freedom for the individual. He argued to the contrary that modern liberal societies are oppressive, though the oppressive practices they employ are not as overt as in earlier times. Modern forms of oppression tend to be hard to recognize as such, because they are justified by ostensibly objective and impartial branches of social science. In a process that Foucault called “normalization,” a supposedly objective social science labels as “normal” or “rational” behaviour that society deems respectable or desirable, so behaviour deemed otherwise becomes abnormal or irrational and a legitimate object of discipline or coercion. Behaviour that is perceived as odd, for example, may be classified as a symptom of mental illness. Foucault viewed modern bureaucratic institutions as exuding a spirit of rationality, scientific expertise, and humane concern but as really amounting to an arbitrary exercise of power by one group over another.

Foucault advocated resistance to the political status quo and the power of established institutions. But he was skeptical of any attempt to argue that one political regime or set of practices is morally superior to another. The use of rational argument to support or oppose a political view, according to Foucault, is merely another attempt to exercise arbitrary power over others. Accordingly, he eschewed any blueprint for political reform or any explicit articulation of moral or rational norms that society ought to uphold. In a 1983 interview he summarized his political attitude in these words:

My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism.

Foucault’s ideas gave rise in the 1970s and ’80s to philosophical postmodernism, a movement characterized by broad epistemological skepticism and ethical subjectivism, a general suspicion of reason, and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power. Postmodernists attacked the attempt by Enlightenment philosophers and others to discover allegedly objective moral values that could serve as a standard for assessing different political systems or for measuring political progress from one historical period to another. According to Jean-François Lyotard (1924–98), for example, this project represents a secular faith that must be abandoned. In La Condition postmoderne (1979; The Postmodern Condition) and other writings, Lyotard declared his suspicion of what he called “grand narratives”—putatively rational, overarching accounts, such as Marxism and liberalism, of how the world is or ought to be. He asserted that political conflicts in contemporary societies reflect the clash of incommensurable values and perspectives and are therefore not rationally decidable.

A skepticism of a more thoroughgoing and exuberant kind was expressed in the writings of Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). He maintained that any attempt to establish a conclusion by rational means ultimately “deconstructs,” or logically undermines, itself. Because any text can be interpreted in an indefinite number of ways, the search for the “correct” interpretation of a text is always hopeless. Moreover, because everything in the world is a “text,” it is impossible to assert anything as objectively “true.”

Feminism and sexual equality

Hatred and hostility based on racial, ethnic, tribal, and other group divisions gave rise to some of the worst catastrophes of 20th-century history. Political philosophers responded to these developments in diverse ways. Perhaps the most innovative philosophical response to social and political oppression was developed by contemporary feminists seeking to address the domination of women by men.

One interesting account of sexual equality and the obstacles to attaining it emerged in the work of the American feminist legal theorist Catharine A. MacKinnon. She asserted that the struggle to overcome male domination is faced with a deeply entrenched adversary: sexual desire between heterosexual women and men. The subjugation of women in society strongly influences conventional standards of femininity and masculinity, which in turn determine what heterosexual individuals find attractive in the opposite sex. Thus, according to MacKinnon, heterosexual women tend to find dominant men sexually attractive, while heterosexual men tend to find submissive women sexually attractive. The latter is the stronger and more important dynamic, since men as a group are politically, economically, and socially more powerful than women. The upshot is that the ordinary and widespread sexual attraction between heterosexual women and men is corrupted by a kind of sadism. The struggle for equal rights and equal power for women is opposed not only by laws, institutions, and practices but also by sexual desire itself. Given this analysis, the legal and cultural tolerance of pornography, which makes the subordination of women sexually appealing to men, is immoral. Pornography serves only to perpetuate a regime of sex-based domination that any decent society should reject.

Contemporary questions

The history of Western political philosophy from Plato to the present day makes plain that the discipline is still faced with the basic problems defined by the Greeks. The need to redeploy public power in order to maintain the survival and enhance the quality of human life, for example, has never been so essential. And, if the opportunities for promoting well-being are now far greater, the penalties for the abuse of power are nothing less than the destruction or gross degradation of all life on the planet.

From another perspective, however, the political problems of the present day are interestingly unique, giving rise to theoretical questions that earlier political philosophers did not have to confront. Two contrasting features of the world in the early 21st century, for example, are the increasing integration of national political and economic systems (see also cultural globalization) and the continuing gross inequality of wealth between developed and less-developed, or underdeveloped, countries. Both features suggest the desirability, even the necessity, of developing political philosophy in order to make it more applicable in a global context. Such considerations have led the Indian economist Amartya Sen and the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum to explore the possibility of a “global” theory of justice. Nussbaum has argued that every inhabitant of the globe is entitled to the conditions that enable one to attain a decent and objectively worthwhile and valuable quality of life. Other philosophers have argued for the justice or necessity of a single world government or of forms of government other than the nation-state.

The advent of nuclear weapons in the mid-20th century increased interest in traditional just-war theory, especially as it applies to the issue of the proportional use of force. Later in the century, the proliferation not only of nuclear but also of chemical and biological weapons made the application of just-war theory to the contemporary scene seem all the more urgent. In the view of some thinkers, the increasing menace of international terrorism in the early 21st century has changed the scope and conditions of justly prosecuted wars, though others vehemently disagree. The nature of terrorism has itself become a philosophically debated question, some philosophers going so far as to assert that terrorism is justified in some real-world circumstances.

The adoption by many countries of liberal-democratic forms of government in the second half of the 20th century, especially after the fall of Soviet and eastern European communism in 1989–91, led some political theorists to speculate that the liberal model of government has been vindicated by history or even (as Francis Fukuyama asserted) that it represents the “end” of history—the culmination of the millennia-long political development of humankind. Be that as it may, many theorists, confident of the basic viability of liberalism, have taken the view that the most important questions of political theory have been settled in liberalism’s favour, and all that remains is to work out the details.

Others are not so convinced. One issue that continues to be troublesome for liberalism is its traditional posture of benevolent neutrality toward religion. Some liberal theorists have proposed that this posture should be extended to all disputed questions concerning what constitutes a good life. Yet millions of people around the world, even in the West, continue to reject the separation of church and state, and millions of others have objected to state policies that allow the pursuit of conceptions of the good life with which they disagree. In these respects, liberalism may be out of sync (rightly or wrongly) with the political aspirations of much of the world’s population.

All this suggests a rather homely conclusion: the future direction of political philosophy, like that of political practice, is uncertain. If anything is likely, it is that there will be much for political philosophers to think about.