Thinking is a mental process which allows humans to model the world, philosophy is the attempt to understand the world using logic and reason. The world being both the external and the internal, and both the knowable and unknowable.
For an overview of philosophy see our branches of philosophy page, for an introduction to philosophy check out Reason at Work (Amazon). Philosophy includes everything from economic and political philosophies, to the philosophies of emotions and mind, to cosmological and other other metaphysical questions, to the nature of god and religion, to the very nature of what we can know. Given that every subject has a science and philosophy (with the two often merging, such is the case in theoretical physics or mathematics) we have to be careful not to undervalue the practical aspects of this non-science.
Stability isn’t necessarily destabilizing, but as Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis eludes: longterm stability breeds instability and diminishes resilience in economic markets, mainly due to psychological factors.
Extreme equality and an extreme inequality are both equally as dangerous in a democratic society. In both cases it corrupts the government.
As James Madison said when discussing special interest factions and liberty in the Federalist #10, “Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires”.
The four “elements” (or “powers”) that form the foundation of government can roughly be expressed as: citizens, executive, legislative, and judicial.
All collectives are comprised of individuals, and all individuals comprise collectives; thus we can never fully consider collectives without considering individuals, or vice versa.
We often attribute the origin of the state of nature argument to Hobbes, but it can be traced to thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and the Sophists in the 300s BC, and is then mused on by other early philosophers.
Historically, Protestantism is like classical liberalism (individual liberties and rights) and Catholicism is like social liberalism (state enforced social justice).
The state of nature is the state humans lived in before forming the first societies. By examining the state of nature we can better understand the implicit and explicit social contracts which govern societies.
Different types of government can be said to be based on a number of attributes like power source, power structure, and economic system.
Politics can be treated as a science (political science), but it must always seek data that can be confirmed by our senses (empirical evidence).