By era
Early modern
17 entries
Absolute Monarchy
The doctrine that legitimate political power should be concentrated, whole and unchecked, in a single hereditary monarch.
11 min
IdeologyCapitalism
An economic system in which capital is privately owned and deployed for profit, and markets, not planners, coordinate what gets produced.
13 min
IdeologyConstitutional Monarchy
A monarch reigns as head of state within limits fixed by a constitution, while real power rests with an elected government.
11 min
Mental modelExpected Value
The value of an uncertain prospect is each possible outcome multiplied by its probability, all added together: the long-run average of the gamble.
8 min
ThinkerJohn Locke
The philosopher who grounded government in consent and individual rights, shaping the liberal tradition more than any other single thinker.
10 min
IdeologyMercantilism
The early-modern doctrine that a nation grows rich by hoarding gold and silver through trade surpluses, protected tariffs, and state-chartered monopolies.
11 min
ConceptNatural Rights
The claim that certain rights belong to every person by nature, prior to any government or law.
7 min
ConceptRationalism and Empiricism
The early-modern quarrel over where knowledge comes from: reason and innate structure, or the senses and experience.
10 min
ThinkerRené Descartes
The philosopher who tried to rebuild all knowledge from a single unshakable point, and found it in the one thing doubt could not touch: the doubter.
12 min
ConceptSovereignty
Sovereignty is the claim that some authority within a territory has the final and supreme power to make, enforce, and adjudicate law, answerable to no higher earthly power.
7 min
ConceptThe Balance of Power
States tend to align against whoever is getting too strong, because no one wants to live at the mercy of a single dominant power.
10 min
IdeologyThe Divine Right of Kings
The claim that a king's authority comes straight from God, so he answers to God alone and to no earthly power.
11 min
ConceptThe Labor Theory of Value
The claim that the economic value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labor required to produce it.
7 min
ConceptThe Leviathan
A commonwealth so powerful that it can overawe all its members, created by their own agreement because the alternative is a war of all against all.
7 min
ConceptThe Social Contract
The idea that political authority is legitimate only because the governed would, or do, agree to it.
11 min
ConceptThe State of Nature
A hypothetical condition before government existed, used to ask what justifies political authority at all.
7 min
ThinkerThomas Hobbes
He argued that without a sovereign power holding absolute authority, human life would collapse into a war of all against all.
9 min