Why Plato, Hobbes, and Marx are great-despite their argumentsPlato's Republic, Hobbes's Leviathan, and Marx's Communist Manifesto are universally acknowledged classics of Western political thought.
The English philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) is known as a conservative who rejected philosophically ambitious rationalism and the grand political ideologies of the twentieth century on the grounds that no human ideas have ultimately reliable foundations.
Examining the social and political upheavals that characterized the collapse of public judgment in early modern Europe, Liberating Judgment offers a unique account of the achievement of liberal democracy and self-government.
A powerful new argument for reviving the ideal of racial integrationMore than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
How happiness became mandatory-and why we should reject the demand to "e;be happy"e;Happiness today is not just a possibility or an option but a requirement and a duty.
Many contemporary political thinkers are gripped by the belief that their task is to develop an ideal theory of rights or justice for guiding and judging political actions.
Why the West must overcome its guilty conscience to foster a better global futureFascism, communism, genocide, slavery, racism, imperialism-the West has no shortage of reasons for guilt.
One of the world's most important political philosophers, Jon Elster is a leading thinker on reason and rationality and their roles in politics and public life.
A searching examination of the moral limits of political compromiseWhen is political compromise acceptable-and when is it fundamentally rotten, something we should never accept, come what may?
Scholars have long argued over whether the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended more than a century of religious conflict arising from the Protestant Reformations, inaugurated the modern sovereign-state system.
This is the first major work in English to explore at length the meaning, context, aims, and vital importance of Thomas Hobbes's concepts of the law of nature and the right of nature.
A leading historian reveals the radical origins of humanity's most cherished secular valuesDemocracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual and racial equality-these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948 U.
Machiavelli's Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "e;Machiavellian"e; maxim that the ends justify the means.
Hadley Arkes argues that it is necessary to move "e;beyond the Constitution,"e; to the principles that stood antecedent to the text, if we are to understand the text and apply the Constitution to the cases that arise every day in our law.
The Jewish Social Contract begins by asking how a traditional Jew can participate politically and socially and in good faith in a modern democratic society, and ends by proposing a broad, inclusive notion of secularity.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) is principally known today as a literary figure--the inventor of the modern essay and the pioneer of autobiographical self-exploration who retired from politics in midlife to write his private, philosophical, and apolitical Essais.
In light of many recent critiques of Western modernity and its conceptual foundations, the problem of adequately justifying our most basic moral and political values looms large.
Richard Ashcraft offers a new interpretation of the political thought of John Locke by viewing his ideas, especially those in the Two Treatises of Government, in the context of his political activity.
In Rousseau's Republican Romance, Elizabeth Wingrove combines political theory and narrative analysis to argue that Rousseau's stories of sex and sexuality offer important insights into the paradoxes of democratic consent.
How social and intellectual changes undermine our justifications for the welfare state The welfare state has come under severe pressure internationally, partly for the well-known reasons of slowing economic growth and declining confidence in the public sector.
Should "e;hate speech"e; be made a criminal offense, or does the First Amendment oblige Americans to permit the use of epithets directed against a person's race, religion, ethnic origin, gender, or sexual preference?
Liberalism, the founding philosophy of many constitutional democracies, has been criticized in recent years from both the left and the right for placing too much faith in individual rights and distributive justice.
The problem of trust in social relationships was central to the emergence of the modern form of civil society and much discussed by social and political philosophers of the early modern period.
In Corrupting Youth, Peter Euben explores the affinities between Socratic philosophy and Athenian democratic culture as a way to think about issues of politics and education, both ancient and modern.
This book seeks to explain why different systems of sovereign states have built different types of fundamental institutions to govern interstate relations.
John Stuart Mill is one of the hallowed figures of the liberal tradition, revered for his defense of liberal principles and expansive personal liberty.
How the insane asylum became a laboratory of democracy is revealed in this provocative look at the treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth-century France.
Post-modernism offers a revolutionary approach to the study of society: in questioning the validity of modern science and the notion of objective knowledge, this movement discards history, rejects humanism, and resists any truth claims.
A philosophical investigation into the connections between trust and violenceThe limiting of violence through state powers is one of the central projects of the modern age.
A bracingly provocative challenge to one of our most cherished ideas and institutionsMost people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government.
What a Confucian constitutional government might look like in China's political futureAs China continues to transform itself, many assume that the nation will eventually move beyond communism and adopt a Western-style democracy.
How secularism has been used to justify the subordination of womenJoan Wallach Scott's acclaimed and controversial writings have been foundational for the field of gender history.
The problem of trust in social relationships was central to the emergence of the modern form of civil society and much discussed by social and political philosophers of the early modern period.
