The Discourses & Other Early Political Writings (Texts in the History of Political Thought)
10 best books like The Discourses & Other Early Political Writings (Texts in the History of Political Thought) (Jean-Jacques Rousseau): The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays, Selected Philosophical Writings, The Portable Machiavelli, German Ideology, The Political Writings of St. Augustine, On the Citizen, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Political Writings (Texts in the History of Political Thought), Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, The Fable of the Bees and Other Writings
The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays
| Author | Percy Bysshe Shelley |
| ISBN | 0879757744 |
The great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), best known for such masterpieces as "Ode to the West Wind" and "Prometheus Unbound," also expressed his ideas on religious oppression in works of impassioned prose.
The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays features five anti-religious...
| Author | Thomas Aquinas |
| ISBN | 0192835858 |
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) saw religion as part of the natural human propensity to worship. His ability to recognize the naturalness of this phenomenon and simultaneously to go beyond i - to explore, for example, spiritual revelation - makes his work as fresh and readable today as it was seven centuries...
| Author | Niccolò Machiavelli |
| ISBN | 0140150927 |
Edited and translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa, "The Portable Machiavelli" not only gives the casual reader a chance to read different personal and professional works of Machiavelli, but also strives to do away with many of the myths that have plagued the man's posthumous fame. For example,...
| Author | Karl Marx |
| ISBN | 0717803015 |
2011 Reprint of 1939 Edition. Parts I & III of "The German Ideology". Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Originally published by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in 1939. "The German Ideology" was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
| Author | Augustine of Hippo |
| ISBN | 0895267047 |
Anyone with a better than cursory knowledge of politics knows that a people's deepest values - their religious values - are what determine whether a society will prosper or fail. And anyone with a more than cursory knowledge of history knows that there was once an entity called Christendom - a political...
| Author | Thomas Hobbes |
| ISBN | 0521437806 |
De Cive (On the Citizen) is the first full exposition of the political thought of Thomas Hobbes, the greatest English political philosopher. Professors Tuck and Silverthorne have undertaken the first complete translation since 1651, a rendition long thought (in error) to have been at least sanctioned...
| Author | J.G.A. Pocock |
| ISBN | 0691114722 |
The Machiavellian Moment is a classic study of the consequences for modern historical and social consciousness of the ideal of the classical republic revived by Machiavelli and other thinkers of Renaissance Italy. J.G.A. Pocock suggests that Machiavelli's prime emphasis was on the moment in which...
| Author | Immanuel Kant |
| ISBN | 0521398371 |
The original edition of Kant: Political Writings was first published in 1970, and has long been established as the principal English-language edition of this important body of writing. In this new, expanded edition two important texts illustrating Kant's view of history are included for the first...
| Author | Jacques Derrida |
| ISBN | 0804749515 |
Rogues, published in France under the title Voyous, comprises two major lectures that Derrida delivered in 2002 investigating the foundations of the sovereignty of the nation-state. The term "État voyou" is the French equivalent of "rogue state," and it is this outlaw designation of certain countries...
| Author | Bernard Mandeville |
| ISBN | 0872203743 |
This edition includes, in addition to the most pertinent sections of The Fable's two volumes, a selection from Mandeville's An Enquiry into the Origin of Honor and selections from two of Mandeville’s most important sources: Pierre Bayle and the Jansenist Pierre Nicole. Hundert's Introduction...
| Author | Marcus Tullius Cicero |
| ISBN | 0192832662 |
Cicero (106-43 BC) was the greatest orator of the ancient world and a leading politician of the closing era of the Roman republic. This book presents with nine of his speeches that reflect the development, variety, and drama of his political career. Among them are two speeches from his prosecution of...
| Author | John Ralston Saul |
| ISBN | 0743236602 |
This is a damned interesting and amusing book.
It's a dictionary in the same vein as Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. It ruminates on the meaning of words and phrases rather than sets the meaning in stone. The author makes it very clear that this is his opinion and not The Truth.
Here's...
The Portable Edmund Burke
| Author | Edmund Burke |
| ISBN | 0140267603 |
The intellectual wellspring of modern political conservatism, Edmund Burke is also considered a significant figure in aesthetic theory and cultural studies. As a member of the House of Commons during the late eighteenth century, Burke shook Parliament with his powerful defense of the American...
Rawls does an excellent job of explaining the core philosophers of western liberalism along with critiques by Marx and to a lesser extent Rousseau. Even thought I was familiar with each of these thinkers, Rawls helped me gain a firm grasp on each along with an understanding of the development of liberalism....
The Limits of State Action
| Author | Wilhelm von Humboldt |
| ISBN | 0865971099 |
The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument . . . unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.
This description by Wilhelm von Humboldt of his purpose in writing
The Limits of State Action
...
| Author | John Stuart Mill |
| ISBN | 0521379172 |
Mill's tract, published in 1859, remains one of the most important and influential of all writings on "Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be exercised by society over the individual" (5). Mill attempts to define those limits as narrowly as possible, and leave as much...
| Author | Joseph de Maistre |
| ISBN | 0521466288 |
A work of powerful style, but like most 19th century conservatism, mainly rethorical. It is no wonder that they lost the cultural battle. It may be my just autism, but systems are the best thing in philosophy and are necessary if one wants to be the backbone of a consistent movement.
That said, de Maistre...
| Author | Harry G. Frankfurt |
| ISBN | 0521336112 |
Of one thing there's no doubt: Fankfurt is a smart dude. His essays are crisp, clear, and relevant - at least, as relevant as one can reasonably expect a collection of philosophical essays to be.
Don't get me wrong: this is not an easy read. "The Importance of What We Care About" tackles some difficult...
| Author | Plato |
| ISBN | 0521442621 |
The Statesman is Plato's neglected political work, but it is crucial for an understanding of the development of his political thinking. It continues themes from the Republic, particularly the importance of knowledge as entitlement to rule. But there are also changes: Plato has altered his view of...
| Author | John Locke |
| ISBN | 0300100183 |
Among the most influential writings in the history of Western political thought, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration remain vital to political debates today, more than three centuries after they were written. The complete texts appear in this volume, accompanied...
| Author | Seyla Benhabib |
| ISBN | 0521831342 |
This book explores the tension between universal principles of human rights and the self-determination claims of sovereign states as they affect the claims of refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants. Drawing on the work of Kant's "cosmopolitan doctrine" and positions developed by Hannah Arendt,...
| Author | Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
| ISBN | 0521348889 |
This book is a translation of a classic work of modern social and political thought, Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Hegel's last major published work, is an attempt to systematize ethical theory, natural right, the philosophy of law, political theory and the sociology of the modern state into...
