The Promise of Politics
10 best books like The Promise of Politics (Hannah Arendt): Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, Simone Weil: An Anthology, History of Political Philosophy, A Study on Authority, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, Philosophical Explanations, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, The Politics of Truth, The Return of the Political, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too
| Author | Michael Walzer |
| ISBN | 0465081894 |
Spheres of Justice represents Walzer’s half of a debate with Robert Nozick. (Nozick’s side of the debate is found in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which was also written as a response to Rawls’s Theory of Justice. Nozick defends a libertarian ideal of minimal government and a laissez-faire...
| Author | Simone Weil |
| ISBN | 0802137296 |
Philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist, political activist -- Simone Weil was among the foremost thinkers of our time. Best known in this country for her theological writing, Weil wrote on a great variety of subjects ranging from classical philosophy and poetry, to modern labor, to the language...
| Author | Leo Strauss |
| ISBN | 0226777103 |
I actually read this entire book from cover-to-cover.
For fun.
Because i felt somebody really ought to.
I'm of the opinion that anyone who wishes to truly understand a subject must diligently study not merely the superficial aspects of that subject, but also the subtle and...
| Author | Herbert Marcuse |
| ISBN | 1844672093 |
The great theorist of radical liberation analyzes the relationship between authority and freedom.
This is the first paperback edition of what is now recognized as Marcuse’s most important collection of writings on philosophy. He analyzes and attacks some of the main intellectual currents...
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....
| Author | Robert Nozick |
| ISBN | 0674664795 |
In this highly original work, Robert Nozick develops new views on philosophy's central topics and weaves them into a unified philosophical perspective. It is many years since a major work in English has ranged so widely over philosophy's fundamental concerns: the identity of the self, knowledge...
| Author | Elisabeth Young-Bruehl |
| ISBN | 0300030991 |
Though she chose philosophy, her early poems are quite good. It's interesting that Arendt was a student of the 2 greatest German philosophers of that time, Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger and participated in discussions that helped form their most influential work. I hadn't realized the French...
| Author | Michel Foucault |
| ISBN | 1584350393 |
In 1784, the German newspaper Berlinische Monatsschrift asked its audience to reply to the question "What is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant took the opportunity to investigate the purported truths and assumptions of his age. Two hundred years later, Michel Foucault wrote a response to Kant's initial...
| Author | Chantal Mouffe |
| ISBN | 1844670570 |
A powerful new understanding of citizenship, democracy and pluralism.
In this work, Mouffe argues that liberal democracy misunderstands the problems of ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts because of its inadequate conception of politics. She suggests that the democratic revolution...
There's No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too
| Author | Stanley Fish |
| ISBN | 0195093836 |
In an era when much of what passes for debate is merely moral posturing--traditional family values versus the cultural elite, free speech versus censorship--or reflexive name-calling--the terms "liberal" and "politically correct," are used with as much dismissive scorn by the right as "reactionary"...
Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law
| Author | Martha C. Nussbaum |
| ISBN | 0691126259 |
Should laws about sex and pornography be based on social conventions about what is disgusting? Should felons be required to display bumper stickers or wear T-shirts that announce their crimes? This powerful and elegantly written book, by one of America's most influential philosophers, presents...
| Author | Richard M. Rorty |
| ISBN | 0816610649 |
Rorty seeks to tie philosophy’s past to its future by connecting what he sees as the positive (and neglected) contributions of the American pragmatic philosophers to contemporary European developments. What emerges from his explorations is a revivified version of pragmatism that offers new...
Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752
| Author | Jonathan I. Israel |
| ISBN | 0199279225 |
Jonathan Israel presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in the best-selling Radical Enlightenment, and now focusing his attention on the first half of the eighteenth century, he returns to the original sources to offer a...
| Author | Julia Kristeva |
| ISBN | 0231121024 |
Twenty-five years after her death, we are still coming to terms with the controversial figure of Hannah Arendt. Interlacing the life and work of this seminal twentieth-century philosopher, Julia Kristeva provides us with an elegant, sophisticated biography brimming with historical and philosophical...
| Author | Jürgen Habermas |
| ISBN | 0807015415 |
For those concerned with the relationships between thought and action, Knowledge and Human Interests will quickly be recognized as a brilliant book -- and a bold outline for a new social theory.
"…this book is rich in suggestions for a new theory of knowledge that would take into account...
| Author | Isaiah Berlin |
| ISBN | 0691090262 |
In this outstanding collection of essays, Isaiah Berlin, one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, discusses the importance in the history of thought of dissenters whose ideas still challenge conventional wisdom--among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen, and Sorel. With his...
| Author | Sheldon S. Wolin |
| ISBN | 0691126275 |
This is a significantly expanded edition of one of the greatest works of modern political theory. Sheldon Wolin's Politics and Vision inspired and instructed two generations of political theorists after its appearance in 1960. This new edition retains intact the original ten chapters about political...
| Author | Michael Curtis |
| ISBN | 0380007851 |
The philosophy of politics
As an introduction to political theory and science, this collection of writings by the great philosophers will be of close interest to general readers. It also forms a basic textbook for students of government and political theory. Such fundamental concepts as...
| Author | Linda Hutcheon |
| ISBN | 0415007062 |
I absolutely love both of Hutcheon's books I've read so far, in fact I keep returning to A Theory of Parody throughout my own work. But A Poetics of Postmodernism has a broader focus and will almost certainly become my go-to text for Hutcheon references in future.
Essentially Hutcheon's argument...
| Author | Stanley Cavell |
| ISBN | 0521529190 |
Cavell is really one of the legends in philosophy of language, and really underappreciated by those who are outside of the sub-discipline. Because so much of the 20th century analytic literature is about language, even when it's not the direct object of study, reading Cavell is really useful for understanding...
