ABSTRACT

A History of Western Political Thought is an energetic and lucid account of the most important political thinkers and the enduring themes of the last two and a half millennia. Written with students of the history of political thought in mind, the book:
* traces the development of political thought from Ancient Greece to the late twentieth century
* focuses on individual thinkers and texts
* includes 40 biographies of key political thinkers
* offers original views of theorists and highlights those which may have been unjustly neglected
* develops the wider themes of political thought and the relations between thinkers over time.

part I|68 pages

The Greeks

chapter 1|14 pages

Ancient Greek Political Thought

chapter 2|14 pages

Socrates and Plato

chapter 3|20 pages

The Guardians of the State and Justice

chapter 4|18 pages

Aristotle and the Science of Politics

part II|58 pages

Romans and Roman Catholics

chapter 5|20 pages

From Polis to Cosmopolis

chapter 6|18 pages

Christian Cosmopolitanism

St Augustine's City of God

chapter 7|18 pages

Christendom and its Law

St Thomas Aquinas

part III|42 pages

Romans and Humanists: The Reinvention of Sovereignty

chapter 8|20 pages

The Reinvention of Sovereignty

Marsilius of Padua

chapter 9|20 pages

Machiavelli

The Prince and the Virtuous Republic

part IV|106 pages

The Theory of the Social Contract

chapter 11|38 pages

Social Contract I

The Hobbesian version

chapter 12|20 pages

Social Contract II

The Lockian version

chapter 13|26 pages

Social Contract III

The Rousseauist version

part V|150 pages

Enlightenment and the Development of the Modern State

chapter 14|18 pages

The Modernity of the Modern State

chapter 15|20 pages

The Politics of Enlightenment

chapter 16|24 pages

Enlightenment and Government Through Law

Montesquieu

chapter 17|62 pages

The American Enlightenment

Jefferson, Crèvecoeur, Hamilton, Jay, Madison, Paine

chapter 18|24 pages

The Limitations of Enlightenment

Hume and Burke

part VI|92 pages

The Rise of Liberalism

chapter 19|22 pages

The Rise of Liberalism

chapter 20|32 pages

Liberalism Comes of Age

Bentham and John Stuart Mill

chapter 21|36 pages

Liberalism in Maturity and Decline

Spencer, Sumner and Green

part VII|24 pages

Reactions to Liberalism 1: Hegel – The State and Dialectic

chapter 22|22 pages

Hegel and the Hegelian Context of Marxism

part VIII|72 pages

Reactions to Liberalism 2: Socialism

chapter 23|24 pages

Marxism and other Socialisms

chapter 24|18 pages

Social Democracy

Bernstein and Crosland

chapter 25|28 pages

The Synthesis of Jacobinism and Marxism–Bolshevism

Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin

part IX|182 pages

Reactions to Liberalism 3: Irrationalism and Anti-Rationalism

chapter 26|22 pages

The Moral Exclusiveness of Nationalism

Herder

chapter 27|22 pages

The Elitist Critique of Democracy

Pareto and Michels

chapter 28|24 pages

Liberalism's Special Enemies

The Crowd and its Theorists

chapter 29|28 pages

The Leader and his Crowd

Sigmund Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)

chapter 31|46 pages

Conservatism

Maurras and Oakeshott