Softcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st pbk., 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 643 pages. An illuminating reappraisal of Plato's later works, which reveals radical changes in his ethical and political theory. Christopher Bobonich argues that in these works Plato both rethinks and revises important positions which he held in his better-known earlier works such as the Republic and the Phaedo. Bobonich analyses Plato's shift from a deeply pessimistic view of non-philosophers in the Republic, where he held that only philosophers were capable of virtue and happiness, to his far more optimistic position in the Laws, where he holds that the constitution and laws of his ideal city of Magnesia would allow all citizens toachieve a truly good life. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Softcover. Jerusalem/NY, Shalem Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 287 pages. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, European political philosophy felt intimately at home with the Hebrew Bible, enjoyed some familiarity with later Jewish texts and exegeses, and accommodated a small number of Jews within its political discourse. The period was characterized by a search for Hebraica Veritas, a view of De Republica Hebraeorum as the idealized polity, and biblical and Jewish ideas permeating the political imagination through art, literature, and legal codes. This volume is comprised of papers from the first ever international conference on political Hebraism held in Jerusalem in August 2004 under the auspices of the Shalem Center. The topic of political Hebraism is broached here from a number of approaches, including historical, literary, philosophical, theological, critical, and sociopolitical.
Hardcover. Oxford, Clarendon Press, First Edition, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 356 pages. Hardcover with illustrated endpapers. Black cloth covered boards with gilt titles to spine. Dust jacket with light sunfade to bottom edge. Illustrations in bw throughout. Clean & unmarked copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 187 pages. Examines Rousseau's contribution as a constitutionalist and builder of institutions, relating his major ideas to twenty-first century debates. Rubber stamp on copyright page, otherwise clean.
Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 216 pages. This remarkable expression of republican thought has never before been published. Algernon Sidney was among the most unrelenting republican partisans of the seventeenth century, and was executed for his opposition to Charles II. Written during Sidney's continental exile, the vivid Court Maxims was only recently rediscovered. The work presents a lively discussion about the principles of government and the practice of politics, articulating a vital tradition of republicanism in an absolutist age.
Hardcover. London, Geoffrey Bles, 1st, 1943, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt title on spine, 268 pages. In an edgeworn dust jacket with a crease lengthwise. Copy of literary critic and historian Roger Shattuck with his pencil signature and "Mindoro, Philippines 1945" (presumed where he served in WW2) on the front fly leaf. Some pencil markings and notations in text.
Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 2013, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 336 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Profusely illustrated in full color & black & white throughout. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. London, NLB, 1st transl. thus, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light blue cloth stamped in gilt, 257 pages. The articles and essays collected in this book were written during the decade of Lukacs's life when he was most active in politics. The first texts mark his transition from an anti-bourgeois aestheticism to Marxism and the newly founded Hungarian Communist Party. They are followed by material which displays the full range of his activity and thought during the subsequent ten years. Some of these essays were written when Lukacs was deputy commissar of education in the embattled, short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. Others include the famous article on parliamentarianism which earned its author the respectful yet severe criticism of Lenin.The volume includes short studies on German revisionism, Bukharin's Marxism, and Karl Wittfogel, and longer pieces on Lassalle and Moses Hess. The collection ends with the theses Luckas wrote, under his cover name "Blum", in opposition to the policies of the Third Period of the Comintern. Clean copy.
Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 4th pr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 745 pages. Beginning with Homer and ending in late antiquity with Christian and pagan reflections on divine and human order, this volume is the first general and comprehensive treatment of Rome ever to be published in English. Its international team of distinguished scholars includes historians of law, politics, culture and religion, as well as philosophers. The volume will long remain an accessible and authoritative guide to Greek and Roman thinking about government and community. Remainder line on bottom edge otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 592 pages. Alexander Herzen-philosopher, novelist, essayist, political agitator, and one of the leading Russian intellectuals of the nineteenth century-was as famous in his day as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. While he is remembered for his masterpiece My Past and Thoughts and as the father of Russian socialism, his contributions to the history of ideas defy easy categorization because they are so numerous. Aileen Kelly presents the first fully rounded study of the farsighted genius whom Isaiah Berlin called "the forerunner of much twentieth-century thought." In an era dominated by ideologies of human progress, Herzen resisted them because they conflicted with his sense of reality, a sense honed by his unusually comprehensive understanding of history, philosophy, and the natural sciences. Following his unconventional decision to study science at university, he came to recognize the implications of early evolutionary theory, not just for the natural world but for human history. In this respect, he was a Darwinian even before Darwin. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. NY, Continuum, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 559 pages. The Frankfurt School of philosophers, aestheticians, sociologists, and political scientists (including Theodore W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse) represents one of the most interesting and unique intellectual events of the twentieth century. Editors Arato and Gebhardt offer major introductions to the three sections that comprise the Reader, in which they seek to place to historical development of the School's thought and to demonstrate its complexity, while investigating its influence on various disciplines. Paul Piccone has written the General Introduction. Clean copy.
Softcover. Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 211 pages. Edited and with an Introduction by Blair Worden. This edition brings back into print, after two and a half centuries, the pioneering work of English republicanism, Marchamont Nedham's The Excellencie of a Free-State, which was written in the wake of the execution of King Charles I. First published in 1656, and compiled from previously written editorials in the parliamentarian newsbook Mercurius Politicus, The Excellencie of a Free-State addressed a dilemma in English politics, namely, what kind of government should the Commonwealth adopt? Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in lightly worn dust jacket, 446 pages. A full review of the history of this initially small band of middle class intellectual socialists, the Mackenie's are undaunted in tackling what becomes a full and multi-character biography of the group that became and remains influential in British politics. This study includes a full and sensitive account of the lives and thought of the Webbs (usefully exploring their differences as well as their points of agreement), Shaw, Pease and Podmore, and even H.G. Wells, amongst others, as well as the history of the relationship of this band with the diverse groups and individuals in the broader British socialist movement - and their ambivalent relationships with the liberal and then the labour governments. Remainder stamp to bottom edge. Otherwise a clean copy.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 3rd pr., 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 316 pages. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy, and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism. Remarkably, the two were best friends for most of their adult lives, sharing what Dennis Rasmussen calls the greatest of all philosophical friendships. The Infidel and the Professor is the first book to tell the fascinating story of the friendship of these towering Enlightenment thinkers-and how it influenced their world-changing ideas. The book follows Hume and Smith's relationship from their first meeting in 1749 until Hume's death in 1776. It describes how they commented on each other's writings, supported each other's careers and literary ambitions, and advised each other on personal matters, most notably after Hume's quarrel with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Clean copy.
Softcover. UK/NY, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 264 pages. The Mask of Enlightenment is the most detailed textual and thematic study of Nietzsche's most important but least understood works: Thus Spake Zarathustra. In this book Nietzsche was laying the groundwork for a fundamental philosophical and political revolution on a global scale. One of the difficulties that the text poses is Nietzsche's prophetic style; Stanley Rosen unweaves the complex threads that form the rhetorical voices of the work, and so explains the style in an accessible manner. He rejects recent sceptical, deconstructionist interpretations of Nietzsche, and reveals a coherence underlying the multiple and apparently incompatible intentions embedded in the text. Nietzsche is a figure whose influence on contemporary thought in the humanities and social sciences continues to be enormous. This book is sure to become the definitive study of Zarathustra, and will have a broad appeal to philosophers and students of modern philosophy, intellectual historians, political scientists, and literary theorists. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Edinburgh University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 210 pages. All students of Western political thought encounter Niccolo Machiavelli's work. Nevertheless, his writing continues to puzzle scholars and readers who are uncertain how to deal with the seeming paradoxes they encounter. 'The Political Philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli' is a clear account of Machiavelli's thought, major theories and central ideas. It critically engages with his work in a new way, one not based on the problematic Cambridge-school approach. Geared towards the specific requirements of students who need to reach a sound understanding of Machiavelli's ideas, it is the ideal companion to the study of this influential and challenging philosopher.
Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 290 pages. This study provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of the meaning of Locke's political thought. John Dunn restores Locke's ideas to their exact context, and so stresses the historical question of what Locke in the Two Treatises of Government was intending to claim. By adopting this approach, he reveals the predominantly theological character of all Locke's thinking about politics and provides a convincing analysis of the development of Locke's thought. In a polemical concluding section, John Dunn argues that liberal and Marxist interpretations of Locke's politics have failed to grasp his meaning. Locke emerges as not merely a contributor to the development of English constitutional thought, or as a reflector of socio-economic change in seventeenth-century England, but as essentially a Calvinist natural theologian. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1911, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers, Gilt title on spine, top edge gilt, 211 pages. The book explores the concept of freedom, its meaning, and its significance in human life. Palmer examines the different philosophical and ethical theories surrounding freedom and its limitations, including determinism and the role of the state in regulating individual freedom. He also discusses the relationship between freedom and morality, and the importance of individual responsibility in the exercise of freedom. The text results from a course of lectures delivered in 1909 before the Lowell Institute of Boston. Delivered without notes, they were carefully reported and subsequently much revised. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 377 pages. Vol. 2 ONLY of a six volume set. Clean, bright copy, no markings.
Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 384 pages. Vol. 3 ONLY of a six volume set. Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 448 pages. Vol. 4 ONLY of a six volume set. Clean, bright copy, no markings.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 234 pages. When Leviathan first appeared in 1651, it was recognized as a work of extraordinary scope, uniting metaphysical, theological, and political arguments into a single distinctive outlook. Contending that modern readers do the book an injustice by neglecting its metaphysical and theological themes, David Johnston supports his claim with a detailed examination of the text as a whole and with a reinterpretation of the genesis of the work. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 375 pages. In probing chapters on C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot, Wolin discovers an unsettling commonality: during the 1930s, these thinkers leaned to the right and were tainted by a proverbial "fascination with fascism." Frustrated by democracy's shortcomings, they were seduced by fascism's grandiose promises of political regeneration. The dictatorships in Italy and Germany promised redemption from the uncertainties of political liberalism. But, from the beginning, there could be no doubting their brutal methods of racism, violence, and imperial conquest. Postmodernism's origins among the profascist literati of the 1930s reveal a dark political patrimony. The unspoken affinities between Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism constitute the guiding thread of Wolin's suggestive narrative. In their mutual hostility toward reason and democracy, postmodernists and the advocates of Counter-Enlightenment betray a telltale strategic alliance--they cohabit the fraught terrain where far left and far right intersect. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 334 pages. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism sets forth a radical reinterpretation of the foundations on which the American regime was constructed. Thomas L. Pangle argues that the Founders had a dramatically new vision of civic virtue, religious faith, and intellectual life, rooted in an unprecedented commitment to private and economic liberties. It is in the thought of John Locke that Pangle finds the fullest elaboration of the principles supporting the Founders' moral vision. Clean copy.