A History of Political Thought: From Antiquity to the PresentISBN: 978-0-7456-4085-3
Paperback
320 pages
September 2008, Polity
This is a Print-on-Demand title. It will be printed specifically to fill your order. Please allow an additional 10-15 days delivery time. The book is not returnable.
Other Available Formats: Hardcover
|
This book is a comprehensive introduction to the history of
political thought, tracing the development of arguments and
controversies from ancient Greece, through different forms of
community, state and empire, to today's global concerns. Bruce
Haddock highlights the bewildering variety of contexts that have
framed political thinking, yet also displays structural features
that have proved to be remarkably stable over time. An important
theme in the book is the need to see political philosophy, even in
its most abstract formulations, as a response to historically
contingent circumstances, without limiting its relevance to those
circumstances. The emphasis throughout is on political thinking as
a response to hard choices. Major thinkers covered include Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Grotius, Locke,
Spinoza, Montesquieu, Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Burke, Hegel, Marx,
Mill, Lenin, Schmitt, Nietzsche, Foucault, Oakeshott and Rawls.
The book treats political philosophy and theory as a tentative engagement with a fractured and controversial past. Yet political thinking remains the exercise of a burden of a responsibility that is inescapable for us. Haddock introduces a history that continues to shape our understanding of ourselves as political and historical creatures.
A History of Political Thought will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, history and philosophy.