Synopses & Reviews
Princeton Readings in Political Thought is one of the most engaging and up-to-date samplers of the standard works of Western political thinking from antiquity through modern times. Organized chronologically, from Thucydides to Foucault, the book brings together forty-four selections of enduring intellectual value--key articles, book excerpts, essays, and speeches--that have shaped our understanding of Western society and politics. Readers will find this work to be an invaluable reference, and they will enjoy not only the varied selections but also the lucid introductions to each historical era and the brief sketches of each thinker.
The book includes the writings of many of the most distinguished observers of the Western experience from classical times (Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero), the Middle Ages (St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Christine de Pizan), modern times (Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, The Federalist Papers, "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen," Burke, Marie-Olympes de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Mill, de Tocqueville, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche), or the ideas of twentieth-century political philosophers and ideologists (Weber, Mosca, Michels, Lenin, Freud, Emma Goldman, Mussolini, Arendt, Orwell, de Beauvoir, Fanon, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Leo Strauss, Walzer, Rawls, Nozick, Habermas, and Foucault).
Review
"Critics might question putting the work of Plato and Malcolm X together between the same covers, but the contrast simply suggests the wide range of thinkers one finds in this collection. Plato, Thucydides, St. Augustine, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, Leo Strauss, Max Weber: All and many more can be found here, represented by substantial excerpts from their most characteristic and important writings."--The Washington Times
Review
Critics might question putting the work of Plato and Malcolm X together between the same covers, but the contrast simply suggests the wide range of thinkers one finds in this collection. Plato, Thucydides, St. Augustine, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, Leo Strauss, Max Weber: All and many more can be found here, represented by substantial excerpts from their most characteristic and important writings. The Washington Times
Synopsis
Princeton Readings in Political Thought is one of the most engaging and up-to-date samplers of the standard works of Western political thinking from antiquity through modern times. Organized chronologically, from Thucydides to Foucault, the book brings together forty-four selections of enduring intellectual value--key articles, book excerpts, essays, and speeches--that have shaped our understanding of Western society and politics. Readers will find this work to be an invaluable reference, and they will enjoy not only the varied selections but also the lucid introductions to each historical era and the brief sketches of each thinker.
The book includes the writings of many of the most distinguished observers of the Western experience from classical times (Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero), the Middle Ages (St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Christine de Pizan), modern times (Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, The Federalist Papers, "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen," Burke, Marie-Olympes de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Mill, de Tocqueville, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche), or the ideas of twentieth-century political philosophers and ideologists (Weber, Mosca, Michels, Lenin, Freud, Emma Goldman, Mussolini, Arendt, Orwell, de Beauvoir, Fanon, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Leo Strauss, Walzer, Rawls, Nozick, Habermas, and Foucault).
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | |
| Thinking Politically: An Introduction | 1 |
1 | Thucydides | |
| Pericles' Funeral Oration | 13 |
2 | Plato | |
| The Apology | 19 |
| The Republic | 39 |
3 | Aristotle | |
| The Politics | 107 |
4 | Cicero | |
| On The Republic | 124 |
5 | St. Augustine | |
| City of God | 133 |
6 | St. Thomas Aquinas | |
| Politics and Law | 144 |
7 | Christine de Pizan | |
| The Book of the City of Ladies | 153 |
8 | Niccolo Machiavelli | |
| The Prince | 167 |
| Discourses on Livy | 188 |
9 | Martin Luther | |
| The Christian in Society | 194 |
10 | John Calvin | |
| God and Political Duty | 200 |
11 | Thomas Hobbes | |
| Leviathan | 205 |
12 | John Locke | |
| Second Treatise of Government | 243 |
13 | Jean-Jacques Rousseau | |
| On the Social Contract | 280 |
| Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men | 293 |
14 | Adam Smith | |
| The Wealth of Nations | 314 |
15 | Publius | |
| The Federalist Papers | 335 |
16 | Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen | 347 |
17 | Edmund Burke | |
| Reflections on the Revolution in France | 349 |
18 | Marie-Olympes de Gouges | |
| Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens | 356 |
19 | Mary Wollstonecraft | |
| A Vindication of the Rights of Woman | 362 |
20 | Jeremy Bentham | |
| An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation | 371 |
21 | John Stuart Mill | |
| On Liberty | 375 |
| On the Subjection of Women | 388 |
22 | Alexis de Tocqueville | |
| Democracy in America | 398 |
23 | G. W. F. Hegel | |
| Philosophy of Right | 425 |
24 | Karl Marx | |
| A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy | 435 |
| Estranged Labour | 438 |
| The Communist Manifesto | 448 |
| After the Revolution | 464 |
| Capital | 465 |
25 | Friedrich Nietzsche | |
| On the Genealogy of Morals | 467 |
26 | Max Weber | |
| Politics as a Vocation | 499 |
27 | Gaetano Mosca | |
| The Ruling Class | 512 |
28 | Robert Michels | |
| Political Parties | 524 |
29 | V. I. Lenin | |
| What Is to Be Done? | 530 |
| The State and Revolution | 534 |
30 | Sigmund Freud | |
| Civilization and Its Discontents | 544 |
| Totem and Taboo | 551 |
| Why War? | 556 |
31 | Emma Goldman | |
| Victims of Morality | 566 |
32 | Benito Mussolini | |
| Fascism | 571 |
33 | Hannah Arendt | |
| The Origins of Totalitarianism | 575 |
34 | George Orwell | |
| Politics and the English Language | 591 |
35 | Simone de Beauvoir | |
| The Second Sex | 601 |
36 | Frantz Fanon | |
| The Wretched of the Earth | 615 |
37 | Martin Luther King, Jr. | |
| Letter from Birmingham Jail | 623 |
38 | Malcolm X | |
| The Ballot or the Bullet | 636 |
39 | Leo Strauss | |
| What Is Political Philosophy? | 642 |
40 | Michael Walzer | |
| In Defense of Equality | 656 |
41 | John Rawls | |
| A Theory of Justice | 669 |
42 | Robert Nozick | |
| Anarchy, State and Utopia | 698 |
43 | Jurgen Habermas | |
| The Pu |