Political Philosophy

Alexis de Tocqueville is one of the most topical and debated figures in contemporary political and social theory. This introduction to de Tocqueville's thought examines in detail his classic works and their major themes. This book argues that Tocqueville's major themes tap into deep anxieties about democratic practices and his writings help us to identify the major fault lines in democracy at the turn of the new century. Beginning with a consideration of Tocqueville's distinctiveness against the historical background and intellectual context of his time, this book goes on to trace the development of his thought on democracy and revolution, history, slavery, religion, and gender, including chapters dealing with his writings on France and the United States. The final chapter then explores Tocqueville's historical legacy and his contemporary significance, illuminating the reasons why this displaced 19th century aristocrat has become one of the most topical figures in contemporary political and social theory.

This book presents an account of Emile Durkheim's work, focusing on a reassessment of his central ideas and arguments. Durkheim can undoubtedly be considered one of the most significant social thinkers of the last hundred years and his writings continue to attract both applause and controversy throughout the world, not just from sociologists and scholars from related disciplines but also from all those interested in the way modern society operates. This introduction to Durkheim's thought examines closely all of Durkheim's ‘canonical’ works and assesses their significance today. The book also considers closely the question what did Durkheim mean by ‘society’? It also assesses Durkheim's contribution to both political sociology and the sociology of law, placing his writings in the context of the generation of European scholars to which he belonged.

Although known as the founder of modern utilitarianism and the source of analytical jurisprudence, Bentham today is infrequently read, but often caricatured. This book, based on a study of Bentham's most important works, offers a reinterpretation of Bentham's main philosophical doctrines, his principle of utility and his analysis of law. The evidence indicates that Bentham was no ‘universalist’ in morals, but embraced a dual standard—in politics the community's interest, in ‘private ethics’ the agent's interest—which may in turn be based on the idea that government should serve the interests of those who are ‘governed’. The argument challenges many common assumptions about Bentham's view of human nature and of political institutions. A new reading is also given to his theory of law, which suggests Bentham's insight, originality, and continued interest for philosophers and legal theorists. This book was first published in 1973. This revised edition contains a new preface, a revised bibliography, and two new indexes, one of names and one of subjects, which together replace the original index.

This book brings together chapters that discuss Hobbes's masterpiece after three and a half centuries. The contributors address three different themes. The first is the place of Leviathan within Hobbes's output as a political philosopher. What does Leviathan add to The Elements of Law (1640) and De Cive (1642; 1647)? What is the relation between the English Leviathan and the Latin version of the book (1668)? Does Leviathan deserve its pre-eminence? The second theme concerns the connections between Hobbes's psychology and Hobbes's politics. The chapters discuss Hobbes's curious views on the significance of laughter, evidence that he connected life in the state with passionlessness; the ways in which such things as fear for one's life entitle subjects to rebel; and the question of how the sovereign's personal passions are to be squared with his personifying a multitude. The third theme is Hobbes's views on the Bible and the Church: chapters examine the tensions between any allowance for ecclesiastical and (differently) biblical authority on the one hand, and political authority on the other.

This book presents the most plausible reading of Thomas Hobbes's moral and political theory based on his book, Leviathan. Hobbes constructs a political theory that bases unlimited political authority on unlimited individualism. The conclusion requires the premiss; anything less than unlimited individualism would justify only limited political authority. But the premiss is too strong for the conclusions; as this book shows, from unlimited individualism only anarchy follows. The theory is a failure. But it has two outstanding merits. First of all, Hobbes introduces a number of important moral and political concepts that deserve our attention. Obligation is his basic moral concept, while authorisation is his basic political concept. Hobbes relies neither on the goodwill of men – their willingness to consider each other's interests for their own sake, and not as means to self-satisfaction – nor on the efficacy of institutions, as the means of both concentrating and limiting political power. Aside from political and moral theory, the book explores Hobbes's views on the nature of man, sovereignty, and God.

This book presents a critical examination of Machiavelli's thought, and an account of his work with a reassessment of his central ideas and arguments. It challenges the accepted interpretations of Machiavelli's work, insisting that his republicanism was based not on a commitment to virtue, greatness, and expansion, but on the ideal of civic life protected by a shield of fair laws. This detailed study of how Machiavelli composed his famous work, The Prince, offers new interpretations, and it further argues that the most challenging and completely underestimated aspect of Machiavelli's thought is his philosophy of life, in particular his conceptions of love, women, irony, God, and the human condition. This book demonstrates that Machiavelli composed The Prince, and all his works, according to the rules of classical rhetoric and never intended to found the ‘modern science of politics’, aiming rather to continue and refine the practice of political theorizing as a rhetorical endeavor taught by the Roman masters of civic philosophy.

The fundamental problem of Rousseau's political philosophy is to find a form of association that protects the person and goods of each person without demanding from them a morally unacceptable sacrifice of autonomy. His solution to this problem, specified by a social contract, is the society of the general will: a free community of equals, whose members share a commitment to the common good, and in which each gives the law to him or herself. But how could it be that we accept a common authority and yet remain fully autonomous; and is such a society genuinely possible for human beings? Rousseau answers the first question by filling out the ideal of a free community of equals, regulated by the general will. He answers the second by showing that human beings can, appearances notwithstanding, live together in a free community of equals, motivated by the general will, and by describing how a free community of equals might work institutionally, as a form of democracy. At the heart of the argument is the idea that human beings are naturally good but corrupted by bad institutions. With institutions that advance the common good and secure each citizen's self-worth, people may acquire the requisite motivations. To this end, Rousseau favors direct-democratic lawmaking, and emphasizes the importance of strong communal solidarities. But the ideal of a free community of equals may be more robust — and more robustly attractive — than his proposals about direct democracy and communitarian ideas of solidarity might suggest.

Susan James offers an interpretation of a work that is itself about interpretation Spinoza's Theologico‐Political Treatise. By setting the Treatise in its seventeenth‐century Dutch context, and identifying the wide range of philosophical, theological, hermeneutic, historical, and political debates to which Spinoza was responding, she elucidates the character of his argument and the ends it was designed to achieve. Although the Treatise engages with many opponents, the most central because most powerful were the conservative theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church and their political allies, who continued to oppose Cartesian philosophy throughout Spinoza's lifetime, and resisted what was known as the freedom to philosophize. Appealing both to philosophical arguments that he develops in more detail in the Ethics, and to a theory of biblical interpretation, Spinoza aims to comprehensively discredit the Church's theological doctrines. At the same time, he sets out to undercut its political commitment to a mixed constitution where power is divided between secular and religious authorities. In the United Provinces, Spinoza claims, the best way to secure freedom is to uphold a republican form of government in which the people are sovereign, and where, within certain limits, individuals are free to worship and philosophize as they wish. At first glance, the sinuous argument of the Treatise appears to lack unity, and many commentators focus on one part of it at the expense of others. Once its context is taken into account, however, it emerges as an integrated defence of philosophical, religious, and political freedom, firmly situated within the framework of Spinoza's philosophical system.