Political Philosophy

In 1849, 5 years before Henry David Thoreau published Walden, he wrote what has come to be recognized as the philosophic textbook for nonviolent revolution. "I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward," Thoreau wrote. "It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right." Taking as his major premise the idea that "...government is best which governs least," Thoreau asserts that one's first loyalty is to one's own nature.

In 1961, Thomas Schelling's The Strategy of Conflict used game theory to radically reenvision the US-Soviet relationship and establish the basis of international relations for the rest of the Cold War. Now, Anne-Marie Slaughter - one of Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers from 2009 to 2012, and the first woman to serve as director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning - applies network theory to develop a new set of strategies for the post-Cold War world.

Transcendence and History is an analysis of what philosopher Eric Voegelin described as “the decisive problem of philosophy”: the dilemma of the discovery of transcendent meaning and the impact of this discovery on human self-understanding. The explicit recognition and symbolization of transcendent meaning originally occurred in a few advanced civilizations worldwide during the first millennium.

In September 2016, the provocative essay "The Flight 93 Election" galvanized many voters by spotlighting the stakes ahead in November and reproaching complacent elements of the Right. Its author, Michael Anton - writing as "Publius Decius Mus" - addressed the main criticisms of his argument soon afterward in a "Restatement on Flight 93". A new criticism emerged that he had painted a dire scenario to be averted, but no positive vision. Here, Anton presents the positive ideal that inspired him - a distillation of his thinking on Americanism and the West, refined over decades.

With The Firm, financial journalist Duff McDonald pulled back the curtain on consulting giant McKinsey & Company. In The Golden Passport, he reveals the inner workings of a singular nexus of power, ambition, and influence: Harvard Business School. Harvard University occupies a unique place in the public's imagination, but HBS has arguably eclipsed its parent in terms of its influence on modern society.

Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, one of the world's leading political philosophers presents with clarity and wit a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated. There are times, G. A. Cohen notes, when we all behave like socialists.

Nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs verkörpern vier Philosoph:innen die Suche nach einem neuen Menschenbild und einer neuen Aufklärung: Theodor W. Adorno, Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault und Paul K. Feyerabend. Mit dem Ziel, die Welt besser zu verstehen und der lebensweltlichen Enge zu entfliehen, gehen sie zwischen Frankfurt, Paris, London, Berkeley und New York neue Wege, die direkt zu den großen Bruchlinien unserer Gegenwart führen. Wolfram Eilenberger legt erneut ein erzählerisches Meisterwerk vor, das Geschichte und Philosophie auf einzigartige Weise verbindet.

How remarkable that an Italian living in the 15th and 16th centuries should lend his name to a word still in common usage in the English language today. Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote only one major work as a gift for his ruling Prince, Lorenzo de Medici. Machiavelli held office as a senior civil servant for 14 years until the downfall of the Republic in 1512. No longer officially employed to impart advice, instead Machiavelli poured out his ideas and resentment in his writings.

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 - May 14, 1887) was an American political philosopher, essayist, pamphlet writer, Unitarian, abolitionist, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the 19th century. He was a strong advocate of the labor movement and severely anti-authoritarian and individualist in political views. Spooner was born on a farm in Athol, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1808, and died on May 14, 1887, in Boston.

In Beyond the Messy Truth, Jones offers a blueprint for transforming our collective anxiety into meaningful change. Tough on Donald Trump but showing respect and empathy for his supporters, Jones takes aim at the failures of both parties before and after Trump's victory. He urges both sides to abandon the politics of accusation and focus on real solutions. Calling us to a deeper patriotism, he shows us how to get down to the vital business of solving, together, some of our toughest problems.

This pacifist manifesto was published in 1917, as the First World War was dragging to a close. The resolution of this catastrophic conflict resulted in a reconstruction of Europe, the fallout from which led to an even more cataclysmic war. Russell delineates the problem as being due to the institutionalizing of national hostilities and the consequent apportioning of blame among the warring parties. In his exposition Russell considers the roles played by a number of institutions, social and political, reserving some his sharpest criticism for organized religion.

Spanning from the nation’s earliest years through the New Deal to the Covid pandemic, a groundbreaking work that interrogates how pivotal decisions have established and continued discriminatory practices in the United States, even as the rise of disinformation and other modern advertising techniques have plunged democracy into an ever-deepening crisis.

A fearless deep dive into the 2020 election from former MSNBC “Road Warrior” and now NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali, who covered the campaign trail every step of the way—investigating the gendered double standards placed on women presidential candidates of that cycle and those who came before, and what it will take for a woman to finally break the glass ceiling and win the White House.

Huey P. Newton's powerful legacy to the Black Panther movement and the civil rights struggle has long been obscured. Conservatives harp on Newton's drug use and on the circumstances of his death in a crack-related shooting. Liberals romanticize his black revolutionary rhetoric and idealize his message. In Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist, Judson L. Jeffries considers the entire arc of Newton's political role and influence on civil rights history and African American thought.

In this tour de force essay, Hans-Hermann Hoppe turns the standard account of historical governmental progress on its head. While the state is an evil in all its forms, monarchy is, in many ways, far less pernicious than democracy. Hoppe shows the evolution of government away from aristocracy, through monarchy, and toward the corruption and irresponsibility of democracy to have been identical with the growth of the leviathan state.

Die Party ist vorbei. Der Crash ist da. Aus der Bankenkrise 2008 wurde über Nacht eine Krise der Weltwirtschaft. Da ist guter Rat teuer, und man beginnt sich an die Spekulationsblasen und Krisen der Vergangenheit zu erinnern. Kapitalismuskritik ist wieder in Mode, bleibt aber meist an der Oberfläche. Doch wie keinem anderen Ökonomen ist es vor 150 Jahren Karl Marx gelungen, die aberwitzigen Bewegungen des Kapitals und seinen Hang zur Selbstzerstörung zu beleuchten.

Pivoting from studies that emphasize the dominance of progressivism on American college campuses during the late sixties and early seventies, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd positions conservative critiques of, and agendas in, American colleges and universities as an essential dimension of a broader conversation of conservative backlash against liberal education. This book explores the story of how stakeholders in American higher education organized and reacted to challenges to their power from the New Left and Black Power student resistance movements of the late 1960s.

Left Imperialism is an exercise in a novel field: ideology archaeology. Is the United States Constitution conservative or liberal? Where does the conservative-liberal dichotomy originate? Are American conservatives related to British conservatives or not? Who are the anarchists—left-wingers or right-wingers? Left Imperialism offers the answers to these questions and many more, taking on a spectrum of ideologies from a brand-new evolutionary perspective. For example, the book traces the origin of many standard political terms—like "left-wing" and "right-wing"—from their inception to ...

African Americans have had every reason to doubt America’s democratic experiment. Yet African American activists, intellectuals, and artists who have sought to transform the United States into a racially just society have put forward some of the most original and powerful ideas about how to make America live up to its democratic ideals. In The Darkened Light of Faith, Melvin Rogers provides a bold new account of African American political thought through the works and lives of individuals who built this vital tradition, which is urgently needed today.

Incredible facts about this Ottoman Empire still surprise anyone who starts discovering those stories. You’ll find out that, for quite a while, this Islamic state was effectively ruled by women, and that’s just the beginning.