Now greatly expanded in its third edition, Political Philosophy: The
Essential Texts is ideal for survey courses in political philosophy.
Offering unprecedented coverage from antiquity to the present, this
historically organized collection presents the most significant works
from nearly 2,500 years of political philosophy. The readings are
substantial or complete texts, not fragments. An especially valuable
feature of this volume is that the works of each author are introduced
with an engaging essay by a leading contemporary authority.
Political Philosophy moves from classical thought (Plato, Aristotle,
Cicero) through the medieval period (Augustine, Aquinas) to modern
perspectives (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Montesquieu,
Rousseau, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant, Hamilton and Madison, Burke,
Bentham, Tocqueville). The book includes work from major
nineteenth-century thinkers (Hegel, Marx and Engels, Mill,
Nietzsche) and twentieth-century theorists (Arendt, Hayek,
Berlin, Taylor, Rawls, Sandel, Nozick, Foucault, Habermas, Held,
Nussbaum, Young, Appiah) and also presents a variety of notable
documents and addresses, including The Declaration of Independence, The
Constitution of the United States, and speeches by Abraham Lincoln, John
Dewey, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition to the new selections
noted above in bold, the third edition also includes the complete text
of Mill's On Liberty, an excerpt from Rawls's Political Liberalism,
and expanded selections from Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Lo
The Federalist Papers.
