Government Philosophy

The Law was originally published as a pamphlet in French in 1850 by Frederic Bastiat. It is his most famous work and was written two years after the third French Revolution of 1848. It defines, through development, a just system of laws and then demonstrates how such law facilitates a free society. Bastiat was a French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly.

There is no shortage of democracy, at least in name, and yet it is in crisis everywhere we look. From a cabal of plutocrats in the White House to gerrymandering and dark-money campaign contributions, it is clear that the principle of government by and for the people is not living up to its promise. The problems lie deeper than any one election cycle. As Astra Taylor demonstrates, real democracy - fully inclusive and completely egalitarian - has in fact never existed. In a tone that is both philosophical and anecdotal, Taylor invites us to reexamine the term.

In The Revolution, Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has exposed the core truths behind everything threatening America, from the real reasons behind the collapse of the dollar and the looming financial crisis, to terrorism and the loss of our precious civil liberties. In this book, Ron Paul provides answers to questions that few even dare to ask.

If a country's Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world's billions of individuals are really managing? In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect.

In Talking Across the Divide, social justice activist Justin Lee explains how to break through the five key barriers that make people resist differing opinions. With a combination of psychological research, pop-culture references, and anecdotes from Justin's many years of experience mediating contentious conversations, this book will help you understand people on the other side of the argument and give you the tools you need to change their minds - even if they've fallen for "fake news."

For decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao’s revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People’s Republic and the legitimacy of its Communist government. With disagreements and conflicts between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing.

Soon after the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky led the Red Army against the counter-revolutionary White armies. Written in the white heat of the Civil War, "Terrorism and Communism" is one of the most potent defences of revolutionary dictatorship of the twentieth century. In his provocative commentary in this new edition, the coruscating critic Slavoj Zizek argues that Trotsky's attack on the illusions of democracy has a vital relevance to today.

De Brevitate Vitae (frequently referred to as On the Shortness of Life in English) is a moral essay written by Seneca the Younger, a Roman Stoic philosopher, to his father-in-law Paulinus. The philosopher brings up many Stoic principles on the nature of time, namely that men waste much of it in meaningless pursuits. According to the essay, nature gives man enough time to do what is really important and the individual must allot it properly.

In this groundbreaking book, the philosopher Martin Hägglund challenges our received notions of faith and freedom. The faith we need to cultivate, he argues, is not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He reveals that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions. What ultimately matters is how we treat one another in this life, and what we do with our time together.

Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But Jason Brennan says they are all wrong. In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough.

Paul Feyerabend’s globally acclaimed work, which sparked and continues to stimulate fierce debate, examines the deficiencies of many widespread ideas about scientific progress and the nature of knowledge. Feyerabend argues that scientific advances can only be understood in a historical context. He looks at the way the philosophy of science has consistently overemphasized practice over method, and considers the possibility that anarchism could replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge.

Psychiatrist, humanist, revolutionary, Frantz Fanon was one of the great political analysts of our time. He has had a profound impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world. A Dying Colonialism is Fanon’s incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as “primitive,” in order to destroy those oppressors.

The Republic is a classic work by an ancient Greek philosopher Plato. There is one of the most famous dialogues of Plato about the arrangement of the state structure and the essence of the state (contemporary for Plato, of course, but also important nowadays because the whole modern so called "European civilisation" is based, first of all, on ancient schemes). The structure of Plato's dialogue is similar to others. Socrates and Glaucon are coming back to Athens from Piraeus. They are stopped by Polemarchus who invites them to visit him and talk.

This book consists of two parts: the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited" and "The Law of Peoples", a major reworking of a much shorter article by the same name. Taken together, they are the culmination of more than 50 years of reflection on liberalism and on some of the most pressing problems of our times.

The Progressive Era witnessed the nation's most convulsive upheaval, a time of radicalism far beyond the Revolution or anything since. In response to the birth of modern America, one small group of middle-class Americans seized control of the nation and attempted to remake society from bottom to top. They accomplished an astonishing range of triumphs, yet the progressive movement collapsed as the war came to an end amid race riots, strikes, high inflation, and a frenzied Red scare.

From the moment of its publication in 1748, The Spirit of the Laws proved to be a controversial work provoking widespread interest. Within three years it had been translated into various European languages - and was swiftly added to the List of Prohibited Books by the Roman Catholic Church. It is a remarkable book, a potpourri of observations and comments ranging far and wide over the social activities of mankind and it exerted a great influence on political leaders in the following decades.

In The Republic, Plato tackles the big issues of the state and the individual: how the state should be ruled, and by whom; and the way the individual should lead his life - and why. The lively quality of the dialogue can be clearly appreciated in this new translation by Tom Griffith.

The theories and observations in this abridged version of Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz's magnum opus have been heeded by military strategists for nearly 200 years. Most have considered this to be the "Bible" of military strategy and tactics.

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a seminal work on crowd psychology by Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), a French social psychologist. He observes that a crowd forms when an influential idea unites a number of individuals and prompts them to act towards a common goal. In a crowd, the conscious personality of the individual is submerged and dominated by the collective mind. Furthermore, every sentiment becomes contagious to a degree that individuals readily sacrifice their personal interest to the collective.

The English philosopher and physician John Locke (1632 - 1704) is widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. His work had a significant effect on the development of epistemology and political philosophy. The Second Treatise on Civil Government places sovereignty in the hands of the people, as Locke's fundamental argument is that people are equal and invested with natural rights in a state of nature in which they live free from outside rule.