Government Philosophy

Un an après la parution du "Voyage autour du monde" de Bougainville, Diderot, intéressé par l'opposition des mœurs entre les Français et les Tahitiens telle que décrite dans le rapport qu'en fait l'auteur, décide d'ajouter un supplément à ce récit sous forme d'un dialogue philosophique et sociologique entre deux personnages fictifs dénommés A et B.

In an increasingly divided society, Iain examines why we've all become so disrespectful and intolerant. Using experiences from his career in politics and the media, he says it doesn't have to be this way and suggests how we can all emerge from tribalism and division and become more respectful to each other and those who govern us. It is a book that is optimistic about the fundamental decencies embedded in human nature and uses deeply personal anecdotes to explain why we can look forward in a positive way to a better life both in personal and material terms.

Why do Internet, financial service, and beer commercials dominate Super Bowl advertising? How do political ceremonies establish authority? Why does repetition characterize anthems and ritual speech? Why were circular forms favored for public festivals during the French Revolution? This book answers these questions using a single concept: common knowledge.

Reparations for slavery have become a reinvigorated topic for public debate over the last decade. Most theorizing about reparations treats it as a social justice project—either rooted in reconciliatory justice focused on making amends in the present; or, they focus on the past, emphasizing restitution for historical wrongs. Olúfemi O. Táiwò argues that neither approach is optimal, and advances a different case for reparations—one rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core.

To the modern mind, the idea of honor is outdated, sexist, and barbaric. It evokes Hamilton and Burr and pistols at dawn, not visions of a well-organized society. But for philosopher Tamler Sommers, a sense of honor is essential to living moral lives. In Why Honor Matters, Sommers argues that our collective rejection of honor has come at great cost. Reliant only on Enlightenment liberalism, the United States has become the home of the cowardly, the shameless, the selfish, and the alienated. Properly channeled, honor encourages virtues like courage, integrity, and solidarity.

Ancient Greece first coined the concept of democracy, yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker - from Plato and Aristotle onward - was ambivalent toward or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation for this is quite simple: The elite perceived majority power as tantamount to a dictatorship of the proletariat. In ancient Greece, there can be traced not only the rudiments of modern democratic society but the entire Western tradition of antidemocratic thought.

Among modern philosophers, few have had a greater impact on history than Karl Marx. Now this easy-to-use introduction to the 19th-century theorist breaks down his work into definitions of his terms and concepts, including Bourgeois State, Classless Society, and Freedom of the Press. Accompanied by an insightful introductory essay that puts the included excerpts from his works in context, The Wisdom of Marx is essential listening for an understanding of the man whose work incited far-reaching social and economic change.

We live in complicated, dangerous times. They are also hyper-technical times. As citizens who will elect future presidents of the most powerful and influential world, we need to know - truly understand, not just rely on television's talking heads - if Iran's nascent nuclear capability is a genuine threat to the West, if biochemical weapons are likely to be developed by terrorists, if there are viable alternatives to fossil fuels that should be nurtured and supported by the government, if nuclear power should be encouraged, and if global warming is actually happening.

Drawing inspiration from philosophy, history, and literature, Martha C. Nussbaum takes us to task for our religious intolerance, identifies the fear behind it, and offers a way past fear toward a more equitable, imaginative, and free society, through the consistent application of universal principles of respect for conscience.

Human rights capture what people need to live minimally decent lives. Recognized dimensions of this minimum include physical security, due process, political participation, and freedom of movement, speech, and belief, as well as subsistence, shelter, health, education, culture, and community. Far less attention has been paid to the interpersonal, social dimensions of a minimally decent life. This collection of essays aims to remedy the neglect of social needs and rights in human rights theory and practice by exploring the social dimensions of the human-rights minimum.

Politicians have failed us. But democracy doesn’t have to. Bought by special interests, detached from real life, obsessed with reelection. Politicians make big promises, deliver little to nothing, and keep the game rigged in their favor. But what can we do? In Politics Without Politicians...

This book is a profound search for a theory of social change. Through clearing away the cobwebs of revolutionary socialism, it renews the fight for the ending of capitalism and the construction of a new, fairer world. After a century of failed attempts by radical projects, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis.

Part searing examination, part call to arms—a bold case against modern sexual ethics, from young Washington Post columnist Christine Emba. For years now, modern-day sexual ethics has held that “anything goes” when it comes to sex—as long as everyone says yes, and does so enthusiastically...

No single individual is ever the sole founder of any major stance in political philosophy. Nevertheless, if one were forced to name the founder of the classical liberal perspective in political thought which holds as its primary political principle that individual liberty is to be respected and protected, one would have to point to the English philosopher John Locke.

"The Communist Manifesto," co-authored by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, is a profound critique of capitalism and a blueprint for a new social order, communism. It argues that the proletariat, or working class, will lead the revolution against the capitalist system's inherent class inequalities. Spanning four sections, the manifesto traces class struggles, critiques the bourgeoisie, reviews socialist and communist literature, and examines the position of communists relative to opposition parties.

When Lorenzo de Medici seized control of the Florentine Republic in 1512, he fired the Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Signoria, Niccolo Machiavelli, which set in motion a fundamental change in the way we think about politics. Suddenly finding himself without a job after 14 years of patriotic service, Machiavelli set a precedent for many a politician to come—by becoming a pundit and commentator through one of the only means available to him at the time: writing a book.

In this unsettling book, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum trace how ungoverning—the deliberate effort to dismantle the capacity of government to do its work—has become a malignant part of politics. Democracy depends on a government that can govern, and that requires what’s called administration.

Until very recently, no society had seen marriage as anything other than a conjugal partnership: a male-female union. What Is Marriage? identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage as something other than the conjugal union of husband and wife is a mistake. Originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, this book’s core argument quickly became the year’s most widely read essay on the most prominent scholarly network in the social sciences.

In his 1992 best-selling book The End of History and the Last Man, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that the dominance of liberal democracy marked the end of humanity's political and ideological development. Thirty years later, with populism on the rise and the number of liberal democracies decreasing worldwide, Fukuyama revisits his classic thesis. A series of in-depth interviews between Fukuyama and editor Mathilde Fasting, After the End of History offers a wide-ranging analysis of liberal democracy today.

Ayn Rand presents her views of the world, politics, and human thought.