From earliest times Locke's writings have been the subject of controversy. An intellectual caught up in the politics of late 17th century England, his writings on politics reveal a man attempting to combine an analysis of the underlying principles of society with a deep commitment to a specific political stance and party. This study, first published in 1978 explains why Locke's vision of political life has continued to fascinate political thinkers of many different persuasions.

Following the collapse of the former regimes of Eastern and Central Europe and Latin America the choice of all of the democratising countries was to move towards liberal democracy. Likewise in Africa, many authoriatarian regimes seem to be in retreat, perhaps most significantly in South Africa. Democracy seems to be the only valued political system of the late twentieth century, so that even China for example, describes itself as the people's democratic dictatorship. So have we really, as ...

In this provocative but balanced essay, Kenneth Minogue discusses the development of politics from the ancient world to the twentieth century. He prompts us to consider why political systems evolve, how politics offers both power and order in our society, whether democracy is always a good thing, and what future politics may have in the twenty-first century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subjec...

Thomas Hobbes, the first great English political philosopher, has long had the reputation of being a pessimistic atheist, who saw human nature as inevitably evil and proposed a totalitarian state to subdue human failings. In this illuminating study, Richard Tuck re-evaluates Hobbes's philosophy and dispels these myths, revealing him to have been passionately concerned with the refutation of scepticism, and to have developed a theory of knowledge which rivalled that of Descartes in its impo...

John Locke (1632-1704) one of the greatest English philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, argued in his masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, that our knowledge is founded in experience and reaches us principally through our senses; but its message has been curiously misunderstood. In this book John Dunn shows how Locke arrived at his theory of knowledge, and how his exposition of the liberal values of toleration and responsible governme...

The third edition of Jurisprudence offers a logically structured, comprehensive, well-researched and accessible overview of legal theory and philosophy. Written primarily for undergraduate students, it examines and demystifies the discipline's major ideas, and promotes a richer understanding of the social, moral and economic dimensions of the law. By locating the major traditions of jurisprudence within the history of ideas, the author deepens students' understanding of the perennial debat...

One of the most profound thinkers of modern history, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) was a central figure of the European Enlightenment. He was also its most formidable critic, condemning the political, economic, theological, and sexual trappings of civilization along lines that would excite the enthusiasm of romantic individualists and radical revolutionaries alike. In this study of Rousseau's life and works Robert Wokler shows how his philosophy of history, his theories of music and poli...

Family and Civilization is the magnum opus of Carle Zimmerman, a distinguished sociologist who taught for many years at Harvard University. In this unjustly forgotten work Zimmerman demonstrates the close and causal connections between the rise and fall of different types of families and the rise and fall of civilizations, particularly ancient Greece and Rome, medieval and modern Europe, and the United States. Zimmerman traces the evolution of family structure from tribes and clan...

Foundations of Public Law offers an account of the formation of the discipline of public law with a view to identifying its essential character, explaining its particular modes of operation, and specifying its unique task. Building on the framework first outlined in The Idea of Public Law (OUP, 2003), the book conceives public law broadly as a type of law that comes into existence as a consequence of the secularization, rationalization, and positivization of the medieval idea of fundamenta...

Roots of Freedom is a primer on the thinkers and ideas that, over many centuries, have laid the foundations of free societies. Concepts such as the rule of law, independent judiciary, limited government, free markets, and individual autonomy are traced in the writings of (among others) Luther, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Adam Smith, the American founders, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill.

The conflict between politics and antipolitics has replayed throughout Western history and philosophical thought. From the beginning, Plato's quest for absolute certainty led him to denounce democracy, an anti-political position challenged by Aristotle. In his wide-ranging narrative, Dick Howard puts this dilemma into fresh perspective, proving our contemporary political problems are not as unique as we think.Howard begins with democracy in ancient Greece and the rise and fall of r...

Concern with authority is as old as human history itself. Eve's sin was to challenge the authority of God by disobeying his rule. Frank Furedi explores how authority was contested in ancient Greece and given a powerful meaning in Imperial Rome. Debates about religious and secular authority dominated Europe through the Middle Ages and the Reformation. The modern world attempted to develop new foundations for authority – democratic consent, public opinion, science – yet Furedi shows that thi...