Tonnies' Community and Civil Society (first published in 1887 as Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft) is a classic of social and political theory, exploring the tension between close-knit "communities" and an emerging global market "society." It is a response to modernity, an exercise in social, political and moral science, and an unusual commentary on the inner character of "democratic socialism." This new translation and introduction make this important work much more readily accessible to student readers, and those interested in social and political theory and the history of European ideas.

This is the first complete new translation of Eduard Bernstein's (1850-1932) famous and influential work. It will provide students with an accurate and unabridged edition of the classic defense of democratic socialism and the first significant critique of revolutionary Marxism from within the socialist movement. First published in 1899, at the height of the Revisionist Debate, it argued that capitalism was not heading for the major crisis predicted by Marx, and that socialism could be achieved by piecemeal reform within a democratic constitutional framework. Bernstein's work is the focal...

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is an extremely influential figure in the history of Western thought and the Catholic church. In this major addition to the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series, Robert Dyson has translated texts by Aquinas that reflect the complete range of his thinking, and clearly show his development of a Christian version of the philosophy of Aristotle. His translations are supported by brief biographies, notes for further reading and a concise critical introduction.

A Holy Commonwealth was written in 1659 by the Puritan minister Richard Baxter (1615-91), and is a candid confession as to why a conservative Puritan fought for Parliament in the Civil War and gave his support to the Cromwells. Baxter publicly repudiated the work in 1670, and in 1683 the Oxford University authorities ordered it to be part of a book-burning that included the works of Hobbes and Milton. This modern edition makes available the work's unique perspective on the relation between Church and magistrate and the origins of the English Civil War.

Richard Price (1723-1791) was an eminent Welsh philosopher and Dissenting Minister. His political pamphlets won him considerable fame in the eighteenth century as a supporter of the American rebels in their struggle for independence, and for the enthusiasm with which he greeted the opening events of the French Revolution. It was this enthusiasm that provoked Edmund Burke into writing "Reflections on the Revolution of France." Price is noteworthy as a defender of freedom of thought (especially on religious matters), as a proponent of parliamentary reform, and as an advocate of a minimalist...

Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire Historique et Critique was a bestseller throughout Europe for two centuries. Sally L. Jenkinson's masterly new edition presents the reader with a coherent path through Bayle's vast work, uncovering Bayle's progressive views on toleration and elitism. This anthology is the first in English to present Bayle as a specifically political thinker. Jenkinson's authoritative translation, careful selection of texts, and lucid introduction will be welcomed by scholars and students of the history of ideas, political theory, cultural history and French studies.

The Federalist represents one side of one of the most momentous political debates ever conducted: whether to ratify, or to reject, the newly-drafted American constitution. To understand the debate properly requires attention to opposing Antifederalist arguments against the Constitution, and this new and authoritative student-friendly edition presents in full all eighty-five Federalist papers written by the pseudonymous 'Publius' (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay), along with the sixteen letters of 'Brutus', the prominent but still unknown New York Antifederalist who was Publius's most formidable...

Fenelon's Telemachus ranks with Bossuet's Politics as the most important work of political theory of the French grand siecle, influencing Montesquieu and Rousseau in its attempt to combine monarchism with republican virtues. Telling the tale of Ulysses' son Telemachus' education by his tutor Mentor (the goddess Minerva in disguise), it shows him learning the qualities of patience, courage, modesty and simplicity, needed when he succeeds as King of Ithaca. It is a commentary on the bellicosity and luxuriousness of Louis XIV.

Bolingbroke: Political Writings provides the first accessible, modernized and annotated texts of three of the most important works in eighteenth-century British political thought. These works, the Dissertation upon Parties, the letter "On the Spirit of Patriotism" and The Idea of the Patriot King together formed the first coherent platform of a political opposition movement in Anglo-American politics and influenced not only radicals in Britain, but the American Founding Fathers and the French Revolutionaries.

Almost on the eve of the sixteenth-century Reformation, the long-running debate over the respective authority of popes and councils in the Catholic Church was vigorously resumed. This book offers the first English translation of four major contributions to that debate. These complex arguments are fundamental for any society under government, whether church or state, and even on the threshold of the twenty-first century the concerns that underlie and animate these scholastic disputations continue to retain their force.