Thomas Paine, defender of freedom, independence, and rational common sense during America's turbulent revolutionary period, offers insights into religion which ring sharply true more than two centuries later. This unabridged edition of The Age of Reason sets forth Paine's provocative observations on the place of religion in society.

"I think all the great religions of the world - Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism - both untrue and harmful. It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true."
Bertrand Russell wrote these words in his famous essay, "Why I Am Not A Christian." In Bertrand Russell on God and Religion, Al Seckel presents in one volume the severe scrutiny Russell brought to bear on organized religion in his best essays.
Bertrand Russell on God and Religion is an exhaustive compilation of Russell's best essays on religion,...

Since Old Testament days discrimination against minorities and other groups has been the rule in history rather than the exception. Chief among these repressive attitudes has been the inferior social and political status of women. Mill offers compelling arguments against the disenfranchisement of women, the infringement of their property rights, and the second-class status they experienced within marriage. One of England's most influential social philosophers, Mill sets the keen sights of his critical, analytic eye on the socio-political justifications for gender supremacy in...

In the rich history of political philosophy, great minds have sought to define the nature and extent of human freedom, with careful justifications offered for the principles proposed. This tradition experienced a heightened degree of enthusiastic intensity upon the publication of On Liberty in England during the nineteenth century.
In this, his most powerful essay, John Stuart Mill defends individual liberty against both social and political encroachment, by daring to suggest that lines of demarcation be drawn to outline the proper role of government with respect to individual freedom....

As one of the early Enlightenment philosophers in England, John Locke sought to bring reason and critical intelligence to the discussion of the origins of civil society.
Endeavoring to reconstruct the nature and purpose of government, a social contract theory is proposed. The Second Treatise sets forth a detailed discussion of how civil society came to be and the nature of its inception. Locke's discussion of tacit consent, separation of powers, and the right of citizens to revolt against repressive governments, has made The Second Treatise one of the most influential essays in the...

Written in part as a theoretical reply to the stodgy conservatism of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution (1790), Paine's Rights of Man (1791-92) sets forth a manifesto of popular democratic rule in the established tradition of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In it Paine offers a discussion of the nature of political man and proceeds to encourage the grass-roots revolutionary movements that seek to analyze critically and, where necessary, reform or replace social and political institutions, many of which tend only to repress those whom they were initially...

During his long life (1872-1970) Bertrand Russell was one of a handful of social thinkers, let alone internationally recognized philosophers, whose views on contemporary issues won for him a devoted and supportive audience on the one hand and a host of vituperative critics on the other. Russell's revolutionary writings frequently placed him in the center of controversy with conservatives and all those who were unwilling to consider moral questions from a rational rather than an emotional stance.
Al Seckel has compiled an exhaustive collection of Russell's very best and most...

Communism as a political movement attained global importance after the Bolsheviks toppled the Russian Czar in 1917. After that time the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, especially the influential Communist Manifesto (1848), enjoyed an international audience. The world was to learn a new political vocabulary peppered with "socialism," "capitalism," "the working class," "the bourgeoisie," "labor theory of value," "alienation," "economic determinism," "dialectical materialism," and "historical materialism." Marx's economic analysis of history has been a powerful legacy, the effects of...

One of his great works, and a must-read for any student of philosophy, The Problems of Philosophy was written in 1912 as an introduction to Russell's thought. As an empiricist, Russell starts at the beginning with this question: Is there any knowledge in the world that is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This, according to Russell, is where the work of philosophy begins. He covers topics such as reality, the nature of matter, inductive reasoning, truth, and the limits of philosophical knowledge. As one of the greatest minds in Western philosophy, Russell's thoughts are...

Throughout history, but most especially during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, great minds of philosophy grappled with two thorny questions: What are the objects of knowledge? and How do we come to know them? Using the revealing dialogue technique, Berkeley shakes the very ground of those who believe that something called matter exists to support the sensible qualities we perceive. In his critique of this view, Berkeley argues for ideas in the mind as the only true reality about which one can have knowledge. His arguments for these conclusions, and for the ultimate foundation of all...