Discourses on Livy is the founding document of modern republicanism, and Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov have provided the definitive English translation of this classic work. Faithful to the original Italian text, properly attentive to Machiavelli's idiom and subtlety of thought, it is eminently readable. With a substantial introduction, extensive explanatory notes, a glossary of key words, and an annotated index, the Discourses reveals Machiavelli's radical vision of a new science of politics, a vision of "new modes and orders" that continue to shape the modern ethos....

Few thinkers have enjoyed so pervasive an influence as Rousseau, who originated dissatisfaction with modernity. By exploring polarities articulated by Rousseau-nature versus society, self versus other, community versus individual, and compassion versus competitiveness-these fourteen original essays show how his thought continues to shape our ways of talking, feeling, thinking, and complaining.
The volume begins by taking up a central theme noted by the late Allan Bloom-Rousseau's critique of the bourgeois as the dominant modern human type and as a being fundamentally in contradiction,...