Habermas and earlier members of the Frankfurt School have presented critical theory as a radically new form of knowledge. It is differentiated from the natural sciences as essentially 'reflective': the knowledge it provides guides us towards enlightenment as to our true interests, and emancipation from often unsuspected forms of external and internal coercion. Its first paradigms are in the writings of Marx and Freud. In this book Raymond Geuss sets out these fundamental claims and asks whether they can be made good. Is a science which does not simply describe and explain social phenomena,...

This volume contains the essential points of Jean Bodin's theory of sovereignty, a landmark in legal theory and royalist ideology. The four chapters presented form the core of Bodin's classic work, Six Livres de la Republique. Bodin was primarily responsible for introducing the seductive but erroneous notion that sovereignty is indivisible, that the entire power of the state had to be vested in a single individual or group. This thesis, combined with the prevailing crisis of authority during the French religious wars, led Bodin to a systematically absolutist interpretation of the French and...

In this selection of the political writings of Karl Marx that predate the Communist Manifesto, excerpts from the "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," "Points on the State and Bourgeois Society" and other writings are newly translated and arranged in a sequence that illuminates the development of his thought, while the introduction discusses the intellectual context of his theories. This volume will be an invaluable guide to the formation of one of the most influential doctrines in the history of political thought.

Leibniz's political and ethical writing long has been neglected, and with this new edition Professor Riley makes available the most representative pieces from Leibniz's political theory. This new edition, specially prepared for this series, is the first to make a considerable number of Leibniz's writings available in English, and includes three previously unpublished manuscripts, a selection of political letters, an introduction, notes, and a critical biography.

Samuel Pufendorf is one of the most important moral and political philosophers of the seventeenth century. His theory, which builds on Grotius and Hobbes, was immediately recognized as a classic and taken up by writers as diverse as Locke, Hume, Rousseau, and Smith. Over the past twenty years there has been a renaissance of Pufendorf scholarship. On the Duty of Man and Citizen is Pufendorf's own epitome of his monumental On the Law of Nature and of Nations, and it served as a basic text in European universities throughout the Enlightenment. This edition has a lucid and historically sensitive...

This is the first collection of the writings of Edmund Burke that precede Reflections on the Revolution in France. A thinker whose range transcends formal boundaries, Burke has been highly prized by both conservatives and liberal socialists, and this new edition charts the development of his thought and its importance as a response to the events of his day. Burke's mind spanned theology, aesthetics, moral philosophy and history, as well as the political affairs of Ireland, England, America, India and France, and he united these concerns in his view of inequality. This edition provides the...

Statism and Anarchy is a complete English translation of the last work by the great Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin. It was written in 1873, in the aftermath of the rise of the German Empire and the clash between Bakunin and Karl Marx in the first International. Bakunin assesses the strength of a European state system dominated by Bismarck. Then, in the most remarkable part of the book, he assails the Marxist alternative, predicting that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" will in fact be a dictatorship over the proletariat, and will produce a new class of socialist rulers. Instead, he...

This book is a collection of writings by early Reformation radicals that illustrates both the diversity and the areas of agreement in their political thinking. The texts are drawn from the period 1521-1527, centering on the German Peasants' War of 1524-1526. The thinkers represented--Muntzer, Karlstadt, Grebel, Hut, Denck, and others--differed on important theological issues, yet all rejected the magisterial Reformation as serving the interests of society's elites. They advocated a strategy of Reformation from below, a sweeping transformation of society to the benefit of the lay commoner and...

The Holy History of Mankind was published in 1837, the first book-length socialist tract to appear in Germany, representing an unusual synthesis of Judaism and Christianity. (Moses Hess was a major figure in the development of both early communist and Zionist thought.) Shlomo Avineri provides the first complete English translation of this classic text, along with new renditions of Sozialsmus und Kommunismus and Ein Kommunistisches Bekenntis. The volume includes a chronology, concise introduction and notes for further reading.

This account of the basic theme of Vico's mature philosophy explores the question of whether philosophical theories can ever be more than an intellectual expression of the underlying beliefs of an age. The first complete English translation of the 1725 text, Vico's The First New Science ia now accessible to a broad, new readership. It is accompanied by a glossary, bibliography, chronology of Vico's life and expository introduction.