Among the most influential writings in the history of Western political thought, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration remain vital to political debates today, more than three centuries after they were written. The complete texts appear in this volume, accompanied by interpretive essays by three prominent Locke scholars.

Ian Shapiro's introduction places Locke's political writings in historical and biographical context. John Dunn explores both the intellectual context in which Locke wrote the Two Treatises of Government...

John Dunn is the founding father of the Cambridge school, which introduced an approach to political theory that emphasizes the importance of historical context in the formation and interpretation of arguments and ideas. The Cunning of Unreason makes a powerful case for the application of the Cambridge school approach to the current political climate. Emphasizing the tempering influence of actual social and political circumstances, as well as the enduring relevance of great political thinkers from Aristotle to Marx, Dunn addresses contemporary debates about democracy, corruption,...

This study provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of the meaning of Locke's political thought. John Dunn restores Locke's ideas to their exact context, and so stresses the historical question of what Locke in the Two Treatises of Government was intending to claim. By adopting this approach, he reveals the predominantly theological character of all Locke's thinking about politics and provides a convincing analysis of the development of Locke's thought. In a polemical concluding section, John Dunn argues that liberal and Marxist interpretations of Locke's politics have failed to grasp his...

'Why do any human beings choose to be socialists? Why has socialist politics proved in practice so frequently disappointing? How far can socialist ideas still serve to inform and guide political judgement in modern states for the better? Are the evident weaknesses of socialist politics in all its varieties likely to lead to its disappearance from modern political activity in the readily imaginable future?' These are the questions John Dunn faces in this book, offering an appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of socialism as a political theory. Its strengths, he argues, will always lie in...

The West African states have reached maturity. This new volume--appearing a decade after the successful West African States: Failure and Promise--provides up-to-date studies of nine states, including Chad, Burkina Faso and Cameroon, which were neglected in the earlier volume, and introduces contemporary theories of West African politics. The book reflects changes on the ground and also in academic debate, notably the remarkable retreat of dependency theory and Marxian analysis and the rise of free-market theorizing by both governments and scholars. The volume also contains important...

Modern Revolutions has been the standard single-volume interpretation of its subject since its publication in 1972. Successive generations of students have welcomed Professor Dunn's lucid attempt to distinguish between ideological assessments of the desirability of eight contemporary revolutions and specific explanations of why they occurred. In this updated edition, Dunn assesses the major advances in the interpretation of revolutionary experience achieved since 1971, and considers the prospective impact of the revolutions of the past two decades on future revolutionary possibilities.

The most important theoretical and practical problem of contemporary political understanding is the problem of how to understand the economic dimension. It is a central cognitive responsibility of contemporary political science, economics, and sociology to show us exactly how it can be understood. But none of these social sciences at present offers a compelling general approach to such understanding. The purpose of this volume is to bring out the historical novelty and intellectual importance of this predicament, to show how it has arisen, and to suggest, by bringing it into clearer and...

In this collection of recent essays (several appearing in English for the first time), John Dunn brings his penetrating insight to a wide range of political issues. He argues for the importance of a historical perspective in political thought, engages with central concepts such as obligation, trust, and freedom of conscience, and tackles contemporary problems such as racism and humanitarian intervention. The volume provides a representative collection of work by one of the most astute political commentators writing today.

In this collection of recent essays (several appearing in English for the first time), John Dunn brings his penetrating insight to a wide range of political issues. He argues for the importance of a historical perspective in political thought, engages with central concepts such as obligation, trust, and freedom of conscience, and tackles contemporary problems such as racism and humanitarian intervention. The volume provides a representative collection of work by one of the most astute political commentators writing today.

John Dunn's Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future demonstrates that the major traditions of thought from which the political values of the modern West have emerged are all, in the light of recent world history, in crucial respects incoherent or flawed. This second edition underlines the drastic changes in the challenges which face the world, in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of the Cold War, stressing the ever tighter linking of the global economy with the ecology in which we live, and the problems which this poses for the survival of civilisation.