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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is the first to make a considerable number of Leibniz's writings available in English, and includes three previously unpublished manuscripts, a selection of political letters, an introduction, notes, and a critical biography.

Max Weber (1864-1920) is generally known as a founder of modern social science. The texts in this edition span his career and illustrate the development of his political thinking on the fate of Germany and the nature of politics in the modern western state and an age of cultural 'disenchantment'.

This volume offers clear and forceful contemporary translations of the most important of Seneca's 'Moral Essays': On Anger, On Mercy, On the Private Life and the first four books of On Favours. They give an attractive, full picture of the social and moral outlook of an ancient Stoic thinker intimately involved in the governance of the Roman empire in the mid first century of the Christian era. A general introduction describes Seneca's life and career and explains the fundamental ideas underlying the Stoic moral, social and political philosophy that informs the essays. Individual introductions, footnotes and biographical notes place the essays in their historical and philosophical contexts, and further assistance to students is provided by section headings in the translations which organize the principal transitions in the argument and the more unfamiliar aspects of Seneca's writing.

Statism and Anarchy is a complete English translation of the last work by the great Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin, written in 1873. Then 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 outlines his vision of an anarchist society and identifies the social forces he believes will achieve an anarchist revolution. Statism and Anarchy had an immediate influence on the 'to the people' movement of Russian populism, and Bakunin's ideas inspired significant anarchist movements in Spain, Italy, Russia and elsewhere. In a lucid introduction Marshall Shatz locates Bakunin in his immediate historical and intellectual context, and assesses the impact of his ideas on the wider development of European radical thought. A guide to further reading and chronology of events are also appended as aids to students encountering Bakunin's thought for the first time.

In seventeenth-century England, patriarchalist thinking shaped English ideas not only about the family but also about society and the state. Many thinkers argued that the state should be seen as a family, and that the king held the powers of a father over his subjects. The classic texts of patriarchal political thinking were written by Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653), one of the most acute defenders of absolute monarchy. In addition to presenting his own patriarchalist theory, Filmer's works contain incisive attacks on democratic thinking and on the notion that political obligation stems from a contract between ruler and ruled. His political works are here edited from the original manuscript and printed sources, with an introduction which locates Filmer's ideas in their historical and ideological contexts. These texts - to which John Locke replied in his influential Two Treatises of Government - provide highly important documents for the understanding of political and social ideas at a decisive stage in the development of English attitudes.

James VI and I united the crowns of England and Scotland. His books are fundamental sources of the principles which underlay the union. In particular, his Basilikon Doron was a best-seller in England and circulated widely on the Continent. Among the most important and influential British writings of their period, the king's works shed light on the political climate of Shakespeare's England and the intellectual background to the civil wars which afflicted Britain in the mid-seventeenth century. James' political philosophy was a moderated absolutism, with an emphasis on the monarch's duty to rule according to law and the public good. Locke quoted his speech to parliament of 1610 approvingly, and Hobbes likewise praised 'our most wise king'. This edition is the first to draw on all the early texts of James' books, with an introduction setting them in their historical context.

This is the revised version of Peter Laslett's acclaimed edition of Two Treatises of Government, which is widely recognised as one of the classic pieces of recent scholarship in the history of ideas, read and used by students of political theory throughout the world. This 1988 edition revises Dr Laslett's second edition (1970) and includes an updated bibliography, a guide to further reading and a fully reset and revised introduction which surveys advances in Locke scholarship since publication of the second edition. In the introduction, Dr Laslett shows that the Two Treatises were not a rationalisation of the events of 1688 but rather a call for a revolution yet to come.

The Education of a Christian Prince is a new student edition of Erasmus's crucial treatise on political theory. It contains a new, excerpted translation from his Panegyric, making it possible for the first time to compare two works which Erasmus himself regarded as closely related. The Education of a Christian Prince was published in 1516 and dedicated to Prince Charles, the future Emperor Charles V, and is one of the most influential books of the 'advice-to-princes' published in the Renaissance era. It is a strongly pacifist work in which Erasmus sought to ensure that the prince governed justly and benevolently. The importance of Erasmus's work lies in his emphasis on virtuous conduct as the backbone of the polity, an argument which has influenced political writing up to the present time. This edition also includes an original introduction, a chronology of the life and work of Erasmus, and a comprehensive guide to further reading.

We know more about the development of John Locke's ideas than we do about almost any other philosopher's before modern times. This book brings together a comprehensive collection of the writings on politics and society that stand outside the canonical works which Locke published during his lifetime. In the aftermath of the Revolution of 1688 the three works by which he is chiefly known appeared: the Two Treatises of Government, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and A Letter Concerning Toleration, and the themes raised in these works had been reflected upon over many years. Mark Goldie's edition makes possible the fullest exploration of the evolution of Locke's ideas concerning the philosophical foundations of morality and sociability, the boundary of church and state, the shaping of constitutions, and the conduct of government and public policy.

This volume makes available for the first time in English the writings about the Holy Roman Empire by Marsiglio of Padua (c.1275-1342), one of the most influential and original political thinkers of the Latin Middle Ages. Included are two major texts. The Defensor minor is a restatement and defence of the doctrines of Marsiglio's best known work, the Defensor pacis. As such it adds to our understanding of his previous thought while giving new dimensions to his theory. De translatione imperii (On the Transfer of the Empire) is a form of appendix to the Defensor pacis, in which Marsiglio's general intellectual framework is applied to an historical assessment of the legitimacy of the exercise of imperial power by the German king outside the authorisation of the pope.

John Milton was not only the greatest English Renaissance poet but also devoted twenty years to prose writing in the advancement of religious, civil and political liberties. The height of his public career was as chief propagandist to the Commonwealth regime which came into being following the execution of King Charles I in 1649. The first of the two complete texts in this volume, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, was easily the most radical justification of the regicide at the time. In the second, A Defence of the People of England, Milton undertook to vindicate the Commonwealth's cause to Europe as a whole.This book, first published in 1991, was the first time that fully annotated versions were published together in one volume, and incorporated a new translation of the Defence. The introduction outlines the complexity of the ideological landscape which Milton had to negotiate, and in particular the points at which he departed radically from his sixteenth-century predecessors.

This is the first collection of the writings of Edmund Burke which precede Reflections on the Revolution in France, and the first to do justice to the connections and breadth of Burke's thought. A thinker whose range transcends formal boundaries, Burke has been highly prized by both conservatives and liberals, and this new edition charts the development of Burke's 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. In the writings in this edition Burke indicated how societies embodying revealed religion and social hierarchy could sustain civilisation and political liberty. These thoughts reached their apogee in Reflections on the Revolution in France. This edition provides the student with all the necessary information for an understanding of the complexities of Burke's thought. Each text is prefaced by a summary and notes to the texts elucidate the literary and historical references. An introduction and biographical and bibliographical essays help place these works in the context of Burke's thought as a whole.

This edition of Voltaire's political writings presents a varied selection of his most interesting and controversial texts, many of which have not previously been translated into English. They range over the nature and legitimacy of political power, law and the social order, crime and punishment, liberty and humanity, war and peace, and the growing disorder in the French economy. They also touch on specific issues and events in pre-Revolutionary France to which Voltaire responded and in which he was closely involved, including the Seven Years' War and relations with Frederick II, the Genevan quarrels of the 1760s, and the sensational trials of Jean Calas, Sirven and the Chevalier de La Barre. A comprehensive introduction explores the background to these texts, which together reflect the full range of Voltaire's responses to the most significant issues of his time.

Joseph de Maistre's Considerations on France is the best known French equivalent of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. This new edition of Richard Lebrun's 1974 translation is introduced by Isaiah Berlin, with a bibliography and chronology by the translator. Published in 1797, the work of the self-exiled Maistre presents a providential interpretation of the French Revolution and argues for a new alliance of throne and altar under a restored Bourbon monarchy. Although the Directory and then Napoleon delayed Maistre's influence within France until the Restoration, he is now acknowledged as the most eloquent spokesperson for continental conservatism. Considerations on France was a shrewd piece of propaganda, but, as Isaiah Berlin contends, by arguing his case in broad historical, philosophical and religious terms, Maistre raises issues of enduring importance.

David Hume is commonly known as one of the greatest philosophers to write in English. He was also one of the foremost political and economic theorists and one of the finest historians of the eighteenth century. His political essays reflect the entire range of his intellectual engagement with politics - as political philosophy, political observation and political history - and function as an extension of and supplement to works such as his Treatise of Human Nature and his History of England. The twenty-seven most important essays are presented in this fully annotated edition, together with excerpts from the History of England which illuminate their context. This major addition to the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy and the history of ideas.

This is the first translation into English of Guicciardini's Dialogue on the Government of Florence. Written in the early 1520s by the author of the famous History of Italy, as well as a History of Florence and Political Maxims and Reflections, this dialogue presents what is arguably the most searching and comprehensive analysis of the politics of his times. Like Machiavelli, his contemporary and friend, Guicciardini rejects classical republican arguments in the name of the new political realism and acknowledges the important role of patronage and graft in contemporary politics and the illegitimacy of nearly all forms of political power. In this Dialogue he provides one of the clearest expositions of the term 'reason of state', which he was one of the first to employ and which he uses to justify the priority of state interest over private morality and religion.