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This book contains a concise presentation of the major political theories underlying the Western tradition and contemporary ideological debates in America and the world. From the Ancients, Plato and Aristotle, to contemporary Americans, Rawls and Nozick, the book examines each thinker's conception of Human Nature, Political Society and Social Ethics. Extensive excerpts from the original writings and their relation to American political principles distinguish this valuable text.
List of contents
Preface - Acknowledgments - Introduction: What Is Political Theory? - Socrates: Political Questioning - Plato's Perfect Republic - Aristotle: Classical Democracy - Cicero: Roman Law and Empire - St. Augustine: Christian Political Theology - St. Thomas Aquinas: Catholic Political Theory - Machiavelli: Power Politics - Thomas Hobbes: British Liberalism - John Locke: Natural Rights - Jean Jacques Rousseau: French Liberalism - Edmund Burke: Conservatism - John Stuart Mill: Intellectual Liberty- Karl Marx: Communism - V.I. Lenin: Imperialism - Sigmund Freud: Psychology and Society - Giovanni Gentile: Fascism - Mihailo Markovic: Neo-Marxism - Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition - Robert Nozick: Libertarian - John Rawls: American Liberalism - Epilogue: A (Possible) Future Political Theory: The Web of Globalism.
About the author
Garrett Ward Sheldon is Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University; Moscow University; the University of Vienna, Austria; Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; and in Istanbul. He received a PhD from Rutgers University and studied at the New School for Social Research in New York City. He is the author of many books and articles on American political thought, religion and politics, and political culture and law.
