Government Philosophy

Incontournable ! À la fois philosophique, politique et stratégique, ce traité écrit au XVIe siècle reste d'une actualité déconcertante. Il y est question de la conquête du Pouvoir et de ce que le Prince doit faire pour le conserver.

In On Decline, Potter surveys the current problems and likely future of Western civilization (spoiler: it’s not great). Economic stagnation and the slowing of scientific innovation. Falling birth rates and environmental degradation. The devastating effects of cultural nostalgia and the havoc wreaked by social media on public discourse. Most acutely, the various failures of Western governments in their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. If the legacy of the Enlightenment and its virtues—reason, logic, science, evidence—has run its course, how and why has it happened?

This is the second of three volumes of posthumously collected writings of G. A. Cohen, who was one of the leading, and most progressive, figures in contemporary political philosophy. This volume brings together some of Cohen's most personal philosophical and nonphilosophical essays, many of them previously unpublished. Rich in first-person narration, insight, and humor, these pieces vividly demonstrate why Thomas Nagel described Cohen as a "wonderful raconteur".

In this timely new edition of his classic book A Political Philosophy, celebrated conservative philosopher Roger Scruton interrogates contemporary values, virtues and morality. What principles should govern our relations to animals, the nation state, the environment and other ways of life? What does modern marriage look like? What is Enlightenment, and how has its inheritance made itself known? How should we approach religion, evil and death? What explains the rise of totalitarianism, and how should we respond to nihilism?

Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In The Tragic Mind, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power.

Americans have never been more divided, and we're ripe for a breakup. The bitter partisan animosities, the legislative gridlock, the growing acceptance of violence in the name of political virtue - it all invites us to think that we'd be happier were we two different countries. There's another reason why secession beckons, says F. H. Buckley: we're too big. In population and area, the United States is one of the biggest countries in the world, and American Secession provides data showing that smaller countries are happier and less corrupt.

In this classic work, Leo Strauss examines the problem of natural right and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the centenary of Strauss's birth, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Walgreen Lectures which spawned the work, Natural Right and History remains as controversial and essential as ever.

In 1848, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO was published by two émigrés from Germany. Marx and Engels' apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system that penetrates every corner of the world reduces every relationship to that of profit, and burst asunder the old forms of production and of politics. It is still a recognisable picture of our world–the vampiric energy of the system being once again highly contentious.

"La República" es la más conocida e influyente obra de Platón, y es el compendio de las ideas que conforman su filosofía. Se trata de un diálogo entre Sócrates y otros personajes, como los discípulos o parientes del propio Sócrates. El tema central de la República es la reflexión sobre qué es la justicia y cómo se expresa en el hombre, lo que lleva a Platón a abordar la organización de la ciudad-estado ideal.

In Nordic Ideology, the anticipated sequel to The Listening Society, the great philosopher Hanzi Freinacht strikes again from his refuge in the Alps—now with a yet bolder mission: to write social and political theory as a thriller. This book can be listened to independently of the first one, and it outlines a path to a metamodern society, emerging from the Nordic countries—one that emerges from but ultimately cancels and outcompetes modern society as we know it, while saving the world-system from collapse. How can this be achieved?

The definitive edition of the late Sir Roger Scruton's philosophical and political essays and reviews, now collected in one volume, edited by Mark Dooley. The philosopher Roger Scruton was the leading conservative thinker of the post-war years. In this audiobook are assembled the very best of his essays and commentaries, arranged thematically. The selection has been made and edited by Mark Dooley, Scruton’s literary executor.

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a seminal work on crowd psychology by Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), a French social psychologist. He observes that a crowd forms when an influential idea unites a number of individuals and prompts them to act towards a common goal. In a crowd, the conscious personality of the individual is submerged and dominated by the collective mind. Furthermore, every sentiment becomes contagious to a degree that individuals readily sacrifice their personal interest to the collective.

A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.

We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive social order, and reveals how another way of life is possible—a good-enough life for all. Avram Alpert shows how our obsession with greatness results in stress and anxiety, damage to our relationships, widespread political and economic inequality, and destruction of the natural world. He describes how to move beyond greatness to create a society in which everyone flourishes.

"Philosophy in the Bedroom" ("La philosophie dans le boudoir") was written in 1795 by the Marquis de Sade, while imprisoned in the Bastille. It is a work of erotism, laced with socio-political subversion. The main characters are libertines, who decided to give a young maiden their own brand of sex education. They explain to her that pleasure is the most important goal of all, and then proceed with affirming that she will not be able to feel "true pleasure" without pain.

In 1848, The Communist Manifesto was published by two émigrés from Germany. Marx and Engels' apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system that penetrates every corner of the world reduces every relationship to that of profit, and burst asunder the old forms of production and of politics. It is still a recognisable picture of our world—the vampiric energy of the system being once again highly contentious. This is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today.

In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolution centered on women's rights. But that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard of: Kobani. By then, the Islamic State had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria alongside the United States.

When Hitler came to power in the 1930s, Germany had led the world in science, mathematics, and technology for nearly four decades. But while the fact that Hitler swiftly pressed Germany's scientific prowess into the service of a brutal, racist, xenophobic ideology is well known, few realize that German scientists had knowingly broken international agreements and basic codes of morality to fashion deadly weapons even before World War I.

David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature - human nature in particular. The Great Guide is an engaging and eye-opening account of how Hume's thought should serve as the basis for a complete approach to life. Julian Baggini masterfully interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of Hume's guide to life.

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.