Political Philosophy

Few essays written in the last decades have caused so much fundamental rethinking. It is essential that libertarians get this issue right and understand the arguments on all sides. Kinsella's piece here is masterful in making a case against IP that turns out to be more rigorous and thorough than any written on the left, right, or anything in between.

From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 best-selling memoir Duty, a characteristically direct, informed, and urgent assessment of why big institutions are failing us and how smart, committed leadership can effect real improvement regardless of scale.

For the last 20 years, John Corvino - widely known as the author of the weekly column "The Gay Moralist" - has traversed the country responding to moral and religious arguments against same-sex relationships. In this timely audiobook, he shares that experience - addressing the standard objections to homosexuality and offering insight into the culture wars more generally. Is homosexuality unnatural? Does the Bible condemn it? Are people born gay (and should it matter either way)? Corvino approaches such questions with precision, sensitivity, and good humor.

Michael Nagler offers a step-by-step guide to using nonviolence creatively to confront any problem and to build change movements capable of restructuring the very bedrock of society. He identifies some specific tactical mistakes made by unsuccessful nonviolent actions, such as the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the Occupy protests, and includes stories of successful nonviolent resistance from around the world, including an example from Nazi Germany.

For 200 years, conservatism has defied its reputation as a backward-looking creed by confronting and adapting to liberal modernity. By doing so, the right has won long periods of power and effectively become the dominant tradition in politics. Yet, despite their success, conservatives have continued to fight with each other about how far to compromise with liberalism and democracy - or which values to defend and how. In Conservatism, Edmund Fawcett provides a gripping account of this conflicted history, clarifies key ideas, and illuminates quarrels within the right today.

From Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia, and from Poland to the Philippines, rapid change and rising inequality have fueled a retreat into tribalist nationalism fed by a fear of being left behind. Populist leaders tap into this fear, with empty promises of looking out for the little guy and promising a return to national greatness. This is happening in countries across the globe and the political spectrum. Political scientists Drache and Froese have turned original research into a compelling analysis of the rise of populism and reveal what it will take to douse the flames.

We in the West appear to be at a year zero, with the seeming end of the relative peace and prosperity we took for granted. The pandemic, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, growing tension with China, a rolling back of globalisation, Brexit, the return of inflation and painful interest rates - all these have shattered the illusions of the world as we knew it. For years our politicians have said they were going for growth and would ensure that those with least would benefit disproportionately from the proceeds of that growth. They've failed.

Machiavelli on War offers a comprehensive interpretation of the philosopher-historian's treatment of war throughout his writings, from poems and memoranda drafted while he was Florence's top official to his posthumous works, The Prince and Discourses on Livy. Christopher Lynch argues that the issue of war permeates the form and content of each of Machiavelli works, the substance of his thoughts, and his own activity as a writer, concluding that he was the first great modern philosopher because he was the first modern philosopher of war.

How much government is too much? What rights should be given up for government? It is the Social Contract which is the foundational discussion on these topics.

Meena Menon was The Hindu's correspondent in Islamabad till she was expelled by the Pakistani authorities in May 2014. In spite of her truncated stay and the restrictions placed on her movements, Menon managed to write on a range of subjects covering swathes of life in Islamabad.

"The Complexity of Harmony" explores the intricate process of achieving unity amidst diverse, often conflicting viewpoints. It delves into how individuals and groups with polarized perspectives can find common ground to work together toward shared goals. On October 8th, 2024 The Complexity of Harmony was the #1 Best Seller in the category of State and Local Government.

In "The Eternal Return of Fascism", Rob Riemen explores the theoretical weakness of fascism, which depends on a politics of resentment, the incitement of anger and fear, xenophobia, the need for scapegoats, and its hatred of the life of the mind. He draws on history and philosophy as well as the essays and novels of Thomas Mann and Albert Camus to explain the global resurgence of fascism, often disguised by its false promises of ushering in freedom and greatness.

The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. In it we find Marx and Engels' rehearsal of the idea that Capital has stolen away the work of the artisan and peasant by building up factories to produce goods cheaply. The efficiency of Capital depends, then, on the wage laborers who staff the factories and how little they will accept in order to have work. This concentrates power and money in a bourgeois class that profits from the disunity of workers (proletarians).

In just 1,337 words, the Declaration of Independence changed the world, but curiously it is now rarely read from start to finish, much less understood. Unsettled by this, Danielle Allen read the text quietly with students and discovered its animating power. "Bringing the analytical skills of a philosopher, the voice of a gifted memoirist, and the spirit of a soulful humanist to the task, Allen manages to find new meaning in Thomas Jefferson' s understanding of equality," says Joseph J. Ellis about Our Declaration.

When Lorenzo de' Medici seized control of the Florentine Republic in 1512, he summarily fired the Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Signoria and set in motion a fundamental change in the way we think about politics. The man who held the aforementioned office was none other than Niccolo Machiavelli, who, suddenly finding himself out of a job after 14 years of patriotic service, set a precedent for many a politician to come: He became a commentator and pundit.

In 63 BC, frustrated by his failure to be elected leader of the Roman Republic, the aristocrat Catiline tried to topple its elected government. Backed by corrupt elites and poor, alienated Romans, he fled Rome while his associates plotted to burn the city and murder its leading politicians. The attempted coup culminated with the unmasking of the conspirators in the Senate. In How to Stop a Conspiracy, Josiah Osgood presents a brisk, modern new translation of the definitive account of these events, Sallust's The War with Catiline.

Neoliberalism has become a dirty word. In political discourse, it stigmatizes a political opponent as a market fundamentalist; in academia, the concept is also mainly wielded by its critics, while those who might be seen as actual neoliberals deny its very existence. Yet, the term remains necessary for understanding the varieties of capitalism across space and time. Arguing that neoliberalism is widely misunderstood when reduced to a doctrine of markets and economics alone, this book shows that it has a political dimension that we can reconstruct and critique.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) - philosopher, historian, sociologist, economist, current affairs journalist, and editor - was one of the most influential and revolutionary thinkers of modern history, but he is rarely thought of as a Jewish thinker, and his Jewish background is either overlooked or misrepresented. Avineri puts Marx's Jewish background in its proper and balanced perspective, and traces Marx's intellectual development in light of the historical, intellectual, and political contexts in which he lived.

From poverty and policing, homelessness and overrun prisons to Grenfell and hostile environments, Britain has long been failing those who need our help the most. There is arguably one unifying theme that links all these afflictions: proximity. Proximity is how close we are to the action and how that affects how we assess, relate to and address whatever that action happens to be. Almost every job requires a level of experience and training with the notable exception of the most powerful people in the country—our political class.

We don't understand the reactionary mind. As a result, argues Mark Lilla in this timely book, the ideas and passions that shape today's political dramas are unintelligible to us. The reactionary is anything but a conservative. He is as radical and modern a figure as the revolutionary, someone shipwrecked in the rapidly changing present, and suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear that history is rushing toward catastrophe.