Political Philosophy

The first modern treatise of political philosophy, The Prince remains one of the world's most influential and widely read books. Machiavelli, whose name has become synonymous with expedient exercises of will, reveals nothing less than the secrets of power: how to gain it, how to wield it, and how to keep it. But curiously, this work of outspoken clarity has, for centuries, inspired myriad interpretations as to its author's true message.

That Donald Trump is an asshole is a fact widely agreed upon - even by his supporters, who actually like that about him. But his startling political rise makes the question of just what sort of asshole he is, and how his assholedom may help to explain his success, one not just of philosophical interest but of almost existential urgency. Enter the philosopher Aaron James, author of the foundational text in the burgeoning field of Asshole Studies: the best-selling Assholes: A Theory.

The Republic is a classic work by an ancient Greek philosopher Plato. There is one of the most famous dialogues of Plato about the arrangement of the state structure and the essence of the state (contemporary for Plato, of course, but also important nowadays because the whole modern so called "European civilisation" is based, first of all, on ancient schemes). The structure of Plato's dialogue is similar to others. Socrates and Glaucon are coming back to Athens from Piraeus. They are stopped by Polemarchus who invites them to visit him and talk.

In every issue of modern society - from climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense - we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need them most, scientists and the idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a vast, well-funded, three-part war on science: the identity politics war on science, the ideological war on science, and the industrial war on science.

Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or al-Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought - the shock and awe of global warming. Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter.

Cultural critic Susie Linfield investigates how eight prominent 20th-century intellectuals struggled with the philosophy of Zionism, and then with Israel and its conflicts with the Arab world. Constructed as a series of interrelated portraits that combine the personal and the political, the book includes philosophers, historians, journalists, and activists such as Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, I. F. Stone, and Noam Chomsky.

Deepak Chopra's passionate new book, Peace Is the Way, was inspired by a saying from Mahatma Gandhi: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." In a world where every path to peace has proved futile, the one strategy that hasn’t been tried is the way of peace itself. "We must not bring one war to an end, or thirty," Chopra tells us, "but the idea of war itself." How can this be done?

Martin Luther King Jr. may be America's most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. But despite his stature, the significance of King's writings and political thought remains underappreciated. In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry state that the marginalization of King's ideas reflects a romantic consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative - an effort not at radical reform but at "living up to" enduring ideals laid down by the nation's founders.

Two authors with decades of experience promoting human rights argue that, as the world changes around us, rights hardly imaginable today will come into being.

Lawyers don’t often admit this in mixed company, but Madiba Dennie wants to let you in on a secret: There's no one true way to interpret the Constitution. Americans saw just how subjective it can be when the Supreme Court denied basic bodily autonomy to millions of people in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, suggesting that our rights and liberties are frozen in a cherry-picked version of history. This is a line of constitutional interpretation called originalism—a framework that says we must be constrained by the meaning of the Constitution's text when it was written.

One of the most profound studies of warfare ever written, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China presents us with an Eastern tradition of strategic thought that emphasizes outwitting one's opponent through speed, stealth, flexibility, and a minimum of force - an approach very different from that stressed in the West, where the advantages of brute strength have overshadowed more subtle methods.

Long before the United States was a nation, it was a set of ideas, projected onto the New World by European explorers with centuries of belief and thought in tow. From this foundation of expectation and experience, America and American thought grew in turn, enriched by the bounties of the Enlightenment, the philosophies of liberty and individuality, the tenets of religion, and the doctrines of republicanism and democracy.

"The Prince" is a 16th-century political treatise by the Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus (Of Principalities). However, the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. This was done with the permission of the Medici pope Clement VII, but "long before then, in fact since the first appearance of The Prince in manuscript, controversy had swirled about his writings".

The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord — and with comparable elegance — it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors).

This pacifist manifesto was published in 1917, as the First World War was dragging to a close. The resolution of this catastrophic conflict resulted in a reconstruction of Europe, the fallout from which led to an even more cataclysmic war. Russell delineates the problem as being due to the institutionalizing of national hostilities and the consequent apportioning of blame among the warring parties. In his exposition Russell considers the roles played by a number of institutions, social and political, reserving some his sharpest criticism for organized religion.

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is an 1848 political document by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the Revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognised as one of the world's most influential political documents.

An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific method.

In a bold act of conscience, Republican Senator Jeff Flake takes his party to task for embracing nationalism, populism, xenophobia, and the anomalous Trump presidency. The book is an urgent call for a return to bedrock conservative principle and a cry to once again put country before party.

A fearless deep dive into the 2020 election from former MSNBC “Road Warrior” and now NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali, who covered the campaign trail every step of the way—investigating the gendered double standards placed on women presidential candidates of that cycle and those who came before, and what it will take for a woman to finally break the glass ceiling and win the White House.

Liberal democracy is the dominant political ideology in the West today. Taken at face value it suggests an equivalency between its two central components-liberalism and democracy - but as Fred Dallmayr argues here, the two operate in very different registers. The two frequently conflict, endangering our public life. This is evident in the rise of self-centered neo-liberalism as well as autocratic movements in our world today.