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Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought is firmly established as the major student series of texts in political theory. It aims to make available all the most important texts in the history of political thought, from ancient Greece to the twentieth century, from throughout the world and from every political tradition. All the familiar classic texts are included, but the series seeks at the same time to enlarge the conventional canon through a global scope and by incorporating an extensive range of less well-known works and previously marginalised voices, many of them never before available in a modern English edition. Where possible, the texts are published in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the series. However, where appropriate, abridged or tightly focused and thematic collections are offered instead. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with chronologies, biographical sketches, a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. Overall, the series aims to provide the reader with an outline of the entire evolution of political thinking on a global scale.

  • General Editors: Quentin Skinner, Queen Mary University of London
  • Editorial Boards: Michael Cook, Princeton University, New Jersey, Hannah Dawson, King’s College London, Adom Getachew, University of Chicago, Emma Hunter, University of Edinburgh, Gabriel Paquette, University of Oregon, Andrew Sartori, New York University, Hilde de Weerdt, Universiteit Leiden

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118 results in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought

Page 3 of 6

Revolutionary Writings
  • Reflections on the Revolution in France and the First Letter on a Regicide Peace
  • Edmund Burke
  • Edited by Iain Hampsher-Monk
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014
  • Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France was the first sustained theoretical critique of the French Revolution; and is now recognised as the classic statement of modern conservatism. Reflections surveys the British political culture of traditionalism, gradualism and deference, and contrasts it with the French Revolutionaries' programme of appeal to abstract right, transformational change and popular agency. Ultimately Burke advocated a counterrevolutionary war and the restoration of the French monarchy. This accessible new edition brings together for the first time Burke's first and last published thoughts on the revolution including as it does the first Letter on a Regicide Peace; a work that has contributed to a particular view of international society. Featuring a comprehensive introduction and extensive annotations, Iain Hampsher-Monk's edition helps readers new to Burke to better understand the historical, political and philosophical context behind his writings, and the significance of contemporary and classical allusions.

Thucydides
  • The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians
  • Thucydides
  • Edited and translated by Jeremy Mynott
  • Published online:
    05 April 2013
    Print publication:
    28 March 2013
  • Thucydides' classic work is a foundational text in the history of Western political thought. His narrative of the great war between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BC is now seen as a highly sophisticated study of the nature of political power itself: its exercise and effects, its agents and victims, and the arguments through which it is defended and deployed. It is therefore increasingly read as a text in politics, international relations and political theory, whose students will find in Thucydides many striking contemporary resonances. This edition seeks to present the author and the text in their proper historical context. The new translation is particularly sensitive to the risks of anachronism, and the notes and extensive reference material provide students with all the necessary historical, cultural and linguistic background they need to engage with the text on its own terms.

Lincoln
  • Political Writings and Speeches
  • Edited by Terence Ball
  • Published online:
    05 April 2013
    Print publication:
    13 December 2012
  • Abraham Lincoln occupies a unique place in the American pantheon. Symbol, sage, myth and martyr, he is an American icon – Honest Abe and The Great Emancipator, a Janus-faced demigod sculpted in marble. But this is the post-assassination Lincoln. During his lifetime Lincoln elicited very different reactions. The writings and speeches presented in this scholarly edition illuminate Lincoln as a political thinker in the context of his own time and political situation. Opening with a concise yet rich introduction, the texts that follow are complete and carefully edited, with extensive annotation and footnotes to provide a clearer insight into Lincoln the man, the politician and political thinker. His views on race and slavery, on secession and civil war and on the contradiction (as his saw it) between the Declaration of Independence ('all men are created equal') and the original Constitution (which condones slavery) are laid out in Lincoln's own well-crafted words.

Marsiglio of Padua: 'Defensor minor' and 'De translatione imperii'
  • Marsiglio of Padua
  • Edited by Cary J. Nederman
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    27 May 1993
  • 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.

Hegel: Political Writings
  • Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
  • Edited by Lawrence Dickey, H. B. Nisbet
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    05 August 1999
  • This major addition to the series of Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought seeks to give students with no specialist knowledge access to both the practical and the metaphysical aspects of Hegel's political thought. The ethical and metaphysical texts in this collection both illuminate and contrast with those political and historical texts in which Hegel draws important conclusions about the modern world from remarkable comparative analyses of recent developments in England, France and Germany. The translator of these texts, H. B. Nisbet, was responsible for the acclaimed rendition of Hegel's Philosophy of Right already published in this series, and Lawrence Dickey's lucid editorial commentary introduces this distinctive corpus of political writing by one of the very greatest thinkers in the European tradition. A full chronology, explanatory annotation, glossary and bibliography are appended to aid the student reader.

Tönnies: Community and Civil Society
  • Ferdinand Tönnies
  • Edited by Jose Harris
  • Translated by Margaret Hollis
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    02 July 2001
  • Ferdinand Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (first published in 1887) is a classic of social and political theory, which explores the clash between small-scale neighbourhood-based 'communities' and large-scale competitive market 'societies'. Tönnies considers all aspects of life - political, economic, legal and family; art, religion and culture; the construction of 'selfhood' and 'personhood'; and modes of cognition, language and understanding. Often recognised as one of the founding texts of sociology, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft is also a highly significant contribution to European political thought and philosophy, with particular relevance to the legacies of Hobbes and Kant. It is at once a response to modernity, a theoretical exercise in social, political and moral science, and an unusual commentary on the inner character of 'democratic socialism'. This new English rendition will introduce Tönnies' work to a fresh generation of English-speaking readers with interests in social and political theory and the history of European ideas.

Voltaire: Political Writings
  • Frangois Marie Voltaire
  • Edited by David Williams
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    24 June 1994
  • 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.

William of Ockham: A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government
  • William of Ockham
  • Edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade
  • Translated by John Kilcullen
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    20 August 1992
  • William of Ockham (c. 1285–c. 1347) was the most eminent and influential theologian and philosopher of his day, a giant in the history of political thought. He was a Franciscan friar who came to believe that the Avignonese papacy of John XXII had set out to destroy the religious ideal on which the Franciscan order was based: the complete poverty of Christ and the apostles. This is the first complete text by Ockham to be published in English. The Short Discourse is a passionate but compelling statement of Ockham's position on the most fundamental political problem of the medieval period: the relationship of supreme spiritual authority, as represented by the pope, to the autonomous secular authority claimed by the medieval empire and the emerging nation-states of Europe. Professor McGrade's introduction, and the notes on the translation make the volume wholly accessible to a modern readership, while a full bibliography and chronology are included as further aids to the reader.

Nietzsche: 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and Other Writings
  • 2nd edition
  • Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson
  • Translated by Carol Diethe
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    30 October 2006
  • Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers of the past 150 years and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is his most important work on ethics and politics. A polemical contribution to moral and political theory, it offers a critique of moral values and traces the historical evolution of concepts such as guilt, conscience, responsibility, law and justice. This is a revised and updated 2006 edition of one of the most successful volumes to appear in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Keith Ansell-Pearson modified his introduction to Nietzsche's classic text, and Carol Diethe incorporated a number of changes to the translation itself, reflecting the considerable advances in our understanding of Nietzsche. In this guise the Cambridge Texts edition of Nietzsche's Genealogy should continue to enjoy widespread adoption, at both undergraduate and graduate level.

Hooker: Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
  • Richard Hooker
  • Edited by A. S. McGrade
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 July 1989
  • The great Elizabethan divine Richard Hooker has occupied a prominent place in the intellectual history of the Church of England and sixteenth-century Protestantism but his wider significance has often been neglected. In his introduction to this selection of books from Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Professor McGrade demonstrates clearly the continued relevance and importance of the particular politico-religious project Hooker undertook and shows that The Laws offer far more than simply an apologia for the Elizabethan religious settlement. The text of this version is based on the authoritative Folger edition and presents those sections of The Laws most important to an understanding of Hooker's wider aims and context.

Bernstein: The Preconditions of Socialism
  • Eduard Bernstein
  • Edited by Henry Tudor
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    29 July 1993
  • This 1993 book was the first complete new translation of Bernstein's famous and influential work. It will provide students with an accurate and unabridged edition of the classic defence of democratic socialism and the first significant critique of revolutionary Marxism from within the socialist movement. First published in 1899, at the height of the Revisionist Debate, it argued that capitalism was not heading for the major crisis predicted by Marx, and that socialism could be achieved by piece-meal reform within a democratic constitutional framework. Bernstein's work is the focal point of one of the most important political debates of modern times, and crucial for the light it casts on 'the crisis of Communism'. The introduction sites Bernstein's work in its historical and intellectual context, and this edition also provides students with all the necessary reference material for understanding this important text.

Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints
  • Mary Wollstonecraft
  • Edited by Sylvana Tomaselli
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 July 1995
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, often described as the first major feminist, is remembered principally as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and there has been a tendency to view her most famous work in isolation. Yet Wollstonecraft's pronouncements about women grew out of her reflections about men, and her views on the female sex constituted an integral part of a wider moral and political critique of her times which she first fully formulated in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). Written as a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), this is an important text in its own right as well as a necessary tool for understanding Wollstonecraft's later work. This edition brings the two texts together and also includes Hints, the notes which Wollstonecraft made towards a second, never completed, volume of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Priestley: Political Writings
  • Joseph Priestley
  • Edited by Peter Miller
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    03 June 1993
  • Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) was arguably one of the most important and interesting English theorists to focus on the issue of political liberty during the English Enlightenment. His concept of freedom is of crucial importance to two of the major issues of his day: the right of dissenters to religious toleration, and the right of the American colonists to self-government. Despite the fundamental importance of both these themes in liberal political theory and their contemporary relevance to national self-determination, Priestley's writings lack a modern edition. This new collection will be the first to make accessible to students Priestleys' Essay on the First Principles and The Present State of Liberty, which encapsulate his political ideology. An introduction and notes, together with guides to further reading and key figures in the text provide the student with all the material necessary for approaching Priestley.

Emerson: Political Writings
  • Edited by Kenneth S. Sacks
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    22 May 2008
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson is the central figure in American political thought. Until recently, his vast influence was most often measured by its impact on literature, philosophy and aesthetics. In particular, Emerson is largely responsible for introducing idealism into America in the form of living one's life self-reliantly. But in the past few decades, critics have increasingly come to realize that Emerson played a key role in abolitionism and other social movements around the time of the American Civil War. This selection for Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought highlights not only Emerson's practical political involvement, but also examines the philosophical basis of his political writings. All of the usual series features are included, with a concise introduction, notes for further reading, chronology and apparatus designed to assist undergraduate and graduate readers studying this greatest of American thinkers for the first time.

Fénelon: Telemachus
  • Frangois de Fénelon
  • Edited by Patrick Riley
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 September 1994
  • Fénelon's Telemachus (1699) is, alongside Bossuet's Politics, the most important work of political theory of the grand siècle in France. It was also the most widely read work of the time, influencing Montesquieu and Rousseau in its attempt to combine monarchism with republican virtues. Fénelon tells of the moral and political education of Telemachus, young son of Ulysses, by his tutor Mentor (the goddess Minerva in disguise). Telemachus visits every corner of the Mediterranean world and learns patience, courage, modesty and simplicity, the qualities he will need when he succeeds Ulysses as King of Ithaca. It is the story of the transformation of an egoistic young man into a model ruler, and is meant (among other things) as a commentary on the bellicosity and luxuriousness of Louis XIV. The present English edition follows closely that of Tobias Smollett published in 1776.

Moses Hess: The Holy History of Mankind and Other Writings
  • Moses Hess
  • Edited and translated by Shlomo Avineri
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    02 December 2004
  • Moses Hess is a major figure in the development of both early communist and Zionist thought. The Holy History of Mankind appeared in 1837, and was the first book-length socialist tract to appear in Germany, representing an unusual synthesis of Judaism and Christianity that showed the considerable influence upon Hess of Spinoza, Herder and Hegel. In due course many of Hess's ideas would find their way into the work of Karl Marx, and into subsequent socialist thought. The distinguished political scientist Shlomo Avineri provides the first full English translation of this text, along with new renditions of Socialism and Communism, A Communist Credo; and The Consequences of a Future Revolution of the Proletariat. All of the usual reader-friendly series features are provided, including a chronology, concise introduction and notes for further reading, in a work of special relevance to students of politics, modern European history, and the history of Zionism.

Vico: The First New Science
  • Gianbattista Vico
  • Edited by Leon Pompa
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    11 July 2002
  • The First New Science gives a clear account of Vico's mature philosophy: the belief that certain functions which are necessary for the maintenance of human society and culture, including philosophy, also condition them historically. This challenges the traditional view that philosophy can lay claim to an historically independent viewpoint, thus bringing into question the legitimacy of the claims of universal prescriptive political theories as against the de facto political beliefs of particular historical societies. This is the first of Vico's later major books in which he wrote in Italian in order not merely to expound but to demonstrate in practice, his conception of the philosophical importance of etymology. This 2002 Cambridge Texts edition is the first complete English translation of the 1725 text. Accompanied by a glossary, bibliography, chronology of Vico's life and expository introduction, it makes this important work accessible to students for the first time.

Arnold: 'Culture and Anarchy' and Other Writings
  • Matthew Arnold
  • Edited by Stefan Collini
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    18 February 1993
  • Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy (1869) is one of the most celebrated works of social criticism ever written. It has become an inescapable reference-point for all subsequent discussion of the relations between politics and culture, and it has exercised a profound influence both on conceptions of the distinctive nature of British society, and on ideas about education and the teaching of literature more generally. This edition establishes the authoritative text of this much-revised work, and places it alongside Arnold's three most important essays on political subjects - Democracy, Equality, and The Function of Criticism at the Present Time. The editor's substantial introduction situates these works in the context both of Arnold's life and other writings, and of nineteenth-century intellectual and political history. This edition also contains a chronology of Arnold's life, a bibliographical guide and full notes on the names, books, and historical events mentioned in the texts.

Sorel: Reflections on Violence
  • Georges Sorel
  • Edited by Jeremy Jennings
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 November 1999
  • Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence is one of the most controversial books of the twentieth century: J. B. Priestley argued that if one could grasp why a retired civil servant had written such a book then the modern age could be understood. It heralded the political turmoil of the decades that were to follow its publication and provided inspiration for Marxists and Fascists alike. Developing the ideas of violence, myth and the general strike, Sorel celebrates the heroic action of the proletariat as a means of saving the modern world from decadence and of re-invigorating the capitalist spirit of a timid bourgeoisie. This edition of Sorel's classic text is accompanied by an editor's introduction by Jeremy Jennings, a leading scholar of political thought, both setting the work in its context and explaining its major themes. A chronology of Sorel's life and a list of further reading are included.

Tocqueville: The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution
  • Edited by Jon Elster
  • Translated by Arthur Goldhammer
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    20 June 2011
  • This translation of an undisputed classic aims to be both accurate and readable. Tocqueville's subtlety of style and profundity of thought offer a challenge to readers as well as to translators. As both a Tocqueville scholar and an award-winning translator, Arthur Goldhammer is uniquely qualified for the task. In his Introduction, Jon Elster draws on his recent work to lay out the structure of Tocqueville' argument. Readers will appreciate The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution for its sense of irony as well as tragedy, for its deep insights into political psychology and for its impassioned defense of liberty.

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