Political Thought

by Rosen, Michael; Wolff, Jonathan; McKinnon, Catriona

• ISBN13: 9780192892782
• ISBN10: 0192892789
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-12-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Human beings live together in societies which, by their very nature, give rise to institutions governing the behavior and freedom of individuals. This raises important questions about how these institutions ought to function, and the extent to which actual systems of government succeed or fail in meeting these ideals. This Oxford Reader contains 140 key writings on political thought, covering issues about human nature and its relation to society, the extent to which the powers of the State are justified, the tension between liberty and rights, and the way resources should be distributed. Topics such as international relations, minority rights, democracy, socialism, and conservatism are also discussed by contributors ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Foucault, Isaiah Berlin, and Martin Luther King.

Author Biography

Jonathan Wolff is Reader in Philosophy at University College London and author of An Introduction to Political Philosophy (OUP, 1996) and Robert Nozick (1991). Michael Rosen is a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, coeditor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, and author of Hegel's Dialectic and its Criticism (OUP, 1982) and The Need for Interpretation (Abalone, 1987).

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(10)
I. Human Nature
Introduction
The Natural State of Mankind	10	(1)
The State Exists by Nature	10	(1)
Aristotle
The Misery of the Natural Condition of Mankind	11	(3)
Thomas Hobbes
The State of Nature and the State of War	14	(4)
John Locke
Fear and Peace	18	(2)
Baron De Montesquieu
The Noble Savage	20	(3)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Man's Character is Formed for Him	23	(3)
Robert Owen
Man as a Productive Being	26	(2)
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels
Natural Selection	28	(2)
Charles Darwin
The Advantage of Morality	30	(1)
Charles Darwin
Mutual Aid	30	(4)
Peter Kropotkin
Man's Nature and Woman's Nature	34	(1)
Women as Weaker Partners	34	(2)
Plato
Separate Spheres	36	(1)
Aristotle
The Likeness and Unlikeness of the Sexes	37	(2)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Rights of Women	39	(1)
Mary Wollstonecraft
The Subjection of Women	40	(4)
John Stuart Mill
In a Different Voice	44	(5)
Carol Gilligan
Socialist Feminism and the Standpoint of Women	49	(5)
Alison M. Jaggar
II. The Justification of the State
Introduction	52	(2)
What is the State?	54	(1)
Political Power	54	(1)
John Locke
The State and Coercion	54	(2)
Max Weber
The Social Contract	56	(1)
Creating Leviathan	56	(3)
Thomas Hobbes
Express and Tacit Consent	59	(3)
John Locke
Natural Freedom and the Freedom of the Citizen	62	(2)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Hypothetical Contract	64	(2)
Immanuel Kant
Against the Social Contract	66	(1)
The Irrelevance of Consent	66	(3)
David Hume
Utility as the True Foundation	69	(1)
Jeremy Bentham
The Priority of the State over the Individual	70	(1)
G. W. F. Hegel
The Principle of Fairness	71	(2)
H. L. A. Hart
The Anarchist Response	73	(1)
Science and the People	73	(3)
Michael Bakunin
The Conflict of Autonomy and Authority	76	(2)
Robert Paul Wolef
Civil Disobedience	78	(1)
The Duty of Obedience	78	(3)
Plato
The Duty of Disobedience	81	(2)
Henry David Thoreau
An Unjust Law is No Law	83	(2)
Martin Luther King
Civil Disobedience	85	(6)
John Rawls
III. Democracy and Its Difficulties
Introduction	89	(2)
Against Democracy	91	(1)
Ruling as a Skill	91	(3)
Plato
The Englightened Despot	94	(2)
Frederick The Great
Democratic Ideals	96	(1)
The General Will	96	(1)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Freedom and Equality	97	(2)
Immanuel Kant
The Democratic Citizen	99	(1)
John Stuart Mill
Majority Rule	100	(3)
John Rawls
True and False Democracy	103	(1)
Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy	103	(1)
V. I. Lenin
Participatory Democracy	104	(2)
Carole Pateman
Dangers in Democracy	106	(1)
Rule of the People and Rule of Law	106	(1)
Aristotle
The Danger of Faction	107	(2)
James Madison
Tyranny of the Majority	109	(2)
Alexis De Tocqueville
Democracy and Bureaucracy	111	(1)
Bureaucratic Administration	111	(2)
Max Weber
Rule by Oligarchy	113	(2)
Vilfredo Pareto
Separation of Powers	115	(1)
Legislative, Executive, and Federative Powers	115	(2)
John Locke
The Ideal Constitution	117	(5)
Baron De Montesquieu
IV. Liberty and Rights
Introduction	119	(3)
What is Liberty?	122	(1)
The Liberty of the Ancients and the Liberty of the Moderns	122	(2)
Benjamin Constant
Two Concepts of Liberty	124	(4)
Isaiah Berlin
In Defence of Positive Freedom	128	(2)
Charles Taylor
No Right to Liberty	130	(3)
Ronald Dworkin
Law and Morality	133	(1)
One Simple Principle	133	(1)
John Stuart Mill
The Consequences of Liberty	134	(3)
James Fitzjames Stephen
The Enforcement of Morals	137	(3)
Partrick Devlin
The Changing Sense of Morality	140	(2)
H. L. A. Hart
Toleration and Free Expression	142	(1)
The Futility of Intolerance	142	(3)
John Locke
Free Expression and the Authority of the State	145	(3)
Thomas Scanlon
The Satanic Verses	148	(3)
Jeremy Waldron
Only Words	151	(4)
Catherine Mackinnon
Virtue and Citizenship	155	(1)
The Democratic Citizen	155	(1)
Pericles
The Requirements of Citizenship	156	(2)
Aristotle
The Servility of the Moderns	158	(1)
Niccolo Machiavelli
The Nature of Modern Servitude	159	(2)
Alexis De Tocqueville
The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty	161	(11)
Quentin Skinner
Rights	172	(1)
Nonsense on Stilts	172	(1)
Jeremy Bentham
The Rights of Egoistic Man	173	(3)
Karl Marx
Rights as Side-Constraints	176	(3)
Robert Nozick
Taking Rights Seriously	179	(2)
Ronald Dworkin
Punishment	181	(1)
In Favour of Capital Punishment	181	(1)
John Stuart Mill
Punishment and Responsibility	182	(2)
H. L. A. Hart
Where Deterrence Theory Goes Wrong	184	(6)
Robert Nozick
V. Economic Justice
Introduction	187	(3)
Private Property	190	(1)
Labour as the Basis of Property	190	(4)
John Locke
The Earth Belongs to Nobody	194	(1)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Property as Expression	194	(5)
G. W. F. Hegel
The Right to the Use of the Earth	199	(3)
Herbert Spencer
Money, the Universal Whore	202	(4)
Karl Marx
The True Foundation of Private Property	206	(1)
Karl Marx
Property and Aggression	207	(1)
Sigmund Freud
Reaping without Sowing	208	(2)
R. H. Tawney
Difficulties with Mixing Labour	210	(4)
Robert Nozick
The Market	214	(1)
The Dangers of Government Interference	214	(1)
Adam Smith
Appearance and Reality	215	(1)
Karl Marx
Prices as a Code	216	(2)
F. A. Hayek
The Tyranny of Controls	218	(4)
Milton Friedman
Rose Friedman
Poverty as Lack of Freedom	222	(2)
G. A. Cohen
Theories of Distributive Justice	224	(1)
The Grasshopper and the Ants	224	(1)
Aesop
Reciprocity	224	(2)
Aristotle
Equality and Inequality	226	(1)
Aristotle
The Common Stock	227	(2)
Gerald Winstanley
The Impossibility of Equality	229	(2)
David Hume
From Each According to His Abilities, To Each According to His Needs	231	(2)
Karl Marx
Looking Backward	233	(5)
Edward Bellamy
The Impossibility of Planning	238	(3)
F. A. Hayek
Two Principles of Justice	241	(4)
John Rawls
The Entitlement Theory	245	(3)
Robert Nozick
Equality of Resources	248	(9)
Ronald Dworkin
VI. Justice between Groups
Introduction	256	(1)
Peace and War	257	(1)
Perpetual Peace	257	(2)
Immanuel Kant
The Civilizing Influence of Commerce	259	(1)
Richard Cobden
Just and Unjust War	260	(3)
Michael Walzer
The Limits of Warfare	263	(4)
Thomas Nagel
Nationalism	267	(1)
National Sentiment	267	(2)
Isaiah Berlin
Is Patriotism a Virtue?	269	(16)
Alasdair Macintyre
Minority Rights	285	(1)
The Message of Affirmative Action	285	(3)
Thomas Hill
National Self-Determination	288	(4)
Avishai Margalit
Joseph Raz
Intergenerational Justice	292	(1)
Justice between Generations	292	(8)
Brian Barry
International Justice	300	(1)
Famine, Affluence and Morality	300	(4)
Peter Singer
Lifeboat Earth	304	(17)
Onora O'nell
VII. Alternatives to Liberalism
Introduction	319	(2)
Liberal Theory under Strain	321	(1)
Legitimation Crisis	321	(2)
Jorgen Habermas
Liberalism in Retreat	323	(1)
Michael Walzer
The Artificiality of Liberalism	324	(2)
Michael Walzer
Conservatism	326	(1)
Eternal Society	326	(2)
Edmund Burke
The Transmission of Culture	328	(3)
T. S. Eliot
On Being Conservative	331	(4)
Michael Oakeshott
Communitarianism	335	(1)
Identification and Subjectivity	335	(3)
Charles Taylor
Tradition and the Unity of a Life	338	(4)
Alasdair Macintyre
Conceptions of Community	342	(3)
Michael Sandel
Socialism	345	(1)
Work in Communist Society	345	(1)
Karl Marx
The Communist Manifesto	345	(3)
Karl Marx
The Realm of Freedom	348	(1)
Karl Marx
The Soul of Man under Socialism	348	(3)
Oscar Wilde
Productive Activity	351	(3)
Ernest Mandel
Socialism and Equality of Opportunity	354	(5)
G. A. Cohen
Post-modernism	359	(1)
The Impulse towards Justice	359	(1)
Friedrich Nietzsche
Power/Knowledge	360	(2)
Michel Foucault
The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy	362	(5)
Richard Rorty
VIII. Progress and Civilization
Introduction	366	(1)
The Effect of the Arts and Sciences	367	(2)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Division of Labour	369	(2)
Adam Smith
Fragmentation and Aesthetic Education	371	(5)
Friedrich Schiller
Development of the Productive Forces	376	(2)
Karl Marx
Our Self-Destructive Impulse	378	(2)
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Transition to Communism	380	(3)
Friedrich Engels
Disenchantment	383	(2)
Max Weber
The Utopian Method	385	(2)
Karl Popper
The End of History	387	(4)
Francis Fukuyama
Appendix: Fundamental Political Documents
US Declaration of Independence (1776)	391	(3)
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789)	394	(2)
The Bill of Rights (1789)	396	(1)
The Gettysburg Address (1863)	397	(1)
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)	398	(5)
Notes	403	(4)
Select Bibliography	407	(1)
Biographical Notes	407	(12)
Source Acknowledgements	419	(6)
Index	425