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Classics in the History of Political Thought
This List Is By:
Liberty Fund Staff
Liberty Fund, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
This is a collection of the most significant writings in the history of political thought. It is designed to bring together in one convenient location the readings which a typical college course on this topic might require.
The texts are listed in chronological order.
The Dialogues of Plato
The foundation stones of western political thought were laid by the ancient Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle.
Plato (429-347 BC) is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived — a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method — can be called his invention. Few other authors in the history of philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank.
A 5 volume edition of Plato by the great English Victorian Greek scholar, Benjamin Jowett. The scholarly apparatus is immense and detailed. The online version preserves the marginal comments of the printed edition and has links to all the notes and comments provided by Jowett.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato translated into English with Analyses and Introductions by B. Jowett, M.A. in Five Volumes. 3rd edition revised and corrected (Oxford University Press, 1892).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/166 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Plato, The Republic
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato translated into English with Analyses and Introductions by B. Jowett, M.A. in Five Volumes. 3rd edition revised and corrected (Oxford University Press, 1892). Chapter: THE REPUBLIC.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/767/93795 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Aristotle, Politics
Aristotle (384-322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who set up a rival academy, The Lyceum, to challenge Plato’s Academy. Aristotle wrote influential works in a range of disciplines - politics, physics, ethics, economics - and had a profound impact on Western thought.
Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, trans. into English with introduction, marginal analysis, essays, notes and indices by B. Jowett. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1885. 2 vols. Vol. 1.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/579 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
St, Augustine, The City of God
Saint Augustine (354-430) was bishop of Hippo in Roman Africa from 396 to 430 and may have been the most important theologian of the early Christian church during the last days of the western Roman Empire. His best known works are the Confessions and the City of God.
Saint Augustine, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Vol. II St. Augustin’s City of God and Christian Doctrine, ed. Philip Schaff, LL.D. (Buffalo: The Christian Literature Co., 1887). Chapter: THE CITY OF GOD.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/2053/152751 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)
Machiavelli (1469-1527) was an Italian Renaissance political philosopher who on the eve of the Reformation, when the city states of northern Italy were in turmoil, wrote his famous advice to a Prince on how to get and keep political power.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, tr. from the Italian, by Christian E. Detmold (Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1882). Vol. 2. Chapter: THE PRINCE.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/775/75825 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Machiavelli, The Discourses on Livy (1519)
Machiavelli’s more extended thoughts on political theory came in a series of discourses on the work of the Roman historian Titus Livius.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, tr. from the Italian, by Christian E. Detmold (Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1882). Vol. 2. Chapter: DISCOURSES on the FIRST TEN BOOKS OF TITUS LIVIUS.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/775/75879 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher who lived during the English Revolution. He is most famous for his work of political philosophy The Leviathan.
The 1909 edition of Hobbe’s best known work of political philosophy is the edition used by Michael Oakeshott in his discussion of Hobbe’s ideas in Hobbes on Civil Association (1937, 1975 Liberty Fund).
Thomas Hobbes, Hobbes’s Leviathan reprinted from the edition of 1651 with an Essay by the Late W.G. Pogson Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/869 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)
James Harrington (1611-1677) was a leading English Republican political theorist of the 17th century. During the English Revolution (or Civil War) of the mid-17th century a number of political theorists were forced to rethink their views about sovereignty and political power. Harrington argued for a republic.
James Harrington, The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, with an Account of His Life by John Toland (London: Becket and Cadell, 1771). Chapter: THE COMMONWEALTH OF OCEANA. TO HIS HIGHNESS The Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/916/75592 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Locke, The Two Treatises of Civil Government (1689)
John Locke (1632-1704) was an English philosopher who is considered to be one of the first philosophers of the Enlightenment and the father of classical liberalism. In his major work Two Treatises of Government Locke rejects the idea of the divine right of kings, supports the idea of natural rights (especially of property), and argues for a limited constitutional government which would protect individual rights.
Locke’s most famous work of political philosophy began as a reply to Filmer’s defense of the idea of the divine right of kings and ended up becoming an defense of natural rights, especially property rights, and of government limited to protecting those rights. This 1764 edition is famous for being the edition which was widely read in the American colonies on the eve of the Revolution.
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Thomas Hollis (London: A. Millar et al., 1764).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/222 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739)
Hume’s first major work of philosophy published in 1739 when he was just 29 yeas old. It is made up of three books entitled “Of the Understanding”, “Of the Passions”, and “Of Morals”. In the book he uses his sceptical rationalism to create an ambitious “science of man”.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume, reprinted from the Original Edition in three volumes and edited, with an analytical index, by L.A. Selby-Bigge, M.A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/342 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (1748)
Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) was one of the most influential legal theorists and political philosophers of the 18th century. His ideas about the separation of powers and checks on the power of the executive had a profound impact on the architects of the American constitution.
This is volume 1 from the Complete Works. The Spirit of Laws is Montesquieu’s best known work in which he reflects on the influence of climate on society, the separation of political powers, and the need for checks on a powerful executive office.
Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 1.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/837 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Rousseau, The Social Contract (1761)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Swiss philosopher and novelist who was an important figure in the Enlightenment. In his novels and discourses he claimed that civilization had weakened the natural liberty of mankind and that a truly free society would be the expression of the “general will” of all members of that society. He influenced later thinkers on both ends of the political spectrum.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated with an Introduction by G.D. H. Cole (London and Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1923). Chapter: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT or PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/638/70977 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 2. Chapter: A SUMMARY VIEW OF THE RIGHTS OF BRITISH AMERICA. SET FORTH IN SOME RESOLUTIONS
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/755/86029 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (1776)
Thomas Jefferson (1793-1826), a Virginian, was the author of the American Declaration of Independence (1776), an active participant in the Revolution, Governor of Virginia (1779), member of Congress, Minister to France, Secretary of State under President Washington, and president of the United States (1800). He was a polymath who wrote on and was knowledgeable about science, architecture, music, agriculture, law, education, geography, and music.
Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 2. Chapter: declaration of independence 1
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/755/86068 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Hume, Essays Moral, Political, Literary (1777)
David Hume was a moral philosopher and historian and a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment. In philosophy he was a skeptic. In his multi-volume History of England he showed how the rule of law and the creation of an independent judiciary created the foundation for liberty in England. Hume also wrote on economics, was a personal friend of Adam Smith,and was a proponent of free trade. His works highlighted the neutrality of money and the errors of the mercantilists (whose flawed theories in favor of increased exports in order to build up a stock of gold remain the foundations of many public policies even today).
“We have Hume’s own word that the definitive statement of his philosophy is not to be found in the youthful Treatise of Human Nature but in the 1777 posthumous edition of his collected works entitled Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. Yet a major part of this definitive collection, the Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (a volume of near 600 pages, covering three decades of Hume’s career as a philosopher) has been largely ignored. The volume has rarely been in print, and the last critical edition was published in 1874-75. With this splendid, but inexpensive, new critical edition by Eugene Miller, the door is open to a richer notion of Hume’s conception of philosophy.” (Donald Livingston, Emory University). This edition contains the thirty-nine essays included in Essays, Moral, and Literary, that made up Volume I of the 1777 posthumous Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. It also includes ten essays that were withdrawn or left unpublished by Hume for various reasons. The two most important were deemed too controversial for the religious climate of his time.
David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, Literary, edited and with a Foreword, Notes, and Glossary by Eugene F. Miller, with an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, revised edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1987).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/704 on 2008-03-13
The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.
Hamilton, Madison, Jay, The Federalist (1788)
The Federalist, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, constitutes a text central to the American political tradition. Published in newspapers in 1787 and 1788 to explain and promote ratification of the proposed Constitution for the United States, which up to then were bound by the Articles of Confederation, The Federalist remains today of singular importance to students of liberty around the world. The new Liberty Fund edition presents the text of the Gideon edition of The Federalist, published in 1818, which includes the preface to the text by Jacob Gideon as well as the responses and corrections prepared by Madison to the McLean edition of 1810. The McLean edition had presented the The Federalist texts as corrected by Hamilton and Jay but not reviewed by Madison. The Liberty Fund The Federalist also includes a new introduction, a Reader’s Guide outlining - section by section - the arguments of The Federalist, a glossary, and ten appendixes, including the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Virginia Resolution Proposing the Annapolis Convention, and other key documents leading up to the transmission of the Constitution to the governors of the several states. Finally, the Constitution of the United States and Amendments is given, with marginal cross-references to the pertinent passages in The Federalist that address, argue for, or comment upon the specific term, phrase, section, or article of the Constitution.
George W. Carey, The Federalist (The Gideon Edition), Edited with an Introduction, Reader’s Guide, Constitutional Cross-reference, Index, and Glossary by George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/788 on 2008-03-13
The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was an English political philosopher who is often seen as laying the foundations of modern conservatism. Although he supported the American colonies in the revolution against the British crown, he strongly opposed the French Revolution, the rise of unbridled democracy, and the growing corruption of government.
Edmund Burke, Select Works of Edmund Burke. A New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Foreword and Biographical Note by Francis Canavan (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999). Vol. 2.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/656 on 2008-03-13
The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.
Paine, The Rights of Man Part I (1791)
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was a vigorous defender of and participant in both the American and French Revolutions. His most famous work is Common Sense (1776) which was an early call for the independence of the American colonies from Britain. His other well known work is The Rights of Man (1791) which was a reply to Burke’s critique of the French Revolution.
Thomas Paine, The Writings of Thomas Paine, Collected and Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894). Vol. 2. Chapter: XIII.: RIGHTS OF MAN.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/344/17349 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Pece (1795)
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher who taught for many years at the University of Koenigsberg. He made pivotal contributions to the study of ethics and epistemology and was a leading figure in the German Enlightenment.
Kant wrote this essay in 1795 during a lull in the fighting of the French Revolutionary Wars. He believed that the Treaty of Bale was an example of how civilised nations might limit the destructiveness of war in the future.
Immanuel Kant, Kant’s Principles of Politics, including his essay on Perpetual Peace. A Contribution to Political Science, trans. W. Hastie (Edinburgh: Clark, 1891). Chapter: PERPETUAL PEACE. A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY. 1795.
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/358/56096 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
Kant, The Philosopy of Law (1796)
Immanuel Kant, The Philosophy of Law: An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the Science of Right, by Immanuel Kant, trans. W. Hastie (Edinburgh: Clark, 1887).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/359 on 2008-03-13
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Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)
Tocqueville was an enormously influential French political philosopher, politician, and historian. After a trip to the U.S. in 1831 to observe the penal system he wrote Democracy in America (1835). He served as a member of parliament in the July Monarchy and the 1848 Revolution, writing an important memoir about the events of that upheaval. His last major work was a unfinished history of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution (1856).
Liberty Fund will be publishing in the near future a new translation of this work based upon the modern French critical edition.
A revised and corrected 12th edition in French of Tocqueville’s famous analysis of the nature and consequences of democracy in the American Republic. In 4 vols.
Alexis de Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, 4 vols., revue et corrigée, et augmenté d’un Avertissement et d’un Examen comparatif de la Démocratie aux États-Unis et en Suisse (Paris: Pagnerre, 1848).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1733 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
J.S. Mill, On Liberty (1859)
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was the precocious child of the Philosophical Radical and Benthamite James Mill. Taught Greek, Latin, and political economy at an early age, He spent his youth in the company of the Philosophic Radicals, Benthamites and utilitarians who gathered around his father James. J.S. Mill went on to become a journalist, Member of Parliament, and philosopher and is regarded as one of the most significant English classical liberals of the 19th century.
On Liberty is his best known work and is a defence of individual liberty and the need to protect it from encroachments by both the crowd and the state.
John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XVIII - Essays on Politics and Society Part I, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by Alexander Brady (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977). Chapter: ON LIBERTY 1859
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/233/16550 on 2008-03-13
The online edition of the Collected Works is published under licence from the copyright holder, The University of Toronto Press. ©2006 The University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of The University of Toronto Press.
Marx, Capital vol. 1 (1867)
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was the leading 19thC theorist of socialism. Marx prided himself on having discovered the “laws” which governed the operation of the capitalist system, laws which would inevitably lead to its collapse. His form of socialism, in which the socialist party leaders would guide the working class in a “dictatorship of the proletariat” in order to destroy the capitalist system by means of a revolution, should be distinguished from the “utopian socialists”, who wanted to create small, voluntary communities where socialism could be put into practise, and the “social democrats” or “labour parties”, which planned to work peacefully within the parliamentary system in order to bring about piecemeal socialist reform. He was born in Trier in Germany and studied philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He first worked as a journalist in the early 1840s but was forced to flee to Paris and then to London in order to escape the censors. It was only in the liberal political environment of London that Marx was able to write his most famous critique of the capitalist system.
Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Capitalist Production, by Karl Marx. Trans. from the 3rd German edition, by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, ed. Federick Engels. Revised and amplified according to the 4th German ed. by Ernest Untermann (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1909).
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/965 on 2008-03-13
The text is in the public domain.
J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869)
Mill’s second great defence of individual liberty was published 10 years after his first, and it deals with the situation of women.
John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXI - Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by Stefan Collini (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984). Chapter: THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN 1869
Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/255/21684 on 2008-03-13
The online edition of the Collected Works is published under licence from the copyright holder, The University of Toronto Press. ©2006 The University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of The University of Toronto Press.