The Best Political Philosophy Books 2024

1. Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics, Used [Paperback]

Hannah Arendt is one of the most important political theorists of the twentieth century. In her works, she grappled with the dark events of that century, probing the nature of power, authority, and evil, and seeking to confront totalitarian horrors on their own terms. This book focuses on how, against the professionalized discourses of theory, Arendt insists on the greater political importance of the ordinary activity of thinking. Indeed, she argues that the activity of thinking is the only reliable protection against the horrors that buffeted the last century. Its essays explore and enact that activity, which Arendt calls the habit of erecting obstacles to oversimplifications, compromises, and conventions. Most of the essays were written for a conference at Bard College celebrating the 100th anniversary of Arendt's birth. Arendt left her personal library and literary effects to Bard, and she is buried in the Bard College cemetery. Material from the Bard archive--such as a postcard to Arendt from Walter Benjamin or her annotation in her copy of Machiavelli's The Prince--and images from her life are interspersed with the essays in this volume. The volume will offer provocations and insights to Arendt scholars, students discovering Arendt's work, and general readers attracted to Arendt's vision of the importance of thinking in our own dark times.

Thinking in Dark Times : Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics, Used [Paperback]

2. Political Ideals, Used [Paperback]

In this volume Bertrand Russell outlines the basic tenets of his political code. He shows that to think, speak and act without interference is our most cherished freedom, and that political ideals must be based upon the ideals of the individual.

Political Ideals, Used [Paperback]

3. Event: A Philosophical Journey Through a Concept, Used [Paperback]

Probably the most famous living philosopher, Slavoj Zizek explores the meaning of events in this short and digestible book An event can be an occurrence that shatters ordinary life, a radical political rupture, a transformation of reality, a religious belief, the rise of a new art form, or an intense experience such as falling in love. Taking us on a trip that stops at different definitions of event, Zizek addresses fundamental questions such as: are all things connected? How much are we agents of our own fates? Which conditions must be met for us to perceive something as really existing? In a world that's constantly changing, is anything new really happening? Drawing on references from Plato to arthouse cinema, the Big Bang to Buddhism, Event is a journey into philosophy at its most exciting and elementary.

Event: A Philosophical Journey Through a Concept, Used [Paperback]

4. Vindication of the Rights of Men [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), author and pioneering feminist, answers Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France in this, her first stirring political pamphlet. In A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), Wollstonecraft refutes Burke's assertions that human liberties are an "entailed inheritance," that the alliance between church and state is necessary for civil order, and that civil authority should be restricted to men "of permanent property." Rather, liberties are rights which all human beings "inherit at their birth, as rational creatures."

A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Used [Paperback]

5. Global Political Philosophy, Used [Paperback]

This up-to-date text treats political philosophy and issues (including the terrorist attacks of September 11) from a global perspective, considering the virtues of both nationalism and cosmopolitanism. As part of his aim of describing a comprehensive global political philosophy, Pojman devotes considerable attention to a defense of ethical objectivism over its ubiquitous rival, ethical relativism.

Global Political Philosophy, Used [Paperback]

6. War Crimes and Just War [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Larry May argues that the best way to understand war crimes is as crimes against humanness rather than as violations of justice. He shows that in a deeply pluralistic world, we need to understand the rules of war as the collective responsibility of states that send their citizens into harm's way, as the embodiment of humanity, and as the chief way for soldiers to retain a sense of honour on the battlefield. Throughout, May demonstrates that the principle of humanness is the cornerstone of international humanitarian law, and is itself the basis of the traditional principles of discrimination, necessity, and proportionality. He draws extensively on the older Just War tradition to assess recent cases from the International Tribunal for Yugoslavia as well as examples of atrocities from the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

War Crimes and Just War, Used [Paperback]

7. Seeing Things Politically : Interviews with Benedicte Delorme-Montini, Used [Hardcover]

"Pierre Manent: here in his conversation are the charm and the wisdom of a man who says very simply that he wants to understand what is." - Harvey Mansfield is Professor of Government at Harvard University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Pierre Manent is probably most deeply original, broadly erudite, and genuinely politically engaged thinker alive today. Not only that, he is the European today who walks most closely in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville in at least this way: He actually has experienced and described the singular greatness of America. He reminds us that anyone who's anyone wants to study and teach in America, because in our country at its best is the place where people "invest their pride and glory in the universities," as "a matter of honor, rather than profit" Manent tells us that it's "Christian-democratic-capitalist America" that "sums up" the strong and confident modern soul that remains "distinctive of the West" in our country, but "was distinctive of the West in Europe." This book is the indispensable introduction to Manent's often difficult and elusive other books. Its form opens us to the whole life of a strange and wonderful man, his development as teacher, thinker, Christian, and citizen of the nation of France. And each of the pithy and user-friendly yet precisely detailed responses to a wide variety of personal questions both perennial and timely is meant to draw in or "turn around" attentive seekers. Every great thinker should be graced with a book like this, where the dialogue is directed (unlike, say, the dialogues we have about Socrates) by the man himself. - Peter Augustine Lawler is Dana Professor of Political Science at Berry College, executive editor of Perspectives on Political Science, and author or editor of 18 books, including Allergic to Crazy (St. Augustine's Press). Book jacket.

Seeing Things Politically : Interviews with Benedicte Delorme-Montini, Used [Hardcover]

8. Reflections on Political Identity, Used [Paperback]

"Norton powerfully defends the inevitability and value of 'those particular, concrete traits and actions whereby men differentiate themselves from one another.'"--Ethics.

Reflections on Political Identity, Used [Paperback]