Political Writings

The eighteenth century produced a remarkable array of thinkers whose influence in the development of free societies and free institutions is incalculable. Among these thinkers were Mandeville, Hutcheson, Smith, Hume, and Burke. And their time is known as the Age of Johnson. Samuel Johnson: Political Writings contains twenty-four of Johnson’s essays on the great social, economic, and political issues of his time. These include “Taxation No Tyranny”—in which Johnson defended the British Crown against the American revolutionaries—and “An Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain,” “Thoughts on the Coronation of King George III,” and “The Patriot,” which is one of Johnson’s principal writings during the American Revolution. In his introduction, Donald J. Greene writes, “it may help to understand [Johnson’s] political thinking if we view it in the tradition of what might be called ‘skeptical’ (or ‘radical’ or ‘empirical’) conservatism, the essential feature of which is distrust of grandiose a priori theory and dogma as the basis for political action.” The Liberty Fund edition is a paperback version of Volume 10 in The Yale Johnson.

Writing well, and persuasively, is not only a discipline that can be learned, it is one deeply rooted in the classical arts of rhetoric and polemic. This book introduces the essential skills, rules, and steps for producing effective political prose appropriate to many contexts, from the editorial, the op-ed, and the polemical essay to others both weighty and seemingly slight.

Alfarabi was among the first to explore the tensions between the philosophy of classical Greece and that of Islam, as well as of religion generally. His writings, extraordinary in their breadth and deep learning, have had a profound impact on Islamic and Jewish philosophy. This volume presents four of Alfarabi's most important texts, making his political thought available to classicists, medievalists, and scholars of religion and Byzantine and Middle Eastern studies. In a clear prose translation by Charles E. Butterworth, these treatises provide a valuable introduction to the teachings of Alfarabi and to the development of Islamic political philosophy. All of these texts are based on new Arabic editions. Two—The Book of Religion and Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages, Plato the Divine and Aristotle—appear in English for the first time. The translations of the other two works—Selected Aphorisms and chapter five of the Enumeration of the Sciences—differ markedly from those previously known to English-language readers. Butterworth situates each essay in its historical, literary, and philosophical context. His notes help the reader follow Alfarabi's text and identify persons, places, and events. English-Arabic and Arabic-English glossaries of terms further assist the reader.

Selected Political Writings gathers Stuart Hall's best-known and most important essays that directly engage with political issues. Written between 1957 and 2011 and appearing in publications such as New Left Review and Marxism Today, these twenty essays span the whole of Hall's career, from his early involvement with the New Left, to his critique of Thatcherism, to his later focus on neoliberalism. Whether addressing economic decline and class struggle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the politics of empire, Hall's singular commentary and theorizations make this volume essential for anyone interested in the politics of the last sixty years.

Francisco Vitoria was the earliest and arguably the most important of the Thomist political philosophers of the Counter-Reformation. Not only did he write important essays on civil and ecclesiastical power, but he became celebrated for his defence of the new world Indians against the imperialism of his own master, the King of Spain. Vitoria's political works are thus of great importance for an understanding both of the rise of modern absolutism, and the debate about the emergent imperialism of the European powers. His works are also unusually accessible, since they survive mainly in the form of 'relectiones', or summaries delivered at the end of his lecture courses on law and theology at the University of Salamanca. Translated here into English for the first time, these texts comprise the core of Vitoria's thought, and will be of interest to specialists in political theory and the history of ideas, ecclesiastical history, and the history of early modern Spain. A comprehensive introduction, a chronology, and a bibliography accompany the texts.

Butterworth richly deserves to be congratulated for providing advanced students and scholars with authoritative, reliable, and readable translations of Alfarabi's important political writings. ― Choice Alfarabi (ca. 870–950) founded the great tradition of Aristotelian/Platonic political philosophy in medieval Islamic and Arabic culture. In this second volume of political writings, Charles E. Butterworth presents translations of Alfarabi's Political Regime and Summary of Plato's Laws, accompanied by introductions that discuss the background for each work and explore its teaching. In addition, the texts are carefully annotated to aid the reader in following Alfarabi's argument. An Arabic-English/English-Arabic glossary allows interested readers to verify the way particular words are translated. Throughout, Butterworth's method is to translate consistently the same Arabic word by the same English word, rendering Alfarabi's style in an unusually faithful and yet approachable manner.

This welcome anthology presents for the first time in one volume John Dewey's major political writings. Ranging throughout his career, the selections display Dewey's philosophical method, his controversial views on war and education, his essential contributions to democratic theory, and his distinctive brand of progressive political ideology. A substantial introductory essay sets the selections in historical context, explains their continuing relevance to American politics, and explores the revivial of interest in Dewey in recent years.