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A History of Political Ideas
Author
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Publisher
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Presses Universitaires de France
Parution date
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EAN
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Number of pages
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373
Description
***Entire manuscript in English***
We all talk about politics, but few of us know how today’s issues fit into the framework of political science. Since the original publication of A History of Political Ideas in 1998 as a two-volume work, it has become a classic, making easier the task of understanding our own time. The book has a unique unity of presentation and thought because, unlike most works of its scope, it is written not by a collective but by a single author—Philippe Nemo.
Nemo traces the origins of political thinking, from the earliest pre-states to today’s super states. He sets forth the premise that the beginnings of political thought—our political science—can be traced to three primary sources: the philosophers and thinkers of the Greek city-state, Roman law, and the Gospels. He analyzes the pre-Greek prepolitical societies and, leaning on the work of anthropologists, shows how though they may have had organizing principles, they did not have the concept of an evolving jurisdiction that governed the people—a concept that is the foundation of political thought. From the Greeks—Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and the Stoics—Nemo moves on to Romans. He shows how Cicero, Seneca, and Tacitus added that sense of evolving jurisdiction and shaped political thought for generations to come. Christian thinkers and writers, including Saints Paul, Augustine, and Thomas, added another layer to the history of political organization. From that foundation, Nemo traces the contributions of “modern” political thinkers, from Machiavelli and Luther to Kant and Rousseau and onward to Marx and Lenin and then to Arendt, Rawls, and the present time.
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