Social and
Political Philosophy is an anthology of some of the most influential writings of history from such heavyweights as Plato, Thoreau, Marx, Hitler and Gandhi. A collection of this type should belong on the bookshelf of anyone interested in political thought. After all, in how many other books can you get direction from Machiavelli on how to become a prince, letters from Thomas Jefferson proving that at least one of the founding fathers of America really did believe wholeheartedly in the separation of church and state, calls for revolution from both Lenin and Hitler, and a doctrine from Mussolini
advocating fascist violence as well as a doctrine from Gandhi advocating non-violent resistance.
In other words, the
Social and political philosophy contained within this book run the gamut. This is not an ideologically coherent guidebook, a person picking this book up and reading at random might just as well come
away influenced to follow the
extreme right
wing as the extreme left wing.
In addition to obviously political writings, however, there are selections which are more philosophic than political, such as Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and John Dewey’s Ethics Also of interest are the calls for conscience and political consciousness such as Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience and Jean Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract.
One of the great elements of this book is its inclusion of the original Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson presented to the Continental Congress. Those sections which were excised or added in the adoption process are distinguished through capitalization, brackets or italics. For anyone who thinks that America’s founding fathers were beyond reproach needs only to read the reprehensible watering-down that the original Congress did.
As well, it’s very enlightening to compare the writing of Marx the communist to Hitler the fascist. Anyone who can read both of these selections and still come away imagining that both of these political movements should share equal fear and anxiety needs to have their heads examined.
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