Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Adams, Marcus P. (ed.), A Companion to Hobbes. (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) 544 pp. 2021:12 (Wiley-Blackwell, UK) <664-72>
ISBN 978-1-119-63499-7 hard ¥47,336.- (税込) US$ 210.95 *

Offers comprehensive treatment of Thomas Hobbes's thought, providing readers with different ways of understanding Hobbes as a systematic philosopher As one of the founders of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes is best known for his ideas regarding the nature of legitimate government and the necessity of society submitting to the absolute authority of sovereign power. Yet Hobbes produced a wide range of writings, from translations of texts by Homer and Thucydides, to interpretations of Biblical books, to works devoted to geometry, optics, morality, and religion. Hobbes viewed himself as presenting a unified method for theoretical and practical science-an interconnected system of philosophy that provides many entry points into his thought. A Companion to Hobbes is an expertly curated collection of essays offering close textual engagement with the thought of Thomas Hobbes in his major works while probing his ideas regarding natural philosophy, mathematics, human nature, civil philosophy, religion, and more. The Companion discusses the ways in which scholars have tried to understand the unity and diversity of Hobbes's philosophical system and examines the reception of the different parts of Hobbes's philosophy by thinkers such as Rene Descartes, Margaret Cavendish, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Presenting a diversity of fresh perspectives by both emerging and established scholars, this volume: Provides a comprehensive treatment of Hobbes's thought in his works, including Elements of Law, Elements of Philosophy, and Leviathan Explores the connecting points between Hobbes' metaphysics, epistemology, mathematics, natural philosophy, morality, and civil philosophy Offers readers strategies for understanding how the parts of Hobbes's philosophical system fit together Examines Hobbes's philosophy of mathematics and his attempts to understand geometrical objects and definitions Considers Hobbes's philosophy in contexts such as the natural state of humans, gender relations, and materialist worldviews Challenges conceptions of Hobbes's moral theory and his views about the rights of sovereigns Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Hobbes is an invaluable resource for scholars and advanced students of Early modern thought, particularly those from disciplines such as History of Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Intellectual History, History of Politics, Political Theory, and English.

Cazzola, Matilde, The Political Thought of Thomas Spence: Beyond Poverty and Empire. (Ideas beyond Borders) 278 pp. 2021:11 (Routledge, UK) * paper 2023 <664-73>
ISBN 978-1-03-206292-1 hard ¥38,907.- (税込) GB￡ 135.00 *
ISBN 978-1-03-206298-3 paper ¥11,524.- (税込) GB￡ 39.99 *

The book is an intellectual analysis of the political ideas of English radical thinker Thomas Spence (1750-1814), who was renowned for his "Plan", a proposal for the abolition of private landownership and the replacement of state institutions with a decentralized parochial organization. This system would be realized by means of the revolution of the "swinish multitude", the poor labouring class despised by Edmund Burke and adopted by Spence as his privileged political interlocutor. While he has long been considered an eccentric and anachronistic figure, the book sets out to demonstrate that Spence was a deeply original, thoroughly modern thinker, who translated his themes into a popular language addressing the multitude and publicized his Plan through chapbooks, tokens, and songs. The book is therefore a history of Spence's political thought "from below", designed to decode the subtle complexity of his Plan. It also shows that the Plan featured an excoriating critique of colonialism and slavery as well as a project of global emancipation. By virtue of its transnational scope, the Plan made landfall in the British West Indies a few years after Spence's death. Indeed, Spencean ideas were intellectually implicated in the largest slave revolt in the history of Barbados.

Quinn, Michael, Bentham. (Classic Thinkers) 250 pp. 2021:11 (Polity Pr., UK) <664-75>
ISBN 978-1-5095-2190-6 hard ¥15,695.- (税込) US$ 69.95 *
ISBN 978-1-5095-2191-3 paper ¥5,597.- (税込) US$ 24.95 *

Jeremy Bentham - philosopher, theorist of law and of the art of government - was among the most influential figures of the early nineteenth century, and the approach he pioneered - utilitarianism - remains central to the modern world. In this new introduction to his ideas, Michael Quinn shows how Bentham sought to be an engineer or architect of choices and to illuminate the methods of influencing human conduct to good ends, by focusing on how people react to the various physical, legal, institutional, normative and cultural factors that confront them as decision-makers. Quinn examines how Bentham adopted utility as the critical standard for the development and evaluation of government and public policy, and explains how he sought to apply this principle to a range of areas, from penal law to democratic reform, before concluding with an assessment of his contemporary relevance. He argues that Bentham simultaneously sought both to facilitate the implementation of governmental will and to expose misrule by rendering all exercises of public power transparent to the public on whose behalf it was exercised. This book will be essential reading for any student or scholar of Bentham, as well as those interested in the history of political thought, philosophy, politics, ethics and utilitarianism.

Machiavelli Then and Now. 370 pp. 2021:11 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <664-2381>
ISBN 978-1-316-51672-0 hard ¥24,497.- (税込) GB￡ 85.00 *

Machiavelli's ideas are as important in our time as in his own. His insights and prescriptions help us make sense of today's political upheavals and natural calamities and reduce them to a working order. The chapters in Machiavelli Then and Now explore Machiavelli's central concerns: statecraft and order, liberty and citizenship, diplomacy and leadership, modes of strategization, the quest for empire - all set against the basic contention between autarchy, oligarchy and democracy. They also address the ethical and behaviourial factors behind political practice, such as force, suasion, ambition, corruption and vigilance in public discourse. The contributors consider the role of language, text and the imagination in Machiavelli, and they also bring the Machiavellian discourse closer to our own times, in relation to Gandhi, Gramsci and Althusser. The book will interest historians, political scientists and students of public policy; philosophers, rhetoricians and literary critics; and no less institution builders, diplomats and, administrators.

Achilleos, Stella / Balasopoulos, Antonis (eds.), Reading Texts on Sovereignty: Textual Moments in the History of Political Thought. (Textual Moments in the History of Political Thought) 208 pp. 2021:8 (Bloomsbury Academic, UK) <664-2382>
ISBN 978-1-350-09970-8 hard ¥21,615.- (税込) GB￡ 75.00 *
ISBN 978-1-350-09969-2 paper ¥6,625.- (税込) GB￡ 22.99 *

Reading Texts on Sovereignty charts the development of the concept from the classical period to the present day. Defined in antiquity as an absolute or supreme type of power, sovereignty's history has been marked ever since by numerous moments of crisis and contestation through which its meaning has been redefined and reconfigured. Using extracts of key texts selected and analysed by leading contributors from the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, Cyprus, Finland, France, Austria, Israel, and Italy, this volume examines these moments and how different societies have grappled with sovereignty through the ages. The book explores a diverse range of geographical and cultural contexts within which the issue of sovereignty became critical, including ancient China and medieval Islam. In addition, the book includes chapters that respond to the vital interplay between the development of the theory of sovereignty and such momentous historical events and developments as the birth of the democratic polis in the classical world, the legal and political developments that attended the rise of the Roman and Islamic empires, the bitter struggles over sovereign rights between the 'temporal' and 'spiritual' authorities of medieval and early modern Europe, the English Civil War, the French and American Revolutions, and the October Revolution.

Bogiaris, Guillaume, Machiavelli's Platonic Problems: Neoplatonism, Eros, Mythmaking, and Philosophy in Machiavellian Thought. 138 pp. 2021:1 (Lexington Books, US) <664-2384>
ISBN 978-1-79361-643-2 hard ¥22,440.- (税込) US$ 100.00 *

Machiavelli is traditionally understood has a thinker who rejected Platonism in bulk. This book argues that even if it is correct to describe him as unsympathetic to Platonic thought, his philosophy addresses it in a deep and nuanced manner. In order to see this, one must first disentangle Machiavelli's conversation with Plato from his criticism of Christian Florentine Neoplatonism. Once this is done, Machiavelli's work reveals itself to engage key Platonic themes, such as love, the place of philosophical education in politics, and the relationship between policymaking and mythmaking. This engagement helps us further characterize and clarify essential concepts and axioms of Machiavellian thought, such as fortuna, virtue, the importance of self-reliance, and the proper sources of political knowledge.

Hill, Lisa / Blazejak, Eden, Stoicism and the Western Political Tradition. 254 pp. 2021:7 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <664-2386>
ISBN 978-981-16-2741-5 hard ¥34,030.- (税込) EUR 139.99 *

This book uniquely recovers and assesses Stoic political thought by tracking its uptake into Western modernity and exploring the extent of its impact. Classical Stoicism has lately seen a popular resurgence inspiring self-help books and therapeutic treatments for anxiety and depression. As a scholarly source for the Western political tradition, it is even more important. Yet, as A.A. Long once observed: "[o]f all the ancient philosophies, Stoicism has probably had the most diffused" yet least "adequately acknowledged influence on Western thought." This close textual study not only provides the first systematic study of the political content of Stoic thought but also establishes the hitherto under-appreciated influence of classical Stoicism on the political thought of the long eighteenth century and beyond in Europe and particularly Britain. The Stoic ideas upon which we focus include their cosmopolitanism, their contribution to sociability and self-interest debates, their influence on modern feminism and utilitarianism, and their prefiguration of modern conceptions of personal rights.

Mallinson, William, Guicciardini, Geopolitics and Geohistory: Understanding Inter-State Relations. (Palgrave Studies in International Relations) 151 pp. 2021:6 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <664-2388>
ISBN 978-3-030-76536-1 hard ¥15,798.- (税込) EUR 64.99

This book demonstrates that geohistory is a more effective concept than geopolitics in understanding inter-state relations, at a time of considerable confusion in world affairs, and that Francesco Guicciardini's thoughts are an efficient medium to demonstrate not only the inadequacies of geopolitics, but that a geohistorical approach can be a more responsible way of understanding international affairs. The book introduces a fresh approach, based on the individual, on which corporate characteristics and behaviour depend, often in the shape of state interests, which are unable on their own to predict actions driven by human behaviour. The book shows how show mainstream international relations theories are stuck in paradigms, inadequate in explaining why world politics is moving in a direction that nobody could predict even a decade ago. It shows how ideology can blur clear understanding. In short, it represents a new and intellectually refreshing approach and method in understanding, and tackling, the vagaries of relations between states.

Najemy, John M., Machiavelli's Broken World. 496 pp. 2022:5 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <664-2389>
ISBN 978-0-19-958092-7 hard ¥9,363.- (税込) GB￡ 32.49 *

Machiavelli was painfully aware of living in a disastrous moment of Italy's history: foreign invasions, occupations and shattered states. He was harshly critical of Italy's princes (such as Francesco Sforza), its professional military class (especially Cesare Borgia), and the Church (Pope Julius II), and this is a study of his evaluation of their failures and of their underlying causes. He believed that the root of Italy's political weakness was the excessive ambition of its elite classes, who, like their counterparts in ancient Rome, were prepared to overthrow governments that obstructed their ambition. Machiavelli formulates this phenomenon, first theoretically, then historically in the context of the Florentine Republic's descent into family-based factionalism, which culminated in the brittle Medici regime. The most damaging tyranny, according to Machiavelli, was the collective tyranny of wealthy elites ready to undermine law and government to preserve and augment their power and wealth.

Navari, Cornelia, The International Society Tradition: From Hugo Grotius to Hedley Bull. (Palgrave Studies in International Relations) 190 pp. 2021:7 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <664-2390>
ISBN 978-3-030-77017-4 hard ¥34,030.- (税込) EUR 139.99 *

This book traces the development of the international society tradition from its origins in Grotius' On the Law of War and Peace to its crystallization in Bull's The Anarchical Society. It follows the idea of sociability among peoples as it was presented by Grotius and substantiated by Pufendorf, through the skepticism of Voltaire and Kant, to emerge as humanitarian warfare and human rights in the international liberal movement, 'world society' in the 20th century Catholic revival, and common practices and social understandings in the English School in the period of disciplinary development in international relations after the Second World War.

Webel, Charles P., The World as Idea: A Conceptual History. (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought) 336 pp. 2021:11 (Routledge, UK) * paper 2023 <664-2393>
ISBN 978-1-138-01352-0 hard ¥38,907.- (税込) GB￡ 135.00 *
ISBN 978-1-03-211566-5 paper ¥11,524.- (税込) GB￡ 39.99 *

In The World as Idea Charles P. Webel presents an intellectual history of one of the most influential concepts known to humanity-that of "the world."Webel traces the development of "the world" through the past, depicting the history of the world as an intellectual construct from its roots in ancient creation myths of the cosmos, to contemporary speculations about multiverses. He simultaneously offers probing analyses and critiques of "the world as idea" from thinkers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine in the Greco-Roman period to Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida in modern times. While Webel mainly focuses on Occidental philosophical, theological, and cosmological notions of worldhood and worldliness, he also highlights important non-Western equivalents prominent in Islamic and Asian spiritual traditions. This ensures the book is a unique overview of what we all take for granted in our daily existence, but seldom if ever contemplate-the world as the uniquely meaningful environment for our lives in particular and for life on Earth in general.The World as Idea will be of great interest to those interested in the "world as idea," scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and intellectual history to political and social theory, and students studying philosophy, the history of ideas, and humanities courses, both general and specialized.

Lyons, Johnny, Isaiah Berlin and his Philosophical Contemporaries. 299 pp. 2021:7 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <664-191>
ISBN 978-3-030-73177-9 hard ¥29,168.- (税込) EUR 119.99 *

This book sets out to identify the nature and implications of a proper understanding of pluralism in a original and illuminating way. Isaiah Berlin believed that a recognition of pluralism is vital to a free, decent and civilised society. By looking below at the often neglected foundations of Berlin's celebrated account of moral pluralism, Lyons reveals the more philosophically profound aspects of his undogmatic and humanistic liberal vision. He achieves this by comparing Berlin's core ideas with those of several of his most distinguished philosophical contemporaries, an exercise which yields not only a deeper grasp of Berlin and several major twentieth-century thinkers, principally A. J. Ayer, J. L. Austin, P. F. Strawson, Bernard Williams and Quentin Skinner, but, more broadly, a keener appreciation of the power of history and philosophy to help us make sense of our predicament.

Schroeder, Peter (Hrsg.), Der Staat als Genossenschaft: Zum rechtshistorischen und politischen Werk Otto von Gierkes. (Staatsverstaendnisse 155) 306 S. 2021:9 (Nomos, GW) <664-1506>
ISBN 978-3-8487-6128-9 paper ¥14,342.- (税込) EUR 59.00 *

Otto von Gierke (1841-1921) hat nachhaltig zentrale Begriffe und Konzepte des modernen Staatsverstaendnisses gepraegt. Der Band gliedert sich in drei systematische Teile, in denen aus den unterschiedlichen Fachperspektiven der Soziologie, Geschichte, Politikwissenschaft und Jurisprudenz Gierkes politisches und juristisches Denken analysiert wird. Im Fokus dieser verschiedenen Perspektiven steht sein organisches Rechts- und Staatsverstaendnis, das er bewusst in unterschiedlichen Genres entwickelt hat. So wird zugleich auch deutlich, was sich den Ideen des Staatsdenkers Otto von Gierke fuer unser eigenes, zeitgemaesses Verstaendnis des Staates gegebenenfalls entnehmen laesst. Am Prinzip der Subsidiaritaet und Gierkes nachdruecklicher Betonung der Rolle von Gemeinschaften und Koerperschaften unterhalb der staatlichen Ebene wird dies zum Beispiel besonders greifbar. In Gierkes Werk wird die Beziehung von Genossenschaftsrecht und Staatsrecht entwickelt, so gelingt es ihm auf der Grundlage einer umfassenden historischen Analyse ein innovatives organisches Rechts- und Staatsverstaendnis zu entwickeln. Prof. Dr. Peter Schroeder ist Professor fuer die Geschichte des politischen Denkens im History Department am University College London. Mit Beitraegen von Niall Bond, Martin Espenhorst, Ben Holland, Celine Jouin, Jasper Kunstreich, Peter Nitschke, Tilman Repgen, Joachim Rueckert, Jan Schroeder, Peter Schroeder und Helga Spindler.