Overview
- Provides a unique and thorough review of Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Locke’s Second Treatise
- Offers a new and original suggestion for a firmer foundation for a theory of political obligation
- Carefully examines the hermeneutical controversy between textualists and contextualists
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke each sought a new foundation for political order. This book serves as a reader's companion to Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Locke’s Second Treatise written for graduate students and scholars seeking a fuller understanding of these classic texts. How do these philosophers respond to perennial questions such as why anyone is ever obligated to obey a government and whether there are any limits to such an obligation. In this book, Bookman begins by sorting out the hermeneutical controversy between textualists and contextualists, offers a chapter-by-chapter commentary on the texts punctuated by questions for the reader’s reflection, and finally suggests a firmer foundation for a theory of political obligation than Hobbes’s and Locke’s consent theories. Also included are bibliographical essays keyed to select bibliographies, providing readers with a wide-ranging, critical reviewof the secondary literature. Intended to be read alongside the primary work, the work is a full intellectual, critical, and bibliographical history, as well as a fresh examination of three classic texts in political theory and philosophy.
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Authors and Affiliations
About the author
John T. Bookman is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Northern Colorado, USA. He is the author of The Mythology of American Politics: A Critical Response to Fundamental Questions (2008) and, with Stephen T. Powers, The March to Victory (1986). He taught political philosophy and American politics for many years to undergraduate and graduate students.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: A Reader’s Companion to The Prince, Leviathan, and the Second Treatise
Authors: John T. Bookman
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02880-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-02879-4Published: 10 January 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-02880-0Published: 28 December 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 224
Topics: Political Theory, Political Philosophy, Democracy