History of Political Thought A Thematic Introduction

This text provides a broad-ranging thematic introduction to the Western tradition of political thought. Following a chronological introductory chapter illustrated with charts of key thinkers and works for each period, the core chapters focus on central issues in political theory: the ends of politics; the location of political power; the exercise of political authority and challenges to it. The thematic organization of the book combines detailed coverage of such "great names" as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx and Mill with assessments of the contributions of an exceptionally wide range of other theorists. The ideas of various thinkers are clearly related to one another and to the different contexts in which they were produced.