History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, Rand McNally, 1963.  Second Edition: Rand McNally, 1972.  Third Edition, University of Chicago Press, 1987.

The third edition of Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey’s History of Political Philosophy is the definitive introduction for students interested in the great thinkers of political philosophy. The book features long introductory essays on ancients such as Plato and Aristotle, medievals such as Aquinas and Maimonides, and moderns such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Nietzsche. The book does not aim to serve as replacement for the serious engagement with the works of these thinkers. Rather it seeks to serve as a kind of reading aid as students confront, as they must, the great texts themselves.  The essays serve this purpose by pointing students to some of the fundamental political questions which the great thinkers confront.

Table of Contents:

Preface to the Third Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction
Thucydides by David Bolotin
Plato by Leo Strauss
Xenophon by Christopher Bruell
Aristotle by Carnes Lord
Marcus Tullius Cicero by James E. Holton
St. Augustine by Ernest L. Fortin
Alfarabi by Muhsin Mahdi
Moses Maimonides by Ralph Lerner
St. Thomas Aquinas by Ernest L. Fortin
Marsilius of Padua by Leo Strauss
Niccolo Machiavelli by Leo Strauss
Martin Luther and John Calvin by Duncan B. Forrester
Richard Hooker by Duncan B. Forrester
Francis Bacon by Howard B. White
Hugo Grotius by Richard H. Cox
Thomas Hobbes by Laurence Berns
Rene Descartes by Richard Kennington
John Milton by Walter Berns
Benedict Spinoza by Stanley Rosen
John Locke by Robert A. Goldwin
Montesquieu David Lowenthal
David Hume by Robert S. Hill
Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Allan Bloom
Immanuel Kant by Pierre Hassner
William Blackstone by Herbert J. Storing
Adam Smith by Joseph Cropsey
The Federalist by Martin Diamond
Thomas Paine by Francis Canavan, S.J.
Edmund Burke by Harvey Mansfield, Jr.
Jeremy Bentham and James Mill by Timothy Fuller
Georg W.F. Hegel by by Pierre Hassner; translated by Allan Bloom
Alexis de Tocqueville by Marvin Zetterbaum
John Stuart Mill by Henry M. Magid
Karl Marx by Joseph Cropsey
Friedrich Nietzsche by Werner J. Dannhauser
John Dewey by Robert Horwitz
Edmund Husserl by Richard Velkley
Martin Heidegger by Michael Gillespie
Epilogue: Leo Strauss and the History of Political Philosophy by Nathan Tarcov and Thomas L. Pangle

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