Social History of Western Political Thought

Regular price €31.99
Regular price €32.50 Sale Sale price €31.99
21st century
A01=Ellen Meiksins Wood
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
anthropology
Author_Ellen Meiksins Wood
automatic-update
biography
british history
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD
Category=HPS
Category=JPA
Category=NHD
Category=QDTS
classic
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
economics
empire
england
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
essays
europe
european history
european union
geopolitics
gifts for history buffs
government
historical
historical books
history
history books
history buff gifts
history gifts
history lovers gifts
history teacher gifts
international politics
Language_English
law
marxism
PA=Available
philosophy
political books
political philosophy
political science
political science books
politics
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
sociology
softlaunch
technology
war
world history
world politics

Product details

  • ISBN 9781839766091
  • Weight: 522g
  • Dimensions: 140 x 210mm
  • Publication Date: 30 Aug 2022
  • Publisher: Verso Books
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

Our Delivery Time Frames Explained
2-4 Working Days: Available in-stock

10-20 Working Days
: On Backorder

Will Deliver When Available
: On Pre-Order or Reprinting

We ship your order once all items have arrived at our warehouse and are processed. Need those 2-4 day shipping items sooner? Just place a separate order for them!

In this groundbreaking work, Ellen Meiksins Wood rewrites the history of political theory, from Plato to Rousseau. Treating canonical thinkers as passionately engaged human beings, Wood examines their ideas not simply in the context of political languages but as creative responses to the social relations and conflicts of their time and place. She identifies a distinctive relation between property and state in Western history and shows how the canon, while largely the work of members or clients of dominant classes, was shaped by complex interactions among proprietors, labourers and states. Western political theory, Wood argues, owes much of its vigour, and also many ambiguities, to these complex and often contradictory relations.

In the first volume, she traces the development of the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Middle Ages in the perspective of social history - a significant departure not only from the standard abstract history of ideas but also from other contextual methods. From the Ancient Greek polis of Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus and Sophocles, through the Roman Republic of Cicero and the Empire of St Paul and St Augustine, to the medieval world of Averroes, Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, Wood offers a rich, dynamic exploration of thinkers and ideas that have indelibly stamped our modern world.

In the second volume, Wood addresses the formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, which have all been attributed to the "early modern" period. Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is certain: it left a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history. The concepts of liberty, equality, property, human rights and revolution born in those turbulent centuries continue to shape, and to limit, political discourse today. Assessing the work and background of figures such as Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Ellen Wood vividly explores the ideas of the canonical thinkers, not as philosophical abstractions but as passionately engaged responses to the social conflicts of their day.
Ellen Meiksins Wood, for many years Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, was the author of many books, including Democracy Against Capitalism, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism, The Origin of Capitalism, Peasant-Citizen and Slave, Citizens to Lords, Empire of Capital and Liberty and Property.