Collection · 18 books · 330 BC to 1880 AD
Political Philosophy
Works on governance, liberty, and political theory.
400s BC
1500s
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli · 1513 AD — whether it is better for a ruler to be feared or loved.
Utopia
Thomas More · 1516 AD — Raphael Hythloday's account of an island with no money and no private property.
The True Law of Free Monarchies
James VI/I · 1598 AD — a reigning king's case that monarchs answer to God alone and that subjects may never lawfully rebel.
1600s
Patriarcha: The Natural Power of Kings
Robert Filmer · 1635 AD — the defense of absolute monarchy that provoked Locke's case for democracy.
Areopagitica
John Milton · 1644 AD — a speech to Parliament defending the freedom to read, print, and judge for oneself.
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes · 1651 AD — Hobbes on human nature, the state of nature, and the social contract.
Second Treatise of Government
John Locke · 1689 AD — the argument that government rests on consent and tyrants may be overthrown.
1700s
Politics Drawn from Holy Scripture
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet · 1709 AD — a royal tutor's case for sacred, paternal, absolute monarchy, proved proposition by proposition from the Bible.
Reflections on the French Revolution
Edmund Burke · 1790 AD — a letter defending tradition and gradual reform against the French Revolution's ideology.
Considerations on France
Joseph de Maistre · 1796 AD — the French Revolution read as divine punishment and providential instrument.
1800s
The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions
Joseph de Maistre · 1814 AD — constitutions grow from a nation's history and character, never from pure reason.
Democracy in America: Volume 1
Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835 AD — the institutional half of Tocqueville's study, from the township to the Constitution.
Democracy in America: Volume 2
Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840 AD — the political half, including the chapter on the tyranny of the majority.
Unbelief and Revolution
Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer · 1847 AD — fifteen lectures tracing the French Revolution to the rejection of God's law.
The Law
Frédéric Bastiat · 1850 AD — law as organized self-defense, and why redistribution is legal plunder.
On Liberty
John Stuart Mill · 1859 AD — the harm principle: society may restrain a person only to prevent harm to others.
Sphere Sovereignty
Abraham Kuyper · 1880 AD — the address arguing family, church, scholarship, and state each hold authority from God.
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