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Fifty Major Political Thinkers by Ian Adams 五十位重要的政治思想家

Fifty Major Political Thinkers

作者：Ian Adams
格式：PDF；1MB；288页

简介:
The nature of political activity and how it may best be conducted is one of the perennial
questions of human existence. In the West alone these matters have been the subject of
philosophical discussion for more than 2,000 years, and the discussion is one to which many
more than fifty thinkers have contributed. In choosing our fifty we have confined ourselves to
Western political thought (with the exception of Mohandas Gandhi, whose ideas were
influenced by the West). We have little expertise outside this field, and, besides, non-Western
traditions are represented in other volumes in this series. Nor have we been concerned with
theoretical debates concerning the 'scientific' study of politics. Even so, the business of
choosing the best or most appropriate fifty was a difficult one.
Any shortlist of 'greats' compiled from such a wide and varied field will contain entries of
three kinds. First, there will be those names it would be impossible to exclude: in this case
Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke and so on. This part of the list almost compiles itself. Then
there will be a penumbra of cases that, though discussable, would probably be included by
most knowledgeable people. Finally, there will be a class of substantially controversial
entries, where the choice really is a matter of editorial discretion. Anyone who undertakes to
draw up such a list will therefore face some difficult decisions, and it is inevitable that the
final selection will not be agreeable to everyone. Selection is particularly difficult when we
come to the era after the French Revolution: the age of mass politics in which so many
movements of political significance have emerged. The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth-
Century Political Thinkers (1998) has 178 entries and does not claim to be exhaustive. It is
unavoidable that a volume purporting to deal with major political theorists will be 'thin' at its
modern end, quite simply because, with some few distinguished exceptions, it is not possible
to predict which very recent theorists will come to be regarded as 'major' by posterity.
A thinker may be 'major' on a number of grounds: power of reasoning, originality, extent of
influence and so on. Choices are inevitably based on a balance of these things. However, for
more recent centuries we have introduced a further criterion: that of representativeness. In the
politics of the last two centuries there have been many movements which embody important
political ideas. Sometimes such movements produce several thinkers of similar stature; or
perhaps they produce no great thinker at all, yet the movement itself is important. Hence the
decision was made to include some thinkers who are more representative than outstanding.
This decision applies to movements such as anarchism, feminism, ecologism, black
emancipation and - most controversially, perhaps - fascism.
Using these various criteria, we have tried to do justice to both the variety and the depth of
Western political thought, and to encourage readers to explore beyond the fifty thinkers
whom, for good or ill, we have chosen.