Where do I begin with political philosophy?

Where do I begin with political philosophy?

I know the usual answer is "Start with the Greeks", but what particular works are truly helpful in learning about the philosophical side of civics?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=ef7gjYqOhFc
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Republic > The Prince > Das Kapital > xenosystems.net

• Marx, Capital, Communist Manifesto*
Recommended: The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., Robert C. Tucker, ed.
• Bakunin, God and the State,* Statism and Anarchy, Bakunin on Anarchism
Recommended: No Gods No Masters, Guerin, ed., Sharkey, trans.
Anarchism: From Theory to Practice,* Guerin, ed., Klopper, trans.
• Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
• Freud, Civilization and It’s Discontents*
• Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, Tristes Tropiques, The Savage Mind, Myth and
Meaning*
• Lacan, Ecrits, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis


Look into Critical Theory, too.

Politics are a farce and only involve the best liar. It's all fucking stupid.

dire post

What's funniest of all is that girl is clearly a bot.

The Prince isn't really a cornerstone of political philosophy. It's influence is grossly exaggerated. But since it's so short, read I guess.

Leviathan, Republic, Two Treatises on Government (rebuttal to Leviathan), Politics (Aristotle), Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke).

You may also be interested in buying the 'History of Political Philosophy', a collection of essays by Strauss. They, generally speaking, do not require core texts to be read to understand the essays and are good for consolidating knowledge. But your choice.

You can listen to this guy OR

You can pass Go and read Nietzsche, thus saving yourself a lot of retardation as you assume a reasonable anti-political stance.

If you want to know how futile the former is, just read Rousseau's Social Contract and laugh at how many times he appeals to spooks like Human Nature/General Will/etc.

If you don't want to use the term 'spooks', and possibly appeal to contemporary Lefties, then make use of Žižek's 'Signifiers Without a Signified' concept.

gibbon

>Nietzsche
how's high school going for ya?

>'History of Political Philosophy', a collection of essays by Strauss

Thanks, boss. I'll just let this thread go to shit from here, I have what I need.

Plato
Aristotle
Epicurus
Machiavelli
Locke
Hume
Descartes

>Not including Rousseau

Pleb status, friend

>Disregarding Nietzsche because so many retards understood him

Fact is he is the most recent of philosophy's Copernican Revolutions. There hasn't been a philosopher of note ever since.

youtube.com/watch?v=ef7gjYqOhFc

This is a fine little cut of leftism, but it is by no means a way to *start* political philosophy.

OP, if you really do want to know what particular Greek works are necessary for political philosophy: Thucydides, Republic, Politics (Aristotle).

Strauss is excellent, you will do well with him.

S T I R N E R

>No History of Revolution in the 19th Century
>No Civil War on France


good list, though Saussure, Lacan and Levi-Strauss are the worst places to START with anything.

I recently got a boxed edition of the Mithologics and from what I've skimmed from it, this is some exit-level, I've-already-mastered-the-whole-of-human-philosophy shit, and that's coming from someone who had very little difficulty with shit like Heidegger or Kant.

The essays are all comprehensible and avoid academic jargon (more or less, forgive them given they know no other life), so as a few other posters say, you'll do well to read through and then go from there to familarise yourself with philosophers who are of your viewpoint, I suppose.

Because let's face it, nobody but somebody who is incredibly shallow reads outside his hivemind except to reinforce his own views about X or Y.

just read kymlicka's contemporary political philosophy for an accessible intro to the field. it's maybe a little outdated and anglocentric but it'll get you on the right path user

i'm a unapologetic marxist and even i find those recommendations terrible.

economics, while dull, and whose exponents are insufferable, is vital to understand politics. after all politics in the last instance in concentrated economics.

as a starter i would recommend learning economics

so
smith-wealth of nations, abridged version is fine
ricardo,-principles is a short book
marx - i would say capital but that is months of reading, his lesser works + wiki should suffice
keynes- general theory is relatively short
Schumpeter- one of the least ideological economists i have ever come across, even though he is scathing towards socialists.

in terms of pure political theorists after the greeks
of course Rousseau
Burke
John stuart Mill( he was a very poor economist) a man of the golden age of liberalism, On Liberty is a must read as well as On The subjection of women if you are that way inclined. his essay On Socialism is a brilliant non ideological analysis of socialism as a system( he had the luxury of being able to analyse socialism before it became a serious political force.)
Thomas paine- rights of man
Thomas moore-Utopia( the edition with introduction and commentary by kautsky is indispensable.

honourable mentions of books which dont deal with pure political theory but whose application illuminates the discipline;
trotsky- 1905, war and the international, history of the Russian revolution. what is fascism and how to fight it.
cohen- Bukharin and the Bolshevik revolution
ernest mandel- late capitalism, the meaning of the second world war
Hitchens. Blood ,Class and nostalgia.
Hobsbawms trilogy
The Gracchi Marius and Sulla beesly, anything about class struggle in ancient rome is worth reading.

Study politics?

>studying politics
Polsci scum are the scummiest scum I see on campus and they are universally base-emotion lefties who will say or believe anything to seem le enlightened and altruistic.

You'll probably make much more meaningful progress with philosophy or politics outside of an academic situation, where you can read and decide for yourself, and if you fuck up you will only have yourself to blame.

...

...