Political Thought - Primary Resources

Pericles: Funeral Oration

Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War

Plato: The Republic

Aristotle: Politics

Cicero: On the Republic and On the Laws

Plutarch: Parallel Lives

Augustine: The City of God

Aquinas: "Treatise on Law," Summa Theologiae, I-II, Questions 90-100, 105, and 108

Machiavelli: The Prince

Hobbes: Leviathan

Locke: Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration

Spinoza: Theologico-Political Treatise

Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

Hume: On the Original Contract

Rousseau: The Social Contract and the Discourse on the Origen of Inequality

Smith: The Wealth of Nations

Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France

Bentham: Principles of Legislation

Hegel: Philosophy of Right and Introduction to the Philosophy of History

Tocqueville: Democracy in America

Mill: On Liberty and The Subjection of Women

Marx: "The Communist Manifesto,"Das Capital, and "Contribution to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right"