Third Edition
Edited by
Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit
Each volume in this outstanding series provides an authoritative and comprehensive collection of the essential primary readings from philosophy’s main fields of study. Designed to complement the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, each volume represents an unparalleled resource in its own right, and will provide the ideal platform for course use.
This third edition first published 2019
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Edition History
Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 1997; 2e, 2005)
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Goodin, Robert E., editor. | Pettit, Philip, 1945– editor.
Title: Contemporary political philosophy : an anthology / edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit.
Description: Third edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2019. | Series: Blackwell philosophy anthologies ; 41 | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019001988 (print) | LCCN 2019004870 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119154174 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119154181 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119154167 | ISBN 9781119154167 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Political science–Philosophy.
Classification: LCC JA71 (ebook) | LCC JA71 .C578 2019 (print) | DDC 320–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019001988
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © Wikimedia Commons
The essays contained in this collection represent what seem to us to be canonical texts in contemporary political philosophy. But they only represent the contemporary canon, they do not exhaust it. Although this collection is two or perhaps three times the size of most, we nevertheless found that we had space for only a sample of the very many more texts and topics that we would like to have included.
The collection is deliberately designed as a companion to our earlier Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: Wiley‐Blackwell, 1993; 2nd edition, 2012). We attempted to retain something of the same flavor in this collection, much the same scope of substantive concerns and much the same diversity of analytic styles. Inevitably, though, there is so much more surveyed in the Companion’s many chapters than can be reprinted here. Interested readers are referred back to the Companion not only to situate the texts in the present collection but also for further readings and whole other sets of concerns.
The Companion as a whole, and our own introduction to it, serves effectively as a preface to this collection. So we will not expound at length here upon our views as to the nature of the political philosophical enterprise. Let this one comment suffice. We have tried to select and organize the texts included here so as to show political philosophy as it truly is: as a set of ongoing conversations and disputations, arguments, and debates.