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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke

The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke

MacPherson, C. B.
Cunningham, Frank

Paperback

Series: Wynford Books

PhilosophyGeneral Political Science

ISBN10: 0195444019
ISBN13: 9780195444018
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Mar 18 2011
Pages: 328
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.60 Width: 5.20 Depth: 7.90
Language: English
This seminal work by political philosopher C.B. Macpherson was first published by the Clarendon Press in 1962, and remains of key importance to the study of liberal-democratic theory half-a-century later. In it, Macpherson argues that the chief difficulty of the notion of individualism that underpins classical liberalism lies in what he calls its possessive quality--its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them. Under such a conception, the essence of humanity becomes freedom from dependence on the wills of others; society is little more than a system of economic relations; and political society becomes a means of safeguarding private property and the system of economic relations rooted in property.

As the New Statesman declared: It is rare for a book to change the intellectual landscape. It is even more unusual for this to happen when the subject is one that has been thoroughly investigated by generations of historians. . . Until the appearance of Professor Macpherson's book, it seemed unlikely that anything radically new could be said about so well-worn a topic. The unexpected has happened, and the shock waves are still being absorbed.

A new introduction by Frank Cunningham puts the work in a twenty-first-century context.

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