Natural Law And Political Realism In The History Of Political Thought ― From The Sophists To Machiavelli

A specialist in the history of political thought, Dyson (government and international affairs, U. of Durham) explores how two persistent streams of thought have dealt with questions about the nature of politics. The natural law tradition and the tradition now most often called political realism, he says, are not always distinct in practice, but for this exposition he treats them as so. In the two volumes covering the entire period from classical antiquity to the present, he highlights the main implications of the traditions for government, social organization, and international relations; the political and social contexts that have enabled their various expressions to seem persuasive; and the intellectual contexts of the contemporary theories of knowledge, ethics, and human nature. Annotation c2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)