Western political thinkers

From Confucius and Plato to Rawls, western political thought is a long argument about justice, authority and freedom — and later thinkers often answer earlier ones. This chapter groups sixteen thinkers into classical, contract, revolutionary and critical traditions, so each thinker can be placed and compared. A worked contrast between Hobbes and Locke on the state of nature shows how two thinkers can share a method and reach opposite conclusions about authority.