Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought - Expanded Edition

This is a significantly expanded edition of one of the greatest works of modern political theory. Sheldon Wolin'sPolitics and Vision inspired and instructed two generations of political theorists after its appearance in 1960. This new edition retains intact the original ten chapters about political thinkers from Plato to Mill, and adds seven chapters about theorists from Marx and Nietzsche to Rawls and the postmodernists. The new chapters, which show how thinkers have grappled with the immense possibilities and dangers of modern power, are themselves a major theoretical statement. They culminate in Wolin's remarkable argument that the United States has invented a new political form, "inverted totalitarianism," in which economic rather than political power is dangerously dominant. In this new edition, the book that helped to define political theory in the late twentieth century should energize, enlighten, and provoke generations of scholars to come.

Wolin originally wrote Politics and Vision to challenge the idea that political analysis should consist simply of the neutral observation of objective reality. He argues that political thinkers must also rely on creative vision. Wolin shows that great theorists have been driven to shape politics to some vision of the Good that lies outside the existing political order. As he tells it, the history of theory is thus, in part, the story of changing assumptions about the Good.

In the new chapters, Wolin displays all the energy and flair, the command of detail and of grand historical developments, that he brought to this story forty years ago. This is a work of immense talent and intense thought, an intellectual achievement that will endure.

"Sheldon Wolin is our premier contemporary theorist of engaged democracy. This expanded edition ofPolitics and Vision offers an extraordinarily comprehensive and acute account of the encounter between philosophy and political power, from classical Greece to the postmodern era of Superpower. The new edition demonstrates the power of Wolin's original enterprise by bringing it into constructive relationship with Marx, Nietzsche, and Dewey, and with political philosophy since Rawls. Essential reading for anyone concerned with the possibilities of politics in the twenty-first century."--Josiah Ober, Princeton University, author of The Athenian Revolution and Political Dissent in Democratic Athens

"In his classic work, Sheldon Wolin brings to light the most fascinating meanings of politics in its highest sense. He writes with the passion of the citizen who worries about power, and the rigor of the thinker committed to intellectual sharpness and historical awareness. In this new edition, Wolin explores in depth the most difficult challenges that our democratic ocieties are facing after their victory over totalitarianisms. Like the first edition, this new one will open fresh avenues to political thinking, and will teach us new and valuable lessons in the difficult art of being free citizens."--Maurizio Viroli, Princeton University, author ofNiccolò's Smile: A
Biography of Machiavelli

"I am happy to report that the excitement of the great work represented by the first edition still remains, and that this book is, if anything, enhanced by the addition of the chapters on theorists including Marx, Nietzsche, Popper and Dewey, and Rawls. This revised and expanded edition is more somberly reflective than its predecessor, and at the same time more provocative in the overall picture it presents."--Jeremy Waldron, Columbia Law School, author ofGod, Locke, and Equality

"A great, provocative, intense, brilliant book. Several generations of political theorists were provoked and instructed by the original edition. Here, Sheldon Wolin brings up to date our understanding of politics and shows why earlier understandings are inadequate to contemporary developments."--Tracy B. Strong, University of California, San Diego, author ofThe Idea of Political Theory