The normative foundations of collective life.
11 topics · 21 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels · 1848
History is the history of class struggle, and capitalism's own internal contradictions will produce the conditions for its overthrow by the…
+5 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch
Immanuel Kant · 1795
Sets out the conditions for lasting peace among states, arguing that republican constitutions, a federation of free states and universal hospitality…
+4 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes · 1651
Without a common power life is a war of all against all, so subjects rationally trade liberty for security — the founding social contract argument.
+9 more at this level
12 of 21 works
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
History is the history of class struggle, and capitalism's own internal contradictions will produce the conditions for its overthrow by the proletariat it creates.
Assumes no economics; it is a pamphlet written to be read aloud, and shorter than most articles about it
about 45 minutes to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyHenry David Thoreau
An individual who believes a law is unjust has a duty to refuse compliance and accept the punishment, rather than wait for the majority to agree.
about 35 minutes to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Martin Luther King Jr.
Argues that an unjust law is no law at all, and that breaking it openly, nonviolently and with acceptance of the penalty is not lawlessness but the highest respect for law.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Steven B. Smith (YaleCourses)
Reads Socrates through Tocqueville as a continuing argument about what authority can legitimately demand, and insists the question is prior to any modern policy dispute.
link checked 17 Sept 2026G. A. Cohen
Argues from the cooperative spirit of a camping trip that a fully socialist society, organised around equality and community rather than market incentive, is both desirable and feasible in principle.
Michael Sandel (TED)
Argues that trying to settle public questions while staying neutral about the good life fails, because disputes over justice already turn on what a practice is for.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Immanuel Kant
Sets out the conditions for lasting peace among states, arguing that republican constitutions, a federation of free states and universal hospitality are jointly necessary to end the state of war between nations.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Alexis de Tocqueville
Argues, from his travels in Jacksonian America, that equality of conditions is the coming force in the modern world, and asks what habits and institutions keep the democracy it produces from collapsing into either anarchy or a new despotism.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026Isaiah Berlin
Distinguishes negative liberty, being left alone by others, from positive liberty, being the author of one's own life, and warns that collapsing the two lets tyrannies justify coercion as 'true' freedom.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Joel Feinberg
Argues that what makes rights distinctively valuable is that they can be claimed, which gives the rights-holder standing to demand their enforcement rather than merely benefiting from it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Rawls
Restates the original position and the two principles of justice from A Theory of Justice in a shorter, revised form addressed directly to the objections it drew.
Thomas Hobbes
Without a common power life is a war of all against all, so subjects rationally trade liberty for security — the founding social contract argument.
about 14 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026This subject genuinely sits in more than one domain. These fields approach the same ground with different methods.