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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $32.95

Format:
Paperback
328 pp.
5.25" x 8"

ISBN-13:
9780195444018

Publication date:
December 2010

Imprint: OUP Canada


The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism

Hobbes to Locke

C. B. Macpherson
Introduction by Frank Cunningham

Series : The Wynford Project

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.

Readership : Courses in political and social philosophy at the 4th year and graduate level.

Frank Cunningham: Introduction to the Wynford Edition
I. INTRODUCTION
1. The Roots of Liberal-Democratic Theory
2. Problems of Interpretation
II. HOBBES: THE POLITICAL OBLIGATION OF THE MARKET
1. Philosophy and Political Theory
2. Human Nature and the State of Nature
3. Models of Society
4. Politcal Obligation
5. Penetration and Limits of Hobbes's Political Theory
III. THE LEVELLERS: FRANCHISE AND FREEDOM
1. The Problem of the Franchise
2. Types of Franchise
3. The Record
4. Theoretical Implications
IV. HARRINGTON: THE OPPORTUNITY STATE
1. Unexamined Ambiguities
2. The Balance and the Gentry
3. The Bourgeois Society
4. The Equal Commonwealth and the Equal Agrarian
5. The Self-Cancelling Balance Principle
6. Harrington's Stature
V. LOCKE: THE POLITICAL THEORY OF APPROPRIATION
1. Interpretations
2. The Theory of Property Right
3. Class Differentials in Natural Rights and Rationality
4. The Ambiguous State of Nature
5. The Ambiguous Civil Society
6. Unsettled Problems Reconsidered
VI. POSSESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
1. The Seventeenth-Century Foundations
2. The Twentieth-Century Dilemma
Appendix
Social Classes and Franchise Classes in England, circa 1648
Notes
Works and Editions Cited
Index

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

C.B. Macpherson (1911-1987) was professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Widely regarded as Canada's pre-eminent political theorist of the twentieth century, he was the author of numerous books, including The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy and The Real World of Democracy, and was named to the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honour.

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Special Features

  • One of the key works of twentieth-century political philosophy
  • Long out of print and now available in an affordable new edition
  • New introduction by Frank Cunningham of the University of Toronto puts the work in a twenty-first-century context