A timeline of political thought

Political philosophy begins with a handful of questions the Greeks, Romans, Indians, and Chinese asked almost simultaneously: What is justice? Who should rule? Can power be made answerable to virtue? Plato answers with philosopher-kings, Aristotle with the mixed constitution, Confucius with the cultivated gentleman, Kautilya and Han Fei with the cold mechanics of state power. Everything that follows is, in some sense, an argument with these books.

1. c. 500 BCThe Art of War Sun Tzu
2. c. 450 BCThe Analects Confucius
3. c. 430 BCMozi Mozi
4. c. 400 BCHistory of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides
5. c. 400 BCTao Te Ching Laozi (Lao Tzu)
6. c. 399 BCApology Plato
7. c. 375 BCRepublic Plato
8. c. 340 BCNicomachean Ethics Aristotle
9. c. 330 BCPolitics Aristotle
10. c. 300 BCArthashastra Kautilya (Chanakya)
11. c. 300 BCMencius Mencius (Mengzi)
12. c. 240 BCHan Feizi Han Fei
13. c. 200 BCThe Bhagavad Gita Vyasa (traditional)
14. c. 140 BCThe Histories Polybius
15. c. 51 BCOn the Commonwealth Cicero
16. 44 BCOn Duties Cicero
17. c. 65Letters from a Stoic Seneca
18. c. 108Discourses and Selected Writings Epictetus
19. c. 175Meditations Marcus Aurelius
20. 413–426City of God Augustine of Hippo

For a thousand years the great political question was the relation between revealed religion and earthly rule. Augustine split history into two cities; Al-Farabi, Averroes, and Maimonides carried Greek philosophy through the Islamic and Jewish worlds while Europe had largely lost it; Aquinas built the synthesis of reason and faith whose theory of natural law still anchors arguments today; and Ibn Khaldun invented something like social science to explain why dynasties rise and rot.

1. c. 940The Virtuous City Al-Farabi
2. c. 1179The Decisive Treatise Averroes (Ibn Rushd)
3. c. 1190The Guide for the Perplexed Maimonides
4. c. 1270Treatise on Law Thomas Aquinas
5. 1265–1274Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas
6. 1377The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History Ibn Khaldun

Politics breaks free of theology. Machiavelli describes power as it is rather than as it ought to be, and recovers the Roman republic as a living model; More invents the modern utopia; Grotius founds international law. Then the wars of religion force the deepest rethink of all: Hobbes derives the sovereign state from fear and consent alone, and Spinoza makes the first great case for freedom of thought.

1. 1516Utopia Thomas More
2. 1531 (written c. 1517)Discourses on Livy Niccolò Machiavelli
3. 1532 (written 1513)The Prince Niccolò Machiavelli
4. 1625The Rights of War and Peace Hugo Grotius
5. 1651Leviathan Thomas Hobbes
6. 1670 (posthumous)Pensées Blaise Pascal
7. 1670Theological-Political Treatise Baruch Spinoza
8. 1679 (collected)The Sermons of António Vieira António Vieira

The age that built the modern political world. Locke grounds government in rights and consent; Montesquieu separates powers; Rousseau asks whether civilisation itself corrupts; Smith discovers the market order. Then the ideas catch fire: Paine and the Federalist argue an actual republic into existence, Wollstonecraft extends the revolution to women, Burke counts its costs, and Kant imagines perpetual peace among free states.

1. 1689A Letter Concerning Toleration John Locke
2. 1689Second Treatise of Government John Locke
3. 1748The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu
4. 1755Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Jean-Jacques Rousseau
5. 1759The Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith
6. 1762The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau
7. 1776Common Sense Thomas Paine
8. 1776The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith
9. 1784What Is Enlightenment? Immanuel Kant
10. 1787–1788The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
11. 1790Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke
12. 1791Rights of Man Thomas Paine
13. 1792A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft
14. 1795Perpetual Peace Immanuel Kant
15. 1797Considerations on France Joseph de Maistre
16. 1815The Jamaica Letter Simón Bolívar

Industry and democracy arrive together, and thinkers split over what they mean. Tocqueville studies democracy's habits in America; Mill defends liberty against the tyranny of opinion; Marx reads the factory as the key to history; Douglass turns the language of liberty against slavery itself. Anarchists, nationalists, and the first social scientists all emerge here, alongside Nietzsche's warning that the death of God leaves politics without a floor.

1. 1819The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns Benjamin Constant
2. 1821Elements of the Philosophy of Right G. W. F. Hegel
3. 1832 (posthumous)On War Carl von Clausewitz
4. 1835–1840Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville
5. 1840What Is Property? Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
6. 1843Fear and Trembling Søren Kierkegaard
7. 1844 (published 1932)Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Karl Marx
8. 1845Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Frederick Douglass
9. 1848Principles of Political Economy John Stuart Mill
10. 1848The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
11. 1849Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau
12. 1850The Law Frédéric Bastiat
13. 1852The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Karl Marx
14. 1852What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass
15. 1859On Liberty John Stuart Mill
16. 1861Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill
17. 1862Nationality Lord Acton
18. 1867Capital, Volume I Karl Marx
19. 1869The Subjection of Women John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill
20. 1880The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
21. 1882 (posthumous)God and the State Mikhail Bakunin
22. 1882What Is a Nation? Ernest Renan
23. 1884The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State Friedrich Engels
24. 1887Community and Society Ferdinand Tönnies
25. 1887On the Genealogy of Morality Friedrich Nietzsche
26. 1891Nuestra América (Our America) José Martí
27. 1892The Conquest of Bread Peter Kropotkin
28. 1893The Division of Labour in Society Émile Durkheim
29. 1894The Kingdom of God Is Within You Leo Tolstoy
30. 1899Evolutionary Socialism Eduard Bernstein
31. 1899Reform or Revolution Rosa Luxemburg

The century of total politics. Weber names the modern state's cold machinery; Lenin turns Marx into a strategy; Gandhi invents mass nonviolence; Schmitt and the fascists theorise the politics of friend and enemy while Mussolini and Gentile put it into practice. Against catastrophe, Keynes rethinks economics, Niebuhr rethinks moral man, and as the war ends Hayek, Polanyi, and Popper publish three rival diagnoses of how civilisation nearly destroyed itself.

1. 1901Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington
2. 1902Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution Peter Kropotkin
3. 1902The Varieties of Religious Experience William James
4. 1903The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois
5. 1904–1905The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Max Weber
6. 1909Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule Mohandas K. Gandhi
7. 1910Anarchism and Other Essays Emma Goldman
8. 1911Political Parties Robert Michels
9. 1917Nationalism Rabindranath Tagore
10. 1917The State and Revolution Vladimir Lenin
11. 1919Politics as a Vocation Max Weber
12. 1922 (posthumous)Economy and Society Max Weber
13. 1922Political Theology Carl Schmitt
14. 1922Public Opinion Walter Lippmann
15. 1923I and Thou Martin Buber
16. 1924The Three Principles of the People Sun Yat-sen
17. 1927Liberalism Ludwig von Mises
18. 1927The Public and Its Problems John Dewey
19. 1928Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality José Carlos Mariátegui
20. 1929Origins and Doctrine of Fascism Giovanni Gentile
21. 1929The Revolt of the Masses José Ortega y Gasset
22. 1930The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam Muhammad Iqbal
23. 1932Brave New World Aldous Huxley
24. 1932Moral Man and Immoral Society Reinhold Niebuhr
25. 1932The Concept of the Political Carl Schmitt
26. 1932The Doctrine of Fascism Benito Mussolini
27. 1929–1935 (published posthumously)Prison Notebooks Antonio Gramsci
28. 1936Annihilation of Caste B. R. Ambedkar
29. 1936The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes
30. 1937The Cost of Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer
31. 1938Anarcho-Syndicalism Rudolf Rocker
32. 1938Homage to Catalonia George Orwell
33. 1938The Black Jacobins C.L.R. James
34. 1939The Twenty Years' Crisis E. H. Carr
35. 1941Escape from Freedom Erich Fromm
36. 1941The Managerial Revolution James Burnham
37. 1942Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy Joseph A. Schumpeter
38. 1943The Abolition of Man C. S. Lewis
39. 1943The Machiavellians James Burnham
40. 1944Dialectic of Enlightenment Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
41. 1944The Great Transformation Karl Polanyi
42. 1944The Road to Serfdom Friedrich Hayek
43. 1945The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper
44. 1945The Use of Knowledge in Society Friedrich Hayek

Out of the ruins, a long argument about freedom. Arendt anatomises totalitarianism; Beauvoir founds modern feminism; Fanon writes the decolonisation of the mind; King writes from a Birmingham jail. Berlin splits liberty in two, Rawls rebuilds justice from first principles, Nozick answers him within five years, and Foucault turns the lens on power itself. Most of today's academic debates were set on these pages.

1. 1946Economics in One Lesson Henry Hazlitt
2. 1947 (posthumous)Gravity and Grace Simone Weil
3. 1948Ideas Have Consequences Richard M. Weaver
4. 1948Politics Among Nations Hans Morgenthau
5. 1949A Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold
6. 1949Human Action: A Treatise on Economics Ludwig von Mises
7. 1949Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
8. 1949 (posthumous)The Need for Roots Simone Weil
9. 1949The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir
10. 1950Discourse on Colonialism Aimé Césaire
11. 1951The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt
12. 1951The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements Eric Hoffer
13. 1952Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon
14. 1952Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis
15. 1953Natural Right and History Leo Strauss
16. 1953The Conservative Mind Russell Kirk
17. 1953The Quest for Community Robert Nisbet
18. 1953The Worldly Philosophers Robert L. Heilbroner
19. 1956The Power Elite C. Wright Mills
20. 1957The Colonizer and the Colonized Albert Memmi
21. 1958A Humane Economy Wilhelm Röpke
22. 1958The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith
23. 1958The Human Condition Hannah Arendt
24. 1958Two Concepts of Liberty Isaiah Berlin
25. 1959The Sociological Imagination C. Wright Mills
26. 1960The Constitution of Liberty Friedrich Hayek
27. 1961The Concept of Law H. L. A. Hart
28. 1961The Wretched of the Earth Frantz Fanon
29. 1962Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman
30. 1962Rationalism in Politics Michael Oakeshott
31. 1962Silent Spring Rachel Carson
32. 1962The Calculus of Consent James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock
33. 1962The Prophets Abraham Joshua Heschel
34. 1962The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Jürgen Habermas
35. 1963Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil Hannah Arendt
36. 1963Letter from Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King Jr.
37. 1963The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan
38. 1964Milestones Sayyid Qutb
39. 1964One-Dimensional Man Herbert Marcuse
40. 1964The Ballot or the Bullet Malcolm X
41. 1965Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism Kwame Nkrumah
42. 1965The Logic of Collective Action Mancur Olson
43. 1966Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal Ayn Rand
44. 1968Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire
45. 1968The Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin
46. 1968Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism Julius K. Nyerere
47. 1970Exit, Voice, and Loyalty Albert O. Hirschman
48. 1970Sexual Politics Kate Millett
49. 1970The Dialectic of Sex Shulamith Firestone
50. 1971A Theory of Justice John Rawls
51. 1971Open Veins of Latin America Eduardo Galeano
52. 1971Selections from the Prison Notebooks Antonio Gramsci
53. 1972The Limits to Growth Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens
54. 1973For a New Liberty Murray Rothbard
55. 1973–1979Law, Legislation and Liberty Friedrich Hayek
56. 1973 (posthumous)Return to the Source: Selected Speeches Amílcar Cabral
57. 1973The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
58. 1973The Machinery of Freedom David Friedman
59. 1974Anarchy, State, and Utopia Robert Nozick
60. 1975Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault
61. 1976The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: The Will to Knowledge Michel Foucault
62. 1977Just and Unjust Wars Michael Walzer
63. 1977Taking Rights Seriously Ronald Dworkin
64. 1978 (posthumous)I Write What I Like Steve Biko
65. 1978Orientalism Edward Said
66. 1979Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste Pierre Bourdieu
67. 1979Theory of International Politics Kenneth Waltz

The arguments of the present: the fate of liberalism after the Cold War, markets and their discontents, identity and recognition, the internet's effect on the public square, democracy's backsliding, climate, and the meaning of nationhood in a connected world. The canon here is younger and less settled, which is the point: these are the books people will still be arguing about when this era gets its own name.

1. 1980A People's History of the United States Howard Zinn
2. 1980Free to Choose Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman
3. 1980The Meaning of Conservatism Roger Scruton
4. 1981After Virtue Alasdair MacIntyre
5. 1981Ain't I a Woman bell hooks
6. 1981The Theory of Communicative Action Jürgen Habermas
7. 1981The Ultimate Resource Julian L. Simon
8. 1981Women, Race & Class Angela Y. Davis
9. 1982The Ecology of Freedom Murray Bookchin
10. 1983Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition Cedric J. Robinson
11. 1983Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson
12. 1983Nations and Nationalism Ernest Gellner
13. 1983Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality Michael Walzer
14. 1984After Hegemony Robert O. Keohane
15. 1984Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center bell hooks
16. 1984Sister Outsider Audre Lorde
17. 1985Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman
18. 1985Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
19. 1986Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity Ulrich Beck
20. 1986Stabilizing an Unstable Economy Hyman P. Minsky
21. 1986The Morality of Freedom Joseph Raz
22. 1987A Conflict of Visions Thomas Sowell
23. 1987The Closing of the American Mind Allan Bloom
24. 1988Can the Subaltern Speak? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
25. 1988Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
26. 1988The Sexual Contract Carole Pateman
27. 1989Democracy and Its Critics Robert Dahl
28. 1989Justice, Gender, and the Family Susan Moller Okin
29. 1989The Liberalism of Fear Judith Shklar
30. 1989Toward a Feminist Theory of the State Catharine A. MacKinnon
31. 1990Black Feminist Thought Patricia Hill Collins
32. 1990Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity Judith Butler
33. 1990Governing the Commons Elinor Ostrom
34. 1990Justice and the Politics of Difference Iris Marion Young
35. 1990The Crooked Timber of Humanity Isaiah Berlin
36. 1991The Ethics of Authenticity Charles Taylor
37. 1992The End of History and the Last Man Francis Fukuyama
38. 1992The Struggle for Recognition Axel Honneth
39. 1993Political Liberalism John Rawls
40. 1993Race Matters Cornel West
41. 1994Long Walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela
42. 1994Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition Charles Taylor
43. 1995Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights Will Kymlicka
44. 1995Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality G. A. Cohen
45. 1995The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy Christopher Lasch
46. 1996The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order Samuel P. Huntington
47. 1997The Racial Contract Charles W. Mills
48. 1998Liberty before Liberalism Quentin Skinner
49. 1998On Democracy Robert A. Dahl
50. 1998Seeing Like a State James C. Scott
51. 1999Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace Lawrence Lessig
52. 1999Development as Freedom Amartya Sen
53. 1999Social Theory of International Politics Alexander Wendt
54. 2000Basic Economics Thomas Sowell
55. 2000Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Robert D. Putnam
56. 2000Liquid Modernity Zygmunt Bauman
57. 2000The Mystery of Capital Hernando de Soto
58. 2001The Tragedy of Great Power Politics John J. Mearsheimer
59. 2002Globalization and Its Discontents Joseph E. Stiglitz
60. 2002Kicking Away the Ladder Ha-Joon Chang
61. 2002The Blank Slate Steven Pinker
62. 2004Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation Silvia Federici
63. 2004The Anatomy of Fascism Robert O. Paxton
64. 2005Black Rednecks and White Liberals Thomas Sowell
65. 2006Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers Kwame Anthony Appiah
66. 2006Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny Amartya Sen
67. 2007A Secular Age Charles Taylor
68. 2007The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies Bryan Caplan
69. 2007The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein
70. 2007The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West Mark Lilla
71. 2009Capitalist Realism Mark Fisher
72. 2009The Art of Not Being Governed James C. Scott
73. 2009The Idea of Justice Amartya Sen
74. 2009Why Not Socialism? G. A. Cohen
75. 2010Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World Deirdre N. McCloskey
76. 2010The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Michelle Alexander
77. 2010The Rational Optimist Matt Ridley
78. 2011Creating Capabilities Martha C. Nussbaum
79. 2011Debt: The First 5,000 Years David Graeber
80. 2011The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
81. 2011The Origins of Political Order Francis Fukuyama
82. 2011Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman
83. 2012Revolution at Point Zero Silvia Federici
84. 2012The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt
85. 2012Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
86. 2013The Entrepreneurial State Mariana Mazzucato
87. 2014Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty
88. 2014Epistemologies of the South Boaventura de Sousa Santos
89. 2014How to Be a Conservative Roger Scruton
90. 2014Political Order and Political Decay Francis Fukuyama
91. 2014The Tyranny of Experts William Easterly
92. 2014This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate Naomi Klein
93. 2015Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates
94. 2015Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution Wendy Brown
95. 2016Against Democracy Jason Brennan
96. 2016Democracy for Realists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels
97. 2016Weapons of Math Destruction Cathy O'Neil
98. 2016What Is Populism? Jan-Werner Müller
99. 2017#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media Cass R. Sunstein
100. 2017Doughnut Economics Kate Raworth
101. 2017On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century Timothy Snyder
102. 2017The Benedict Option Rod Dreher
103. 2017The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics Mark Lilla
104. 201812 Rules for Life Jordan Peterson
105. 2018Algorithms of Oppression Safiya Umoja Noble
106. 2018Bullshit Jobs: A Theory David Graeber
107. 2018Discrimination and Disparities Thomas Sowell
108. 2018Enlightenment Now Steven Pinker
109. 2018How Democracies Die Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
110. 2018Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment Francis Fukuyama
111. 2018Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life Nassim Nicholas Taleb
112. 2018The Coddling of the American Mind Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
113. 2018The People vs. Democracy Yascha Mounk
114. 2018The Virtue of Nationalism Yoram Hazony
115. 2018Why Liberalism Failed Patrick J. Deneen
116. 2019Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World Branko Milanović
117. 2019Dominion Tom Holland
118. 2019How to Be an Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi
119. 2019Necropolitics Achille Mbembe
120. 2019The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff
121. 2019The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes
122. 2019The Madness of Crowds Douglas Murray
123. 2019The Right Side of History Ben Shapiro
124. 2020A Time to Build Yuval Levin
125. 2020Entitled Kate Manne
126. 2020Open Democracy Hélène Landemore
127. 2020The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties Christopher Caldwell
128. 2020The Parasitic Mind Gad Saad
129. 2020The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? Michael J. Sandel
130. 2020Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism Anne Applebaum
131. 2020Why We're Polarized Ezra Klein
132. 2021Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America John McWhorter
133. 2022A Brief History of Equality Thomas Piketty
134. 2022Common Good Constitutionalism Adrian Vermeule
135. 2022Conservatism: A Rediscovery Yoram Hazony
136. 2023Liberalism Against Itself Samuel Moyn
137. 2023Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future Patrick J. Deneen
138. 2023Technofeudalism Yanis Varoufakis
139. 2023The Identity Trap Yascha Mounk
140. 2023The Origins of Woke Richard Hanania
141. 2023Tyranny of the Minority Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
142. 2024Autocracy, Inc. Anne Applebaum
143. 2024On Freedom Timothy Snyder
144. 2025Abundance Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
145. 2025The Technological Republic Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska
146. 2026Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters Daniel A. Bell