Many people today have noticed that we do not really understand the political life of the world in which we live (or even that of the nation states of which we are citizens). Some who have noticed this are themselves students of politics by profession: political scientists, political sociologists, political economists, political or social theorists, even the more aspiring of journalists. Many who are in no sense professional students of politics (along with at least some who are) are certainly beginning to fear that this degree of incomprehension may be a source of danger in itself: not simply a (perhaps merciful) impediment to realizing quite how bad things already are, but a further aggravation of a range of hazards which are already acutely alarming. This book expresses just that fear. But it also attempts to show how quite archaic intellectual resources can help us to improve our judgement of the significance of recent political experience, and perhaps even (thereby) our prospects for securing a better rather than a worse political future for ourselves and our descendants.

All western universities which provide an opportunity to study politics offer, as part of their instruction, the study of a miscellany of major historical texts of political interpretation, usually of western provenance and stretching in time from Plato and Aristotle to Rawls and Dworkin. The virtual ubiquity of this practice, however, is far from matched by any corresponding commonality of judgement as to why such an offer is in any sense appropriate, let alone as to how the study of the texts themselves is best envisaged or conducted.