John Plamenatz (1912-1975) was a Montenegrin political philosopher, who succeeded Isaiah Berlin as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. The best-known of his many books on the political thought is Man and Society: A Critical Examination of Some Important Social and Political Theories from Machiavelli to Marx (1963). Mark Philp is Fellow and Tutor in Politics of Oriel College, and has been a Lecturer in Politics at Oxford University since 1983. From 2000-2005 he was Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University. He is the author of Political Conduct (Harvard University Press, 2007) and Thomas Paine (OUP, 2007).Zbigniew Pelczynski is an emeritus fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford University. He has worked widely across the history of political thought and contemporary political theory.

The real value of the present work is in the editors' meticulous compilation of footnotes charting related scholarship since 1975. The publication of these essays provides a chronicle of the continuing study of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau, especially historically oriented research of the kind issuing from the Cambridge school around Skinner, Tully, et al. Thus, what might have been merely an artifact of the dead past has been given new life ...

• PART ONE: MACHIAVELLI; PART TWO: HOBBES; PART THREE: ROUSSEAU

John Plamenatz (1912-1975) was a Montenegrin political philosopher, who succeeded Isaiah Berlin as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. The best-known of his many books on the political thought is Man and Society: A Critical Examination of Some Important Social and Political Theories from Machiavelli to Marx (1963). Mark Philp is Fellow and Tutor in Politics of Oriel College, and has been a Lecturer in Politics at Oxford University since 1983. From 2000-2005 he was Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University. He is the author of Political Conduct (Harvard University Press, 2007) and Thomas Paine (OUP, 2007).Zbigniew Pelczynski is an emeritus fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford University. He has worked widely across the history of political thought and contemporary political theory.

The real value of the present work is in the editors' meticulous compilation of footnotes charting related scholarship since 1975. The publication of these essays provides a chronicle of the continuing study of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau, especially historically oriented research of the kind issuing from the Cambridge school around Skinner, Tully, et al. Thus, what might have been merely an artifact of the dead past has been given new life ...

• PART ONE: MACHIAVELLI; PART TWO: HOBBES; PART THREE: ROUSSEAU