Roger Boesche is Professor of Politics at Occidental College. He is the author of The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville (1987) and editor of Alexis de Tocqueville: Selected Letters on Politics and Society (1985).

“A great achievement in the scholarship of political philosophy. Anyone who wants to think deeply about the meaning of tyranny must read it.”—American Political Science Review (APSR)

• ContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Plato: The Political Psychology of Tyranny2. Aristotle: Tyranny as Unnatural3. Tacitus: Tyranny as a Politics of Pretense4. Machiavelli: Defeating Princely Tyrannies5. Montesquieu’s Two Theories of Despotism: Fearing Monarchs and Merchants6. Tocqueville: The Pleasures of Servitude7. Marx: Despotism of Class and Workplace8. Freud: The Reproduction of Tyranny9. Weber: The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Domination10. Fromm, Neumann, and Arendt: Three Early Interpretations of Nazi GermanyConclusion: Thinking About TyrannyAfterwordIndex

Roger Boesche is Professor of Politics at Occidental College. He is the author of The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville (1987) and editor of Alexis de Tocqueville: Selected Letters on Politics and Society (1985).

“A great achievement in the scholarship of political philosophy. Anyone who wants to think deeply about the meaning of tyranny must read it.”—American Political Science Review (APSR)

• ContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Plato: The Political Psychology of Tyranny2. Aristotle: Tyranny as Unnatural3. Tacitus: Tyranny as a Politics of Pretense4. Machiavelli: Defeating Princely Tyrannies5. Montesquieu’s Two Theories of Despotism: Fearing Monarchs and Merchants6. Tocqueville: The Pleasures of Servitude7. Marx: Despotism of Class and Workplace8. Freud: The Reproduction of Tyranny9. Weber: The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Domination10. Fromm, Neumann, and Arendt: Three Early Interpretations of Nazi GermanyConclusion: Thinking About TyrannyAfterwordIndex

Roger Boesche is Professor of Politics at Occidental College. He is the author of The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville (1987) and editor of Alexis de Tocqueville: Selected Letters on Politics and Society (1985).

“A great achievement in the scholarship of political philosophy. Anyone who wants to think deeply about the meaning of tyranny must read it.”—American Political Science Review (APSR)

• ContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Plato: The Political Psychology of Tyranny2. Aristotle: Tyranny as Unnatural3. Tacitus: Tyranny as a Politics of Pretense4. Machiavelli: Defeating Princely Tyrannies5. Montesquieu’s Two Theories of Despotism: Fearing Monarchs and Merchants6. Tocqueville: The Pleasures of Servitude7. Marx: Despotism of Class and Workplace8. Freud: The Reproduction of Tyranny9. Weber: The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Domination10. Fromm, Neumann, and Arendt: Three Early Interpretations of Nazi GermanyConclusion: Thinking About TyrannyAfterwordIndex