EBOOK
About
Philip Pettit is L. S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, Canberra. He is the author of Republicanism, On the People's Terms, Just Freedom, and other books.
A major new account of the state and its importance by a leading political philosopher
The future of our species depends on the state. Can states resist corporate capture, religious zealotry, and nationalist mania? Can they find a way to work together so that the earth heals and its peoples prosper? Or is the state just not up to the task? In this book, the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit examines the nature of the state and its capacity to serve goals like peace and justice within and beyond its borders. In doing so, he breaks new ground by making the state the focus of political theory-with implications for economic, legal, and social theory-and presents a persuasive, historically informed image of an institution that lies at the center of our lives.
Offering an account that is more realist than utopian, Pettit starts from the function the polity is meant to serve, looks at how it can best discharge that function, and explores its ability to engage beneficially in the life of its citizens. This enables him to identify an ideal of statehood that is a precondition of justice. Only if states approximate this functional ideal will they be able to deal with the perennial problems of extreme poverty and bitter discord as well as the challenges that loom over the coming centuries, including climate change, population growth, and nuclear arms. "In its ambition and execution, The State resembles such canonical works of political philosophy as Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) or Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du contrat social (1762) and will likely be counted among them in time."---Adam Coleman, The Irish Times "[I]mportant, timely, and original."---Donald Bello Hutt & Victoria Kristan, Res Publica "Magisterial and defining. Pettit is one of the world's greatest political philosophers; this book offers clarity and wisdom on every page."-Cass R. Sunstein, author of #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media "What is the state? Why do we need it? And how can we control it? In this monumental book, one of today's most prolific and inspired philosophers revisits the foundations of modern political theory. Through piercing analyses of the origins of the law, the need for both sovereignty and decentralization, the power of the people, the function of individual rights, and the political regulation of the market, Philip Pettit has written the definitive treatise of the state for our times."-Cécile Laborde, University of Oxford "Philip Pettit has written a rigorous and compelling account of what the state must be and could be as a prelude to an argument about what it should be to achieve national and global justice. Of particular note is his understanding of sovereignty as an emergent phenomenon from the interactions of multiple decentralized agents of the people, a critical updating of classical theorists. The argument for the survival and necessity of the state is equally important for both domestic political theorists and would-be architects of global governance."-Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America "In this philosophical tour de force, Philip Pettit offers an elegant republican riposte to the sovereignty theories of Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, and their contemporary admirers. Through a thought experiment worthy of his early-modern interlocutors, he demonstrates that the proper functioning of the state, including ensuring security and welfare, is not best served by a unitary sovereign, but rather by a balance of power between rulers and subjects."-Josiah Ober, Stanford University "In this grand treatise, Philip Pettit does nothing less for our time than what Thomas Hobbes did for his: lay out the na
A major new account of the state and its importance by a leading political philosopher
The future of our species depends on the state. Can states resist corporate capture, religious zealotry, and nationalist mania? Can they find a way to work together so that the earth heals and its peoples prosper? Or is the state just not up to the task? In this book, the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit examines the nature of the state and its capacity to serve goals like peace and justice within and beyond its borders. In doing so, he breaks new ground by making the state the focus of political theory-with implications for economic, legal, and social theory-and presents a persuasive, historically informed image of an institution that lies at the center of our lives.
Offering an account that is more realist than utopian, Pettit starts from the function the polity is meant to serve, looks at how it can best discharge that function, and explores its ability to engage beneficially in the life of its citizens. This enables him to identify an ideal of statehood that is a precondition of justice. Only if states approximate this functional ideal will they be able to deal with the perennial problems of extreme poverty and bitter discord as well as the challenges that loom over the coming centuries, including climate change, population growth, and nuclear arms. "In its ambition and execution, The State resembles such canonical works of political philosophy as Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) or Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du contrat social (1762) and will likely be counted among them in time."---Adam Coleman, The Irish Times "[I]mportant, timely, and original."---Donald Bello Hutt & Victoria Kristan, Res Publica "Magisterial and defining. Pettit is one of the world's greatest political philosophers; this book offers clarity and wisdom on every page."-Cass R. Sunstein, author of #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media "What is the state? Why do we need it? And how can we control it? In this monumental book, one of today's most prolific and inspired philosophers revisits the foundations of modern political theory. Through piercing analyses of the origins of the law, the need for both sovereignty and decentralization, the power of the people, the function of individual rights, and the political regulation of the market, Philip Pettit has written the definitive treatise of the state for our times."-Cécile Laborde, University of Oxford "Philip Pettit has written a rigorous and compelling account of what the state must be and could be as a prelude to an argument about what it should be to achieve national and global justice. Of particular note is his understanding of sovereignty as an emergent phenomenon from the interactions of multiple decentralized agents of the people, a critical updating of classical theorists. The argument for the survival and necessity of the state is equally important for both domestic political theorists and would-be architects of global governance."-Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America "In this philosophical tour de force, Philip Pettit offers an elegant republican riposte to the sovereignty theories of Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, and their contemporary admirers. Through a thought experiment worthy of his early-modern interlocutors, he demonstrates that the proper functioning of the state, including ensuring security and welfare, is not best served by a unitary sovereign, but rather by a balance of power between rulers and subjects."-Josiah Ober, Stanford University "In this grand treatise, Philip Pettit does nothing less for our time than what Thomas Hobbes did for his: lay out the na