This is a significantly expanded edition of one of the greatest works of modern political theory. Sheldon Wolin's "Politics and Vision" inspired and instructed two generations of political theorists after its appearance in 1960. This new edition retains intact the original ten chapters about political thinkers from Plato to Mill, and adds seven chapters about theorists from Marx and Nietzsche to Rawls and the postmodernists. The new chapters, which show how thinkers have grappled with the immense possibilities and dangers of modern power, are themselves a major theoretical statement. They culminate in Wolin's remarkable argument that the United States has invented a new political form, 'inverted totalitarianism,' in which economic rather than political power is dangerously dominant.In this new edition, the book that helped to define political theory in the late twentieth century should energize, enlighten, and provoke generations of scholars to come. Wolin originally wrote "Politics and Vision" to challenge the idea that political analysis should consist simply of the neutral observation of objective reality. He argues that political thinkers must also rely on creative vision. Wolin shows that great theorists have been driven to shape politics to some vision of the good that lies outside the existing political order. As he tells it, the history of theory is thus, in part, the story of changing assumptions about the good. In the new chapters, Wolin displays all the energy and flair, the command of detail and of grand historical developments, that he brought to this story forty years ago. This is a work of immense talent and intense thought, an intellectual achievement that will endure.

謝爾登·S.沃林

謝爾登·S.沃林，美國普林斯頓大學政治學榮譽教授，先後在奧伯林學院、加利福尼亞大學伯剋利、聖剋魯斯及洛杉磯諸分校、普林頓大學、康乃爾大學和牛津大學執教政治學理論凡四十年之久。他還是《民主》期刊的創辦主筆。第一版《政治與構想》榮獲利平科特政治理論奬。他的另一部著作《兩個世界之間的托剋維爾》於2003年獲美國政治學會頒發的伊斯頓奬。

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辛亨復

辛亨復，籍貫江蘇無锡，生於上海。華東師範大學英語語言文學學士，美國博伊西州立大學曆史學碩士（肆業），工商管理碩士。已齣版的人文社科譯著有《權力角逐--政治領袖的成敗之道》、《紐約簡史》等。