“...this is a book about texts as well as their authors, it is not a textbook so much as a context book and a pretext book, concerned with settings and motives as well as the works themselves. Its success will be measured by the readers who pick up Plato’s Republic, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and find themselves engrossed rather than baffled—and even when they are baffled, are happy to go on reading, interrogating, and arguing with their authors for themselves.” ValueGood Book Author:Alan Ryan
“He had gone again and, emboldened by his first successful trip, had chosen a different sort of world to enter, that of THE MONK. He had studied the book with great care and finally selected a passage that was purely descriptive. The result was the same. The instant he closed the top of the showcase, he was transported to the world described in the open pages. He found himself standing - and shivering - in a dank corridor that, he knew, was far underground. Feeble candlelight flickered in the distance, off to his left. Water dripped down the gleaming walls and startled rats scurried past his feet. The air was stale and unpleasant. Down the corridor to his left, he could hear singing but could not make out the words. Then suddenly, from his right, he heard a woman's high-pitched scream, its sound caroming off the wet, stone walls of the passageway. He jumped, his skin crawling at the back of his neck. And found himself back in his warm and familiar room. ("I Shall Not Leave England Now")” ReadingFictionGothicThe MonkMatthew Gregory Lewis Book:Shadows 7 Source: Shadows 7
“Justice is the most "political" or institutional of the virtues. The legitimacy of a state rests upon its claim to do justice.” StatesPoliticalJusticeVirtueClaimsLegitimacy Author:Alan Ryan
“A colleague once described political theorists as people who were obsessed with two dozen books; after half a century of grappling with Mill's essay On Liberty, or Hobbes's Leviathan, I have sometimes thought two dozen might be a little on the high side.” PeopleLittlesTwoBookSometimesMightPoliticalSidesHalfLibertyCenturyObsessedDozenColleaguesEssaysMillsTheoristsHobbesGrapplingHalf A CenturyLeviathan Author:Alan Ryan
“It is never right to injure anyone. It can never be right to make someone worse than he is.” Author:Alan Ryan
“Richard A. Posner is an extraordinary person. If he did not exist, it would be hard to believe that he could. (...) He writes with a flair that puts most journalists to shame and a depth of knowledge that puts most professors to shame.” IfsWritingBelievePersonsHardWould BeShameExtraordinaryDepthJournalistProfessorsHard To BelieveFlairExtraordinary Person Author:Alan Ryan
“We do not go to work only to earn an income, but to find meaning in our lives. What we do is a large part of what we are” Our LivesIncomeFind Me Author:Alan Ryan
“Modern liberalism has many roots. One of the most important is the ideas of a man described by an American critic as 'his satanic free-trade majesty John Stuart Mill' and revered by others.” MenImportantIdeasModernRootsTradeCriticsLiberalismMajestyMillsFree TradeSatanicModern Liberalism Author:Alan Ryan
