Originally published in 1963, this classic book is a rethinking of the history of Western political philosophy. Charles N. R. McCoy contrasts classical-medieval principles against the "hypotheses" at the root of modern liberalism and modern conservativism.

Introduction to the Transaction Edition Thomas M. Neumayr and Richard J. DoughertyPrefaceIntroductionPart One. The Classical-Christian Tradition1 Plato: Logic and Political Reality The Sophists Socrates and Plato The Doctrine that Virtue Is Knowledge The State The Individual Writ Large Property and the Family2 Aristotle: Political Science and the Real World Art and Prudence Ethics Fundamental Principles of Self-government The Political Life and the Contemplative Life The Primacy of the Common Good Economics and Politics Political Science: Architectonic and Principal Science The Political Community Forms of Government Rule According to Law and the Forms of Government The Mixed Forms of Government and the Polity3 The Political Philosophy of Later Greece and Rome The Philosophies of Conduct Natural Law, Law of Nations, and Civil Law4 Christianity and Political Philosophy: The Relation of Church and State Greek Political Philosophy and Christian Theology The Theory of Church and State St. Augustine: The City of God St. Thomas Aquinas: Church and State Egidius Colonna John of Paris Marsilius of Padua5 Christianity and Political Philosophy: The Theory of Constitutional Government The Political Community: The Law of the Constitution The Best Form of Government Consent and Possibility: Intrinsic Limits on Positive Law The Divine Positive Law and Constitutional LibertyPart Two. The Modern Theory of Politics6 Machiavelli and the New Politics: The Primacy of Art Machiavelli and the Renaissance Art and the New Physics The Political Thought of Machiavelli The Protestant Reformation and Political Philosophy7 The Modernized Theory of Natural Law and the Enlightenment Jean Bodin (1530 1596) The Modernized Theory of Natural Law Hugo Grotius (1583 1645) Thomas Hobbes (1588 1679) John Locke (1632 1704) Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 1778)8 The Outcome of Autonomous Natural Law: Classical Liberalism and Conservatism David Hume The Attack on Causality Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments Jeremy Bentham (1748 1832) John Stuart Mill (1806 1873) Edmund Burke (1729 1797) and Modern Conservatism The Dilemma of Liberalism9 The Marxist Revolutionary Idea: The Enlightenment in Germany The German Philosophical Revolution Ludwig Feuerbach and the Humanist Critique of Philosophy10 The Marxist Revolutionary Idea: Philosophy Passes into PracticeEpilogueIndex