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The New Leviathan

or Man, Society, Civilization, and Barbarism

R G Collingwood author David Boucher editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:17th Dec '92

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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The New Leviathan cover

The New Leviathan, originally published in 1942, a few months before the author's death, is the book which R. G. Collingwood chose to write in preference to completing his life's work on the philosophy of history. It was a reaction to the Second World War and the threat which Nazism and Fascism constituted to civilization. The book draws upon many years of work in moral and political philosophy and attempts to establish the multiple and complex connections between the levels of consciousness, society, civilization, and barbarism. Collingwood argues that traditional social contract theory has failed to account for the continuing existence of the non-social community and its relation to the social community in the body politic. He is also critical of the tendency within ethics to confound right and duty. The publication of additional manuscript material in this revised edition demonstrates in more detail how Collingwood was determined to show that right and duty occupy different levels of rational practical consciousness. The additional material also contains Collingwood's unequivocal rejection of relativism. David Boucher's introduction shows that The New Leviathan and The Idea of History are integrally related and that neither can be properly understood independently of the other. He is also concerned to show how many of Collingwood's ideas have a contemporary relevance, and that his ideas on barbarism are not so unusual as they might at first appear.

`R.G. Collingwood's late and relatively neglected work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, published in 1942 a few months before his death, is now reissued with an introduction by David Boucher and the addition of two related lectures from 1940, "Goodness, Rightness, Utility" and "What Civilization Means".' Times Literary Supplement
`a strange and fascinating book ... The publication of this handsome new edition of The New Leviathan ... is a welcome event.' Political Studies
'In his respectful and informative introduction David Boucher shows how The New Leviathan and the additional material appended to it fit in with Collingwood's thought as a whole.' Peter Johnson, History of Political Thought, Vol. XIV, 1993
'Throughout, the 'Introduction' displays Boucher's usual mastery of the material, serious and probing approach, and judicious appraisal.' Peter Nicholson, Collingwood Studies, Vol. 1, 1993
'Boucher does not only put Collingwood's political and moral philosophy, as elaborated in The New Leviathan, together with Hobbe's, Locke's, and Rousseau's, but also with Rawls' and MacIntyre's... Boucher's exposition of Collingwood's political-philosophical position in The New Leviathan is extremely interesting and clarifying.' (translation) Guido Vanheeswijck

ISBN: 9780198239819

Dimensions: 223mm x 145mm x 34mm

Weight: 732g

586 pages

Revised edition