Publications

Seyla Benhabib
How can liberal democracy best be realized in a world fraught with conflicting new forms of identity politics and intensifying conflicts over culture? This book brings unparalleled clarity to the contemporary debate over this question. Maintaining that cultures are themselves torn by conflicts...
Seyla Benhabib
Interpreting the work of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt rereads Arendt’s political philosophy in light of newly gained insights into the historico-cultural background of her work. Arguing against the standard interpretation...
Seyla Benhabib
This book explores the tension between universal principles of human rights and the self-determination claims of sovereign states as they affect the claims of refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants. Drawing on the work of Kant’s “cosmopolitan doctrine” and positions developed by Hannah...
This book counters a range of assumptions commonly held about Marx’s views of nationalism and internationalism, not least by twentieth-century marxists themselves. It shows that Marx did not envisage the abolition of national communities or nation states; that the politics of nationalism in...
The dramatic, myth-shattering story of how Machiavelli—arguably the most misunderstood thinker of all time—fought to change his corrupt world. Since the publication of The Prince five centuries ago, Machiavelli has been associated with political amorality. But that characterization is unfair. In Be...
A myth-shattering portrait of one of history’s most celebrated, most notorious political thinkers: Niccolo Machiavelli. Since the publication of The Prince five centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli has become a byword for political amorality. But in Be Like The Fox, Erica Benner reveals...
Esser volpe” offre un resoconto avvincente e accurato della vita di uno dei pensatori politici più celebrati e controversi della storia: Niccolò Machiavelli. E lo fa nella forma di una biografia non convenzionale, animata dal ritmo e dall’energia della narrazione romanzesca....
Machiavelli’s Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the “Machiavellian” maxim...
Why did Machiavelli write the Prince - and why did religious and political authorities find it so threatening? Five hundred years on, this book tries to answer these questions. In the first detailed, chapter-by-chapter reading of the Prince in any language, Erica Benner shows that the book is a...
Really Existing Nationalisms challenges the conventional view that Marx and Engels lacked the theoretical resources needed to understand nationalism. It argues that the two thinkers had a much better explanatory grasp of national phenomena than is usually supposed, and that the reasoning behind...