This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s.

This book brings together the lectures that inspired a generation of students--and a regeneration of moral philosophy.

One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.

Unpopular in its day, David Hume's sprawling, three-volume A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) has withstood the test of time and had enormous impact on subsequent philosophical thought. Hume's comprehensive effort to form an observationally grounded study of human nature employs John Locke's empiric principles to construct a theory of knowledge from which to evaluate metaphysical ideas. A key to modern studies of eighteenth-century Western philosophy, the Treatise considers numerous classic philosophical issues, including causation, existence, freedom and necessity, and morality. (...) Unabridged republication of the edition originally published by Oxford at the Clarendon Press, London, 1888. Index. Appendix. (shrink)