All human relationships are not created equal; attachments between close associates ('friends'), compatriots ('citizens'), and humans ('strangers') vary greatly in terms of their character and importance. From a critical standpoint, though, which type of attachment should take priority? Are we morally obliged to think of ourselves first and foremost as members of the human race, or should we prioritize our allegiance to a particular nation, or our personal friendships above our humanity? In Friends, Citizens, Strangers, Richard Vernon considers these questions, and addresses the implications of various answers. Vernon grounds his investigation in the work of Locke, Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, and J.S. Mill in England, and Rousseau, Comte, Proudhon, and Bergson in France. He explores what these thinkers have to say about the theme in question, and in turn what that theme reveals about basic issues in their own work. Vernon also turns to contemporary thought to explore the issue: the idea of a 'crime against humanity' as an assertion of the moral standing of strangers, the idea of moral partialism, the claim that compatriots inherit historical obligations, and the 'associativist' view that obligations are of two distinct kinds, partial and universal. Finally, drawing on both the historical and contemporary sources discussed, Friends, Citizen, Strangers proposes a solution: a moderate form of cosmopolitanism that finds a place for multiple levels of attachment and association. This work will prove useful not only to scholars of the authors discussed, but also to those interested in ethics and political theory more broadly.

This analysis of Georges Sorel's ideas on revolution and the original translations of some of his little-known writings on this theme offer a critical reassessment of Sorel's place in modern political thought.
This analysis of Georges Sorel's ideas on revolution and the original translations of some of his little-known writings on this theme offer a critical reassessment of Sorel's place in modern political thought.
By turns conservative pessimist, social democrat, revolutionary syndicalist, and reactionary, Sorel is a perplexing figure. He has long been regarded as one of a generation of intellectuals who abandoned reason for violence, theoretical reflection for practical commitment. But according to Sorel -- as the title of his most notorious book makes clear -- the task of the theoretician is to reflect on violence. He maintained that reflection discloses the limited and deficient character of practical thought, but he also recognized that the springs of action escape the grasp of the reflective theorist. It was this distinctness of theory and practice that Soreal attempted to come to terms with in his thinking on revolution. If revolution is a violent action, it is also a process of structural change which the actors themselves do not comprehend. This theme enables the reader to grasp a significant degree of continuity among some of Sorel's bewilderingly diverse positions. Moreover, it accounts for much of his critique of Marxism and his sceptical reflects on Marxian notions of history, class, consciousness, and party.
Placed in the context of modern revolutionary thinking, Sorel is an eccentric figure but not an irrelevant one, for his approach points to some of the difficulties in the idea of revolution that were largely overlooked by the ‘New Left.’