Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Agora Editions)

This sourcebook provides a great overview of the major players in Medieval political philosophy from the three major religions. Each translation includes a bibliography for further reading. It includes some of the only English translations I've been able to find for Al Farabi. Unfortunately, the book itself could have been higher quality. The pages started falling out shortly after I began using it. A friend who also bought the book from Amazon reported the same thing.

good and fast

product was as described.

This is pretty much THE sourcebook of medieval political philosophy, for any who would use that term. It presents a coherent collection of essays and extracts, with explanatory introductions for each piece and to each section (Islamic, Jewish, and Christian). The translations chosen are all the best available, with sections and/or paragraph numbers annotated and the page numbers to the prominent alternative editions or chief manuscripts bracketed.Unfortunately, my copy also has pages falling out from ordinary use, though from a look at the binding it seems to be a problem only for the first 1/5th or so of the text. I also concur with a prior reviewer that the space for marginal notes is insufficient.I would not, however, recommend any other text as a replacement. One would do best, then, to purchase directly from Cornell University Press, asking them to inspect the text before shipment.

An excellent resource. Updated with new selections and supplemented with helpful introductory material: a general introduction which could serve as an introduction to political philosophy simply, and introductions to each section (Islamic, Jewish, and Christian) and each selection. I seem to have been lucky in that my copy does not suffer from the binding issues that other reviewers have mentioned. My only criticism as I've used this for a class is that the layout makes it almost impossible to take notes in the margins.

This Sourcebook, an update and expansion of the original 1963 edition, contains a really unparallelled collection of sources pertaining to medieval political thought in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Really top notch. However, the quality of the actual physical book is quite lacking: every page I turn immediately falls out. Alas that such an excellent collection should be printed in such a low quality edition.

The binding is a problem in this text, as all the commentators have noticed. I would also remark that the classic introduction to the first addition is missing--which is simply a same. There is insufficient space to write in the text as well. Overall I don't see a marked improvement from the first addition, except that the notes corresponding to each text have been improved. Although I own the new addition I still prefer the first, and will continue to use and recommend it.