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Until the eighteenth century, Western societies were hierarchical ones. Since then, they have transformed themselves into societies dominated by two features: participatory democracy and the protection of human rights. In Modern Isonomy, distinguished political theorist Gerald Stourzh unites these ideas as “isonomy.” The ideal, Stourzh argues, is a state, and indeed a world, in which individual rights, including the right to participate in politics equally, are clearly defined and possessed by all. Stourzh begins with ancient Greek thought contrasting isonomy—which is associated with the rule of the many—with “gradated societies,” oligarchies, and monarchies. He then discusses the American experiment with the development of representative democracy as well as the French Revolution, which proclaimed that all people are born and remain free and with equal rights. But progress on the creation and protection of rights for all has been uneven. Stourzh discusses specifically the equalization of slaves, peasants, women, Jews, and indigenous people. He demonstrates how deeply intertwined the protection of equal rights is with the development of democracy and gives particular attention to the development of constitutional adjudication, notably the constitutional complaint of individuals. He also discusses the international protection human rights. Timely and thought-provoking, Modern Isonomy is an erudite exploration of political and human rights.

In Rousseau, Nietzsche, and the Image of the Human, Paul Franco examines the relationship between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche, arguably the two most influential shapers and explorers of the moral and cultural imagination of late modernity. Both thinkers leveled radical critiques of modern life, but those critiques differed in important respects. Whereas Rousseau focused on the growing inequality of modern society and the hypocrisy, self-division, and loss of civic virtue it spawned, Nietzsche decried the democratic equality he identified with Rousseau and the loss of individual and cultural greatness it entailed. Franco argues, however, that Rousseau and Nietzsche are more than mere critics; they both put forward powerful alternative visions of how we ought to live. Franco focuses specifically on their views of the self and its realization, their understandings of women and the relation between the sexes, and their speculative conceptions of politics. While there are many similarities in their positive visions, Franco argues that it is the differences between them from which we have most to learn.