Sparks Commentary

In 1656, Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated , from the  Jewish  community into which he was born. He had taught some doctrines that offended ...

In the seventeenth century , Thomas Hobbes gave the most powerful argument ever written for the necessity of some form of government. His o...

“This book contains all the malice, and revenge, and treason, that mankind can be guilty of: It fixes the sole power in the parliament and t...

John Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government” is one of the greatest political works ever written. It had a massive influence on the founding d...

“These are what are called revolution-principles. They are the principles of  Aristotle  and Plato , of Livy and Cicero , of Sydney , Harri...

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke on 5 February 1675 Sir Is...

“ Cogito, ergo sum .” (“I think, therefore I am.”) – René Descartes, in his works “Discourse on the Method” (1637) and “Principles of Philo...

The battle over the Sun-centered universe was as much political as it was scientific. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries , a th...

“Bills of attainder, ex-post-facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the socia...

The English   philosopher   John Locke was a vocal advocate of private property, and gave an eloquent defense of it in his "Second T...

The English   philosopher  Thomas Hobbes once said that the state of nature is a "war of every man against every man." Many have...

"The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But mod...

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man ; the same is consequent to the time, whe...