The Blackwell Guide to Social and Political Philosophy brings together a collection of newly commissioned essays which examine fundamental issues in social and political theory. Written by leading social and political philosophers, each essay provides a map to the history of the issue at hand and a judicious assessment of the main arguments that have been brought to bear upon that issue.

Robert L. Simon is Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College. He is author of numerous articles in social and political philosophy as well as Fair Play (1991) and Neutrality and the Academic Ethic (1994), and co-author of The Individual and the Political Order, (third edition, 1998). He is currently working on issues in discourse ethics and on the ethics of competition in athletics, and is a past president of the International Association of the Philosophy of Sport.