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“... Emmanuel Levinas. Six of the pieces are published here in English for the first time. The editors, Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, are sensitive to what might be ‘impolitic’ or ‘morbid’ about such a collection, but their introduction amply and lucidly justifies their assembly of these works, and the only snag with the book as a whole is that ...”

“... Immanuel Kant​ was against revolutions. In 1793 he described them as the work of ‘political criminals’ and ‘injustice in the highest degree’. He accepted, on the other hand, that they sometimes turned out well: the Dutch had been lucky with theirs in 1579, for example, and so had the British in 1688. As for the French in 1789, it was too soon to say; but in one respect their revolution was already a glorious success: the wave of sympathy it had generated in the rest of the world showed that humanity was ready to move on from the old politics of unprincipled personal intrigue to a new politics of ‘lawful constitutions’ and ‘natural right’ – from the murderous madness of Richard III, you might say, to the enlightened benevolence of Nathan the Wise ...”