The Media Environment of Political Thought

Through an analysis of the environments of Rousseau and Marx, this book explores the tradition of political thought as highly regulated stream of information shaped by historical writing systems and considers the future of political thought in the computer age.

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The Media Environment of Political Thought offers a novel way of looking at the tradition of political thought by reconstructing the historical media landscapes in which great political texts of the past were produced. It brings to light the little-charted media environments in which two political innovators—Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx—operated and analyzes both how writing systems shaped their intellectual growth, and how they used those systems to communicate their pioneering ideas. The historical analysis is followed by a critical reflection on the future of political thought in the age of computer-mediated communication. Together the three studies presented in the book conjure up a view of the tradition of political thought as highly regulated stream of information shaped by historical writing systems.