The present second edition attempts a specific approach to political and social philosophy, which relates the political to the social and raises the question of the historicity of philosophy. In addition, there have been significant improvements to the author’s analyses as well as bibliographical additions. The author focuses on the work of the main representatives of modern political thought and traces the main lines of the problematic developed in terms of the approach to the political phenomenon by N. Machiavelli, Th. Hobbes, J. Locke, Montesquieu, J. – J. Rousseau, J. S. Mill, G. W. F. Hegel and K. Marx. The text is addressed to students of philosophy and to the general readership interested in political philosophy and the theoretical analysis of the political phenomenon.