Political theory courses in British universities focus on a canon of thinkers among whom the following are conventionally assigned a place: Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Hegel, Marx and Mill. These writers, and a few others (e.g., Hume, Bentham, Tocqueville) have somehow become elevated out of the profusion of otherwise unnoticed or forgotten political writings of the long Western tradition of political reflection. The process by which the selection took place is, to say the least, obscure. Sheer quality is presumably an important factor, although in a number of cases a major theorist rose to prominence because his ideas fitted the political needs and circumstances of his time. Some thinkers enjoyed intellectual celebrity in their own lifetimes (Locke, Voltaire, Sartre and Rawls come to mind; Rousseau's case is perhaps more one of notoriety); others are only given their laurels posthumously.