Philosophy

Adam Ferguson on Democracy

Adam Ferguson on Love, Self-Interest, and Pleasure

Adam Smith and our Propensity to Deceive rather than to Think ill of Ourselves

Adam Smith on Admiration of the Rich and Powerful

Adam Smith on Happiness, Tranquility, and Enjoyment

Adam Smith on Men of Public Spirit

Adam Smith on Religion and the Rules of Morality

Adam Smith on social change and “the man of system” (1759)

Adam Smith on the dangers of faction and privilege seeking (1759)

Adam Smith on the Dangers of sacrificing one’s Liberty for the supposed benefits of the “lordly servitude of a court” (1759)

Adam Smith on the illegitimacy of using force to promote beneficence (1759)

Adam Smith on the Nature of Happiness

Adam Smith on the ridiculousness of romantic love (1759)

Adam Smith on the Sympathy one feels for those Vanquished in a battle rather than for the Victors (1762)

Adam Smith on why people obey and defer to their rulers (1759)

Adam Smith thinks many candidates for high political office act as if they are above the law (1759)

Adam Smith, Patriotism, and the Welfare of Our Fellow Citizens

Adam Smith, Selfishness, and Sympathy

Aristotle and Virtue Ethics

Aristotle insists that man is either a political animal (the natural state) or an outcast like a “bird which flies alone” (4thC BC)

Benedict de Spinoza on the natural right every person has to think and speak on any subject they choose (1670)

Bentham on how “the ins” and “the outs” lie to the people in order to get into power (1843)

Bentham on the proper role of government: “Be Quiet” and “Stand out of my sunshine” (1843)

Bernard Mandeville concludes his fable of the bees with a moral homily on the virtues of peace, hard work, and diligence (1705)

Bernard Mandeville on how the Hardships and Fatigues of War bear most heavily on the “working slaving People” (1732)

Bernard Mandeville uses a fable about bees to show how prosperity and good order comes about through spontaneous order (1705)

Cicero on being true to one’s own nature while respecting the common nature of others (c. 50 BCE)

Cicero on the need for politicians to place the interests of those they represent ahead of their own private interests (1st century BC)

Cicero urges the Senate to apply the laws equally in order to protect the reputation of Rome and to provide justice for the victims of a corrupt magistrate (1stC BC)

Condorcet on why the French revolution was more violent than the American (1794)

Condorcet writes about the inevitability of the spread of liberty and prosperity while he was in prison awaiting execution by the Jacobins (1796)

Confucius on Prudence and the Superior Man

David Hume believes we should assume all men are self-interested knaves when it comes to politics (1777)

David Hume examines the pride of the turkey (and other creatures) (1739)

David Hume on how the prosperity of one’s neighbors increases one’s own prosperity (1777)

David Hume on property as a convention which gradually emerges from society (1739)

David Hume on the origin of government in warfare, and the “perpetual struggle” between Liberty and Power (1777)

David Hume on the Perception of Beauty

David Hume ponders why the many can be governed so easily by the few and concludes that both force and opinion play a role (1777)

Epictetus on one’s inner freedom that is immune to external coercion (c. 100 CE)

Francis Hutcheson on the difference between “perfect” and “imperfect” rights (1725)

Francis Hutcheson’s early formulation of the principle of “the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers” (1726)

Herbert Spencer on the pitfalls of arguing with friends at the dinner table (1897)

Herbert Spencer worries that the violence and brutalities of football will make it that much harder to create a society in which individual rights will be mutually respected (1879)

J.S. Mill in a speech before parliament denounced the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the use of flogging in Ireland, saying that those who ordered this “deserved flogging as much as any of those who were flogged by his orders” (1866)

J.S. Mill on the wife as the “actual bondservant of her husband” in the 19th century (1869)

J.S. Mill spoke in Parliament in favour of granting women the right to vote, to have “a voice in determining who shall be their rulers” (1866)

J.S. Mill was convinced he was living in a time when he would experience an explosion of classical liberal reform because “the spirit of the age” had dramatically changed (1831)

J.S. Mill’s great principle was that “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” (1859)

Jeremy Bentham argued that the ruling elite benefits from corruption, waste, and war (1827)

Jeremy Bentham on how the interests of the many (the people) are always sacrificed to the interests of the few (the sinister interests) (1823)

Jeremy Bentham on rights as a creation of the state alone (1831)

Jeremy Bentham on the Utility Principle

Jeremy Bentham relates a number of “abominations” to the French National Convention urging them to emancipate their colonies (1793)

John Locke believed that the magistrate should not punish sin but only violations of natural rights and public peace (1689)

John Locke on the separation of Church and Magistrate (1689)

John Locke tells a “gentleman” how important reading and thinking is to a man of his station whose “proper calling” should be the service of his country (late 1600s)

John Stuart Mill discusses the origins of the state whereby the “productive class” seeks protection from one “member of the predatory class” in order to gain some security of property (1848)

John Stuart Mill on “the sacred right of insurrection” (1862)

John Stuart Mill on the “atrocities” committed by Governor Eyre and his troops in putting down the Jamaica rebellion (1866)

John Stuart Mill on the “religion of humanity” (c. 1858)

John Stuart Mill on the need for limited government and political rights to prevent the “king of the vultures” and his “minor harpies” in the government from preying on the people (1859)

John Stuart Mill uses an analogy with the removal of protective duties and bounties in trade to urge a similar “Free Trade” between the sexes (1869)

Lao Tzu and the Tao of laissez-faire (6thC BC)

Lao Tzu discusses how “the great sages” (or wise advisors) protect the interests of the prince and thus “prove to be but guardians in the interest of the great thieves” (600 BC)

Lord Kames states that the “hoarding appetite” is part of human nature and that it is the foundation of our notion of property rights (1779)

Mandeville on the social cooperation which is required to produce a piece of scarlet cloth (1723)

Marcus Aurelius on using reason to live one’s life “straight and right” (170)

Michael Oakeshott on Individualized Reason

Mill on the dangers of the state turning men into “docile instruments” of its will (1859)

Pascal and the absurd notion that the principles of justice vary across state borders (1669)

Plato believed that great souls and creative talents produce “offspring” which can be enjoyed by others: wisdom, virtue, poetry, art, temperance, justice, and the law (340s BC)

Plato warns of the people’s protector who, once having tasted blood, turns into a wolf and a tyrant (340s BC)

Samuel Smiles on how an idle, thriftless, or drunken man can, and should, improve himself through self-help and not by means of the state (1859).

Shaftesbury on the need for liberty to promote the liberal arts (1712)

Shaftesbury on the True Test of Bravery

Shaftesbury on Truth as the Most Powerful Thing in the World

Socrates on the Good in Death

Spencer on spontaneous order produced by “the beneficent working of social forces” (1879)

Spencer on voting as a poor instrument for protecting our rights to life, liberty, and property (1879)

Spencer on voting in elections as a screen behind which the wirepullers turn the sovereign people into a puppet (1882)

Spinoza on being master of one’s own thoughts (1670)

Spinoza on the dangers of using superstition to hoodwink the people (1670)

The Earl of Shaftesbury on the value of good conversations for questioning everything (1709)

The Earl of Shaftesbury relates the story of an unscrupulous glazier who gives the rowdy town youths a football so they will smash windows in the street and thus drum up business (1737)

The Earl of Shaftesbury states that civility and politeness is a consequence of liberty by which “we polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides” (1709)

William Paley dismisses as a fiction the idea that there ever was a binding contract by which citizens consented to be ruled by their government (1785)

Wollaston on crimes against person or property as contradictions of fundamental truths (1722)