The 17th century was an important period in the development of natural law theories. The crises and revolutions of the mid-century prompted many thinkers to see civil and economic relations as being based on natural law and natural…
Up until the 19th century the dominant grounds for defending individual liberty had been that of natural rights. Jeremy Bentham and his followers in the first half of the 19th century shifted the grounds to that of utility, viz. that…
The Utilitarians were 19th century British political theorists and journalists who believed that the principle which should govern the actions of government is that which will produce “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”…
In the late 19th century the classical liberal, free market orthodoxy was beginning to be challenged by socialists like George Bernard Shaw, who put together a collection of essays in 1889 advocating greater intervention by the state…
Donald Lutz drew up a list of the most frequently cited authors by members of the Founding Generation of the American Republic. A full list can be found here and there is a bibliographical essay on this topic by Forrest McDonald.
Liberty Fund recorded conversations with two dozen of the most original thinkers about liberty of our times, and these conversations are available on audio and/or video online. They included Armen A. Alchian, Manuel Ayau, Jacques…
The intellectual struggle to articulate the theory of classical liberalism was often as hard fought as the physical battle for its political realization. The Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics Series presents not only some of the…
The modern form of socialism emerged in Britain, France and Germany in the 1830s and 1840s and has continued to evolve ever since. Various strands make up the socialist school of thought including voluntary socialists who wished to…
The Stoics were originally members of of school of philosophy which emerged in Ancient Greece (the founder was Zeno) and which had a number of important and influential members during the Roman Republic and Empire, such as Cicero,…
