March 2023: Foundations of Modern Environmentalism
Please join us in March 2023 for a Virtual Reading Group with Paul Schwennesen.
Pre-registration is required, and we ask you to register only if you can be present for ALL sessions. Readings must be purchased in advance. You may use promo code VRG2023 to receive 35% off your purchase at Liberty Fund Books. Participants who successfully complete ALL sessions will be eligible to receive an Amazon e-gift certificate.
Environmental activism, despite its omnipresent placement in our news feeds, is really nothing new. Thinkers back to (at least) John Locke and John Stuart Mill have expressed concern for the natural environment.
Join us for three sessions in which we dig into the foundations of today’s environmental movement, exploring what we can learn from their efforts and what we might do going forward.
Session I: Thursday, March 16, 2023, 11:00 am-noon EST, Commons and Enclosures
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, “The Land Ethic”
John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapter V, “Of Property”
John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of J.S. Mill, Volume XXIX, “Land Tenure Reform (1871)”
Celia Easton, “Jane Austen and the Enclosure Movement”
Session II: Thursday, March 23, 2023, 11:00 am-noon EST, Wilderness as a Concept
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, “Wilderness”
William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness”
Session III: Thursday, March 30, 2023, 11:00 am-noon EST, A Balance of Nature?
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, “Arizona & New Mexico”
Emma Marris, Rambunctious Garden, “Introduction”
Jonathan Franklin, A Wild Idea, “Introduction”
Virtual Reading Groups
- One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare’s Plays
- December 2023: H.G. Wells, Technocracy and Liberty
- November 2023: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War: the Gettysburg Address
- September 2023: Islam and Liberty
- September 2023: H. L. Mencken on Commerce, Culture, and Democracy
- August 2023: The Price of Power: Bring Up the Bodies and The Prince
- July 2023: Civil Society and Political Economy
- June 2023: The Challenges of Democracy in a Diverse Society
- April 2023: Understanding Reconstruction - the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
- March 2023: Foundations of Modern Environmentalism
- February 2023: Bruno Leoni: Freedom and the Law
- January 2023: Oakeshott’s Moral Vision
- January 2023: The Messiness of Progress: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and David Hume’s Essays and Histories
- December 2022: Classical Tragedy and the World of Ideas
- December 2022: J.S. Mill “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion"
- November 2022: The Election of 1800: Jefferson v. Adams
- October 2022: Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy
- September 2022: The Evolution of American Federalism
- September 2022: Liberty and Virtue in the Axial Age
- August 2022: Jane Austen’s Persuasion: Aristocracy, Independence, and Economics
- May 2022: THE BILL OF RIGHTS: SELECT CASES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
- April 2022: Education in a Free Society
- March 2022: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Women
- March 2022: Ancient v Modern Liberty
- February 2022: Joseph Schumpeter’s “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”
- January 2022: James Madison and the Conflict Between the Executive and Legislative Branches
- November 2021: Pericles' Funeral Oration
- September 2021: Celebrate Constitution Day
- August 2021: Agriculture, the State, and Liberty
- June 2021: Adam Ferguson’s History of Civil Society
- May 2021: The Colonial Origins of the Bill of Rights