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In London between 1700 and 1750 one in six theatrical performances was a Shakespearean play. In fact, the most popular comic dramatists of the time, Arthur Murphy, declared, “With us islanders, Shakespeare is a kind of established… more

“The best counsellors are the dead.”

So the long-serving Elizabethan and Stuart courtier, Sir Francis Bacon, concluded in his essay “On Counsel” in 1612. Bacon was not the first to use this maxim, often appearing in the Latin as “… more

Much like Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part I, Shakespeare understood that with reward, comes risk and with individual risk and reward, come certain inequities. Shakespeare’s status as a rational, cautious investor distinguished him from… more

In the eighth canto of Dante’s Paradiso, now in the third sphere of Venus, one witnesses a discussion of how Nature, or the embodied Spirit or Will of God, does not actually distinguish between the individuality of people. It sees… more

Our friends at Adam Smith Works thought that visitors to the Reading Room might be particularly interested in joining their upcoming Virtual Reading Group on Edith Wharton's House of Mirth and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral is perhaps one of the best mergings of the Classical and the Christian traditions in dramatic form that I have ever encountered. Though the subject matter is indisputably Christian, the form of… more

In Borges' Library of Babel, the titular library contains every book from all possible universes, thoughts, and dreams, including both coherent and incoherent works. Everything that ever could be written is there, and so is every… more

We have seen that Sandefer’s case for the Rand-Sandefur thesis that Lewis broadly condemns all modern statist regimes is weak. I turn here to the textual case for a different reading of the political message of It Can’t Happen Here.… more

The presidential election of 2016 rekindled interest in Sinclair Lewis’ prophetic 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here. (2014, henceforth ICHH) One hard question about It Can’t Happen Here is, what exactly is the It that Lewis… more

A 2018 article in the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics entitled, “Clinicians’ Need for an Ecological Approach to Violence Reduction” presents an illuminating example of moral overreach, apparently inspired by a line… more

How can just vengeance itself receive a just punishment? This is the major question in the seventh canto of Dante’s Paradiso. In this second sphere of heaven, named Mercury, those who sought worldly fame and the active life at the… more

Imagine you wake up alone on a boat, surrounded by a vast expanse of water with no land in sight. You have no memory of how you got there, what land the boat sailed from or where it is going, or even if you are on an ocean or a… more

"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.""Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others." --Jonathan Swift

Today we consider Cantos 5-6 from Dante’s Paradiso and finish Dante's time with the Oath Breakers and Unfulfilled vowers from the Sphere of the Moon (Constance and Piccarda). We will then shoot up "like an arrow that strikes the… more

In the Sphere of the Moon in Dante’s Paradiso, Dante meets two radiant former-nuns who at first seem like “reflections in a deep pool.” So faint are they to him that they are much like a vague thought or reflection one has not yet… more

After a frenetic and tirelessly productive career, including advocacy of religious liberty that landed him in prison, Daniel Defoe, age 59, began the writing that made him one of history’s unforgettable novelists--known to us all.

In the first Sphere of Paradise, the Moon, we encounter our first cadre of difficult philosophical questions. In addition to those “simple” ones of how one moves in Paradise, and how a body would move in it (it couldn’t—just like a… more

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe made a lasting impression on me as a boy. But I seem to have missed the theme, which historians view as religious salvation—“deliverance”—and religious tolerance. 

Nor did I get around, back… more

Welcome to Celestial Paradise, otherwise known as the Heaven in Dante’s Paradiso. Yes, that heaven; the heaven, even, for medieval Catholics. 

Among Daniel Defoe's masterpieces is Moll Flanders, published in 1722 with a long eighteenth-century title that seems to reveal everything but the protagonist's petticoat: 

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll… more

As a young man, Robert Burns read Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and expressed his reaction in the strongest terms in his “commonplace book”—a personal journal not intended for publication, but obviously not destroyed by… more

At first glance, the idea that classical liberals throughout the world should learn about the writings of an Argentine man who is well-known for his fiction may seem odd. The works of Jorge Luis Borges, though, are something else.

Aside from the Bible story, it would be hard to find a more traditional and beloved Christmas tale than Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, so it was no surprise to find a copy in Pierre Goodrich's book collection. The cheery red… more