In November, Liberty Fund hosted a virtual reading group on Eric Hoffer's short book, The True Believer.
One topic of discussion was Hoffer's conservatism, which is implicit to his theories of mass movements. One place it’s implied is in his mistreatment of liberalism. In section 52, under “Deprecation of the Present”, Hoffer sums up his views of conservatives, skeptics, liberals, radicals, and reactionaries.
The Great Gatsby ends on a sad note. The book's namesake, Gatsby, lies dead in a pool. He experiences a second death when his funeral is sparsely attended. The house that was so full when he was alive lies empty in his death. George…
“I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence...[but] has anyone ever heard of a savage…
Professor Alan Kors explains that the young Rousseau did not trust the Paris philosophes. He met with them in the cafes but did not like their deism. He had known and argued with atheists. The philosophes seemed to him to seize upon…
November’s OLL Birthday Essay is in honor of François Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire. A playwright, poet, historian, philosopher, and satirist, Voltaire literally defined the Age of Enlightenment, sometimes…
Spend much time in discussion of ethics and you’ll likely hear standard objections to various utilitarian theories. In their single-minded drive to maximize some version of the good (e.g., desirable conscious states like pleasure),…
A previous essay suggested ways in which preference-satisfaction utilitarianism (“preferentism”) is superior to forms of utilitarianism that focus on promoting or maximizing desirable states of consciousness (such as pleasure).…
October’s OLL Birthday Essay is in honor of the French polymath Denis Diderot. Most famous as the editor and inspiration of the Encyclopédie, Diderot also published works on philosophy and art, as well as novels, and plays, and was…
In a previous article, we have already talked about the views of the founder of Georgian liberal thought, Prince Ilia Chavchavadze, on private property. It should be noted that his reviews were not limited to only internal issues;…
Thirty years into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a small book appeared in the London market. The frontispiece identified it as ‘The French Historie’ and noted that it was ‘published by A. D.’. Only when the reader perused the…
The Wife of Bath’s Tale is likely the single-most selected work from Chaucer’s corpus to be used in the classroom. Yet this tendency to single it out also works to obscure the Tale’s role in the larger story, the connections which…
In the second episode of Liberty Fund’s new Future of Liberty podcast, hosted by Mitch Daniels, Daniels welcomes Reason magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward to discuss the ever changing role of journalism in a free…
