“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…
The movement for human freedom just lost one of its great champions. The Cato Institute’s “North Star,” David Boaz, passed away on June 7, 2024, at the age of 70. I commend you to read the many heartfelt remembrances already…
If anyone does, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) warrants the description “Renaissance man.” But, to avoid confusion, since Priestley lived a couple of centuries after the Renaissance, let me argue here that this “Enlightenment man,” as…
Several far-better known and experienced reviewers than I have written on Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honor Trilogy, noting the resemblance of its major romantic sub-plot to the prophet Hosea while at the same time generally consigning…
For those of you who, like me, became hooked on Netflix’s award-winning drama about Queen Elizabeth II and the modern British monarchy during the Covid lockdown (or, in my case, shortly thereafter), the end of The Crown was somewhat…
This May’s Birthday Essay is in honor of the political journalist and statesman Friedrich Gentz. Though born a commoner, he called himself von Gentz after he was knighted by the Swedish crown in 1804. Gentz made an intellectual…
Hamilton: An American Musical features an epic standoff between young, fiery Hamilton and bold, preachy Samuel Seabury in “Farmer Refuted.” In their musical sparring match, Hamilton “tears the dude apart,” with his defense of the…
Consider the following: a major United States city has witnessed a recent upswing in violent crime. Generally, U.S. crime levels are still much lower than their peak in the early 90’s, but many residents perceive their city has…
When one idly day-dreams one frequently imagines how things might be different. What if the clouds were red? What if I had a million dollars, tax-free? What if I did not have to wake up at 5 a.m. during the week? Generally, one…
April’s OLL Birthday essay is in honor of the Dutch political philosopher Hugo de Groot, Latinized as Grotius. Sometimes referred to as “the father of Natural Law,” his writings can be seen as marking the origins of Natural Law…
The Reading Room crew is eagerly anticipating today's eclipse, as watchers of the skies have done for centuries. We've gathered a list of links to the OLL and elsewhere for you to explore while you're waiting for totality.
James moves to the small town of Libertopia, where property rights are respected with perfect consistency. There is no force or fraud. Contracts are still normally in writing but handshakes uphold deals reliably. One can leave one’s…
In Plato's Republic, Socrates confidently asserts to Glaucon, Plato’s older brother, that evil cannot be done consciously, or rationally, for one doing evil believes himself to be doing good, and one cannot do evil to another,…
Philosophers like to ask questions whose answer might seem obvious at first glance but for which satisfactory accounts often prove elusive. One such question is “Why be moral?” You might think there should be some convincing…
The eighteenth century was the age of “enlightened absolutism” in Russia and the German-speaking states. Its noteworthy practitioners included Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia, Catherine II (the Great) of Russia, and Maria…
March’s OLL Birthday essay is in honor of the English journalist, novelist, and radical political philosopher William Godwin. A pioneering figure in Utilitarianism and anarchist thought, Godwin had a profound influence in the…
Among the ways in which to classify different species of conservatism, one might consider how different kinds of conservatives seem to be less zealous and ideological than are others. When considered in this light, conservatism has…
The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night both end in double marriages, featuring the kind of comedy Disney would later seize upon: boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy and girl live happily ever after. But what of the other boy?…
The period between the Wars of the Roses and the England Civil War has been referred to by scholars as the ‘monarchy of counsel’: an era where advice and advisers were at the centre of political discourse. As concepts of ‘counsel’…
The period between the Wars of the Roses and the England Civil War has been referred to by scholars as the ‘monarchy of counsel’: an era where advice and advisers were at the centre of political discourse. As concepts of ‘counsel’…
Most Enlightenment intellectuals united around themes such as passion for science and scientific method (inductive reasoning), human wellbeing as the goal of philosophy, and religious tolerance. But nothing proved more nearly…
In the 1770s, the greatest naturalist in the Western World, the French scientist George Louis Leclerc, comte du Buffon—echoed by many others viewed as the leading scientific authorities of the era—insisted that beyond doubt America’…
At the end of The Merchant of Venice, Shylock gets himself into quite a legal pickle. Unlike many tragedies (and many proverbial pickles), Shylock’s situation is entirely of his own making –due to his rigid adherence to law, not his…
Shannon Chamberlain, in her Reading Room post on the character of Thomas Wyatt in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Halltrilogy, offers a lovely reading of the historical Wyatt’s brilliant sonnet, “Whoso List to Hunt.”
In The Republic, the interlocutor Glaucon asks Plato’s Socrates why we should be just. He relates a story of the shepherd Gyges, who discovers a magic ring that allows him invisibility and anonymity. The formerly decent man becomes…
We often associate “I’ll never forget where I was when…” memories with tragic events, like the JFK assassination or 9/11. But sometimes we have these memories about happy occasions and other personally and culturally significant…
Montaigne wrote that “we owe justice to men, and mercy and kindness to other creatures that may be capable of receiving it”. But why is justice so important? What is it about justice that Montaigne considers it among the most…
In 1524, rebellion broke out in southern Germany. The uprising, known as the Peasants’ War, grew out of demands for greater freedom for the serfs. It was not, despite its name, just a revolt by farmers. Serious thinkers advanced it,…
This January’s OLL Birthday Essay is dedicated to the German philosopher Samuel Pufendorf, whose work on Natural Law built on that of Hobbes and Grotius and subsequently influenced the Scottish Enlightenment and all later thinking…
It shouldn’t be surprising chez Shakespeare, but whenever I pick up Twelfth Night, I am amazed by the continual invitation to play – the ludic dare to experiment with gender, sexuality, crossdressing, feasting, drinking, and social…
"Every man…is, of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty.""All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual… is his natural right which none…
To drink or not to drink? To laugh or not to laugh? To jest or not to jest? These are the questions that run through Sir Toby Belch’s mind during the entirety of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Yet, beneath his jocular, inebriated…
The story repeats itself every time I teach literature. The discussion about texts, almost inexorably, ends up with students trying to figure out whether the text is 'good' or 'bad'. As if, in the end, as judges on a pedestal, our…
Sarah Skwire doesn’t say YOU MUST READ SHAKESPEARE…but if you do, you’ll probably learn from him. And then you can reread him later to learn more and different things. In this hour-long conversation with Sabine El-Chidiac at The…
The term is not politically correct, today, but there should be little doubt that “exceptionalism” applies to the Enlightenment in America. We know that thanks to the Pulitzer Prize–winning history by Harvard University professor…
Among the many memorable turns of phrase in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution France (1790), few have proved more striking than its florid descriptions of Marie Antoinette and her treatment at the hands of the October 6th…
In 1699, Jonathan Swift, one of our favorite writers, made a list of resolutions for his life. While they weren't technically New Year's resolutions, we present them here for the entertainment and edification of our readers.
