Political Thought

Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century presents ten new essays on central themes of the American Founding period by some of today’s preeminent scholars of American history. The writers explore various aspects of the zeitgeist, among them Burke’s theories on property rights and government, the relations between religious and legal understandings of liberty, the significance of Protestant beliefs…

Liberty in Mexico presents sixty-four essays and writings on liberty and liberalism, from the early republican period to the late twentieth century, from a variety of authors. The texts in this edition will refute commonly held notions that the liberal project in Latin America had no indigenous roots. The institutions of modern representative government and free-market capitalism were very much…

The Limits of State Action has an exuberance and attention to principle that make it a valuable introduction to classical liberal political thought. It is also crucial for an understanding of liberalism as it developed in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. Humboldt explores the role that liberty plays in individual development, discusses criteria for permitting the state…

A chemist and member of a family renowned for its learning in several disciplines, Michael Polanyi experienced first-hand the horrors of totalitarian government and worldwide war. He argued that centrally planned organizations—or governments—based solely on the methods of science threaten to foreclose a full human knowledge of the mysteries of existence and therefore pose a direct threat not only to…

Spencer develops various specific disastrous ramifications of the wholesale substitution of the principle of compulsory cooperation—the statist principle—for the individualist principle of voluntary cooperation. His theme is that “there is in society . . . that beautiful self-adjusting principle which will keep all its elements in equilibrium. . . . The attempt to regulate all the actions of a community…

Michael Oakeshott on the Human Condition is a collection of sixteen essays that constitute Timothy Fuller’s reflections over a period of forty-five years on Michael Oakeshott’s understanding of the human condition, including his central ideas on politics, philosophy, religion, and conservatism. Fuller is arguably the most recognized Oakeshott scholar worldwide, and these essays express not only his profound insights into Oakeshott’s…