Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) is perhaps best known as the author, in 1902, of Aesthetics, a work of enduring influence. "History as the Story of Liberty" was written in 1938 when the Western world had succumbed to the notion that history is a creatur…
In Human Action, Mises starts from the ideas set forth in his Theory and History that all actions and decisions are based on human needs, wants, and desires and continues deeper and further to explain how studying this human action is not only a leg…
Carroll Quigley was a legendary teacher at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. His course on the history of civilization was extraordinary in its scope and in its impact on his students.Like the course, "The Evolution of Civilizations" is a co…
Rationalism in Politics established the late Michael Oakeshott as the leading conservative political theorist in modern Britain. This expanded collection of essays astutely points out the limits of "reason" in rationalist politics and criticizes ide…
In the years following its publication, F. A. Hayek's pioneering work on business cycles was regarded as an important challenge to what later became known as Keynesian macroeconomics. Today, as debates rage on over the monetary origins of the curren…
Universal Economics is a new work that bears a strong resemblance to its two predecessors, University Economics (1964, 1967, 1972) and Exchange and Production (1969, 1977, 1983). Collaborating again, Professors Alchian and Allen have written a fresh…
Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence, originally delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1762-1763, present his "theory of the rules by which civil government ought to be directed." The chief purpose of government, according to Smith, is to preserve…
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont spent nine months in the U.S. studying American prisons on behalf of the French government. They investigated not just the prison system but indeed every aspect of American public and private li…
In this text, the author argues that organisations -- 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 academic freedom…
David Hume's great, enduring reputation in philosophy tends to obscure the fact that, among his contemporaries, his history of England was a more successful work. The history covers almost 1800 years. Hume saw English history as an evolution from a…
Bureaucracy contrasts the two forms of economic management--that of a free-market economy and that of a bureaucracy. In the market economy entrepreneurs are driven to serve consumers by their desire to earn profits and to avoid losses. In a bureaucr…
Originally published by Yale University Press in 1944, "Bureaucracy" is a classic fundamental examination of the nature of bureaucracies and free markets in juxtaposition to various political systems. "Bureaucracy" contrasts the two forms of economi…
The Theory of Money and Credit integrated monetary theory into the main body of economic analysis for the first time, providing fresh, new insights into the nature of money and its role in the economy and bringing Mises into the front rank of Europe…
Hayek's most detailed work in economic theory, The Pure Theory of Capital, has long been overlooked. First published in 1941, it stood in sharp contrast with fashionable economic thought, which had shifted under the influence of John Maynard Keynes.…
This complementary volume provides five additional essays to expand our understanding of Hayek's ideas about money and monetary policy. Good Money, Part II: The Standard investigates the consequences of the predicament of composition which led to on…
In The Trend of Economic Thinking Hayek presents many of the figures that influenced the development of his economic thought. The articles range from well-known economists such as Mandeville, Hume, Smith, and Bastiat, to lesser-known figures such as…
Ludwig von Mises, the author of such classics as 'Socialism and Human Action' is universally acknowledged as one of the most important classical liberals and economists of the twentieth century. In 1934, he left his native Austria in fear of the Naz…
By 1989, when Michael Oakeshott's Voice of Liberal Learning was first published by Yale University Press, books that held a negative view of education in the United States had garnered a remarkable amount of attention. Oakeshott's approach to the su…
Written toward the end of Mises's life, his last monograph, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, returned to economics as a science based on human action. Mises believed that, since the publication of Human Action, economists and scientists…
In this volume, Mises argued that economics is a science because human action is a natural order of life and that it is the actions of humans that determine markets and capital decisions. Since Mises believed these links could be proven scientifical…
These volumes provide a selection of seventy-six essays, pamphlets, speeches, and letters to newspapers written between 1760 and 1805 by American political and religious leaders. Many are obscure pieces that were previously available only in larger…
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 soci…
The greatest obstacle to rule of law in our time, contends the author of this thought-provoking work, is the problem of overlegislation. In modern democratic societies, legislative bodies are increasingly usurping functions that were and should be e…
According to Bruno Leoni, the greatest obstacle to rule of law in our time is the problem of overlegislation. In modern democratic societies, legislative bodies increasingly usurp functions that were, and should be, exercised by individuals or group…
The Liberty Fund edition is a modernized translation of Richard Cantillon's Essai sur la nature du commerce en general (1755) with a new introduction by Antoin E. Murphy. In the Essay, Cantillon outlined an extraordinary model-building approach show…
The Liberty Fund edition is a modernized translation of Richard Cantillon's Essai sur la nature du commerce en g n ral (1755) with a new introduction by Antoin E. Murphy. In the Essay, Cantillon outlined an extraordinary model-building approach show…
Sir Henry Sumner Maine was one of the great intellects of the Victorian era. In Popular Government he examines the political institutions of men. He saw that popular governments, unless they are founded upon and consonant with the evolutionary devel…
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a keen observer of political and economic problems and a passionate proponent of liberal economic theory. This book collects nineteen of Bastiat's articles, ranging from the theory of value and rent, public choice an…
Discovery, Capitalism, and Distributive Justice makes Kirzner's case for the idea that entrepreneurial profit is both essential for an economy and profoundly just. Asserting that the problem with standard criticism of capitalist income distribution…
Reflecting Adam Smith's wide learning and varied interests, these essays shed considerable light on his place in the Scottish Enlightenment. Included are histories of astronomy, ancient logic, and ancient physics; essays on the "imitative" arts and…
General Israel Putnam is remembered in history and legend as exclaiming to the American soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill, "Don't fire 'til you see the whites of their eyes!" As Dowling notes, "All the episodes are retold - Bunker Hill, the Batt…
The fifth volume in The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock consists of six parts, each part expounding on a separate component of the field. Part 1, "Rent Seeking: An Overview," brings together two papers that focus on problems of defining rent-seekin…
William Penn played a crucial role in the articulation of religious liberty as a philosophical and political value during the second half of the seventeenth century and as a core element of the classical liberal tradition in general. This volume ill…
With his customary wit and grace, Dr. Barzun contrasts the ritual of education with the lost art of teaching. Twenty-one chapters deal with three major issues: the practice of teaching, the subject matter to be taught, and the institutional and cult…
As one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Hamilton occupies an eccentric, even flamboyant, position compared with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, and Marshall. Hamilton's genius, forged during his service in the Continent…
Alexander Hamilton's thought has, for over two hundred years, been noted for its deviations from American revolutionary Whig orthodoxy. From a conventional Whig at the beginning of his career, Hamilton developed a Federalist viewpoint that liberty d…
In his foreword, Robert D. Tollison identifies the main objective of Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan's The Reason of Rules ." . . a book-length attempt to focus the energies of economists and other social analysts on the nature and function o…
This book presents sixty-four essays and writings on liberty and liberalism, for the early republican period to the late twentieth century, from a variety of authors. The volume offers direct access to primary sources that are not available to reade…
Christian Wolff's The Law of Nations is a cornerstone of eighteenth-century thought. A treatise on the philosophy of human action, on the foundations of political communities, and on international law, it influenced philosophers throughout the eight…
Considered a leading voice in criminology and political philosophy, Ernest van den Haag discusses his ongoing work in criminal law and criminology, and he explains how his great insights relate to his central belief in a free society. Approximate ru…
The Law of the Constitution elucidates the guiding principles of the modern constitution of England: the legislative sovereignty of Parliament, the rule of law, and the binding force of unwritten conventions. A. V. Dicey (1835-1922) was an English j…
The significance of THE LAW OF NATIONS resides in its distillation from natural law of an apt model for international conduct of state affairs that carried conviction in both the Old Regime and the new political order of 1789-1815.
The great eighteenth-century theorist of international law Emer de Vattel (1714-1767) was a key figure in sustaining the practical and theoretical influence of natural jurisprudence through the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Coming toward the en…
Hippolyte Taine's The French Revolution, which is written from the viewpoint of conservative French opinion, is a unique and important contribution to revolutionary historiography in which Taine condemns the radicals of the French Revolution, freely…
Benjamin A Rogge -- late Distinguished Professor of Political Economy at Wabash College -- was a representative of that most unusual species: economists who speak and write in clear English. He forsakes professional jargon for clarity and logic -- a…
Based on his theory of natural law, Pufendorf denounces the Revocation [of the Edict of Nantes in 1685] as an illegitimate and tyrannical act and advocates toleration. The Divine Feudal Law' can be seen as a complement to the treatise on toleration…
Written in response to Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha (1680), the Discourses Concerning Government by Algernon Sidney (1623-1683) has been treasured for more than three centuries as a classic defense of republicanism and popular government.Thomas G.…
A Treatise of the Laws of Nature, originally titled De Legibus Naturae, first appeared in 1672 as a theoretical response to a range of issues that came together during the late 1660s. It conveyed a conviction that science might offer a more effectiv…
Now complete in seven titles/eight volumes, this series is the first uniform collection of Adam Smith's writings. The Glasgow edition is published in hardcover by Oxford University Press. The paperback edition is published by Liberty Fund.
Now available from Liberty Fund "Christianity and Classical Culture" is considered one of the great works of scholarship published in the last century. The theme of "Christianity and Classical Culture" is the fundamental change in thought and action…
Although 'The Present State of Germany' was first made available in English over three centuries ago, it has been virtually unavailable in English since the period of the American Founding. By 1696, Pufendorf was well known in England as a staunch d…
By examining the thought of four seminal thinkers, "Shirley Robin Letwin" in The Pursuit of Certainty provides a brilliant record of the gradual change in the English-speaking peoples' understanding of "what sort of activity politics is." As Letwin…
In the turbulent years between passage of the Federal Reserve Act (1913) and the Bretton Woods Agreement (1945), the people of the western world suffered two world wars, two major and several minor international financial panics, and epidemic of cur…
George Turnbull's eighteenth-century translation of A Methodical System of Universal Law was his major effort to convey continental natural law to Britain, thus making Heineccius's natural jurisprudence more accessible to English-speaking audiences.…
