Freedom of the Press from Milton to Tocqueville
ABSTRACT
This conference provided an opportunity to focus on this discursive and intellectual history of one of our most complacently accepted inheritances. There are at least three general themes that may arise in the course of our reading and conversation. First, there is the shift in emphasis from religious to secular settings. Second, there is the question of the relationship between the private and the public. Third, is freedom of the press a function of a distinctive national culture or civilization, or does it have a more universal reach?
READING LIST
Conference Readings
Kurland, Philip B. and Ralph Lerner, eds. The Founders' Constitution, Volume 5: Amendments I-XII, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000.
Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 1638-1647 . Edited by William Haller. New York: Columbia University Press, 1934.
Louis, Chevalier de Jaucourt. Encyclopédie . Edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. France: Diderot and d'Alembert, 1765.
Blackstone, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England: Volume 4: Of Public Wrongs. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979.
Cato. Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, Volume One. Edited by Ronald Hamowy. Compiled by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995.
Cato. Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, Volume Two. Edited by Ronald Hamowy. Compiled by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995.
Constant, Benjamin. Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments. Edited by Etienne Hofmann. Translated by Dennis O'Keeffe. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2003.
Helvétius. A Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties and His Education. Translated by William Hooper. London: Vernor, Hood and Sharpe, 1778.
Hume, David. Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. Edited by Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985.
Locke, John. Letter Concerning Toleration . Edited by Jonas Proast. New York: Garland, 1984.
Milton, John. Areopagitica and Other Political Writings of John Milton. Edited by John Alvis. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1999.
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat. The Spirit of the Laws. Translated by Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Storing, Herbert J. The Complete Anti-Federalist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America, Volume I. Translated by Henry Reeve. Cambridge: Sever and Francis, 1862.