For Students

With The Moral Foundation of Democracy, John H. Hallowell makes a significant argument in favor of the importance of moral values in the orderly functioning of modern democracies. Hallowell argues that developments in recent democratic thought have eroded the very “faith” upon which democracy rests, namely, that man is a reasonable, moral, and spiritual actor. He sharply criticizes positivist thought…

Although the market economy is not as unpopular now as when Acton wrote The Morals of Markets, the morality of buying and selling has long bothered man’s conscience. Defenses of capitalism often establish its efficiency or rely on a “that is the way human nature is anyway” argument. This book asserts that a free market is a necessary condition for…

Originally published in 1742, Observations upon Liberal Education is a significant contribution to the Scottish Enlightenment and the moral-sense school of Scottish philosophy. In Observations, Turnbull applies the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment to the education of youth. He shows how a liberal education fosters true “inward liberty” and moral strength and thus prepares us for responsible and happy lives…

In five essays, including three on historiography, one of the greatest minds in English political thought in the twentieth century explores themes central to the human experience: the nature of history, the rule of law, and the quest for power that is intrinsic to the human condition. Michael Oakeshott believed, as Timothy Fuller observes, that “the historian’s effort to understand…

Robert Bellarmine was one of the most original and influential political theorists of his time. His writings present coherent definitions of the nature and aim of temporal authority and its relationship to spiritual authority. This fresh translation will be interesting to a wide readership of both scholars of political thought and the educated general public. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) was a…

The Organization of Inquiry, the third volume in Liberty Fund’s The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, was originally published by Duke University Press in 1966. This is a treatise by one of the most stalwart practitioners of the scientific method in political economy—Gordon Tullock. Charles K. Rowley, Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University, writes in his introduction…