Liberalism

Last update: 07 Dec 2024 23:54
First version: 5 May 2023

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Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder

A distinct tradition in Euro-American political thought. The name comes from the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution and has its heyday in the 19th century, though whether the ideas go back to the 17th century, or whether that's just retrospective ancestor-claiming, is disputed.

See also:
• the Enlightenment
• Ernest Gellner
• Friedrich Hayek
• The Left
• Karl Popper
• Pragmatism
• Socialism

Recommended (very misc., needs sub-division):
• Jacques Barzun, Of Human Freedom
• Norberto Bobbio, Liberalism and Democracy
• Rose Laub Coser, In Defense of Modernity: Role Complexity and Individual Autonomy
• John Dewey
  • Freedom and Culture
  • Liberalism and Social Action
• Francis Fukuyama, Liberalism and Its Discontents
• Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty
• Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917--1937 [Hu's own writings deserve a place here as well]
• Stuart Hampshire, Justice Is Conflict
• Joseph Heath
  • Enlightenment 2.0
  • Cooperation and Social Justice
• L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism
• Stephen Holmes, An Anatomy of Antiliberalism
• Stephen Holmes and Cass R. Sunstein, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes
• John McGowan, American Liberalism
• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
• Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
• Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century
• Bertrand Russell
  • Freedom and Organization, 1814--1914
  • Power
  • Authority and the Individual
• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom

To read:
• Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy (Congress for Cultural Freedom, CIA)
• George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910--1914
• Guido de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism
• Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
• John Kenneth Galbraith, Annals of an Abiding Liberal
• Raymond Geuss, Not Thinking like a Liberal
• Judge Learned Hand, Spirit of Liberty
• Eric Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics
• James Hoopes, Community Denied: The Wrong Turn of Pragmatic Liberalism
• John M. Jordan, Machine-Age Ideology: Social Engineering and American Liberalism, 1911--1939
• Andreas Kalyvas and Ira I. Katznelson, Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns
• Ira Katznelson, Liberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnick
• Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy
• Alexandre Lefebvre, Liberalism as a Way of Life
• Jethro K. Lieberman, Liberalism Undressed
• Steven Lukes, Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity
• Kevin Mattson, Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945--1970
• Olivia Newman, Liberalism in Practice: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Public Reason
• Suzanne Nossel, Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All
• John Rawls
  • A Theory of Justice
  • Political Liberalism
• Jeffrey Reiman, As Free and as Just as Possible: The Theory of Marxian Liberalism
• Saul, Voltaire's Bastards
• Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism
• James Simpson, Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism [Of course liberalism had illiberal beginnings --- what else could it have come from?]
• Paul Starr, Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism
• Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination
• Michael Walzer, The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On "Liberal" as an Adjective