Liberals I

Just Property ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 5-33
Author(s):  
Christopher Pierson
Keyword(s):  
Social Institution ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Henry George ◽  
The Us ◽  
William Paley ◽  
Benjamin Constant

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what we mean by liberalism. It continues with an evaluation of the views that liberals have taken of the justification of property. I first consider the broadly utilitarian case developed by William Paley, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham. I then assess the distinctive view taken (in France) by Benjamin Constant and (in the US) by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. I devote careful attention to the work of John Stuart Mill, who is a key source for a distinctively modern (or ‘new’) liberal view in which property is not so much a right of persons as a social institution, legitimately open to collective regulation. The chapter ends with an outline of the liberal case for communal ownership of the land made by the American journalist Henry George.

Liberals II

Just Property ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 34-57
Author(s):  
Christopher Pierson
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Us

This chapter continues the evaluation of ideas about property within the modern liberal tradition. Much of this thinking has its origins in the later work of John Stuart Mill. I begin with some key ‘new’ liberals: T. H. Green, J. T. Hobhouse, and J. A. Hobson. These thinkers take a varyingly radical view of the provisionality of individual claims to private property. Following a short interlude on interwar liberalism, I turn to the development of liberal ideas on property in the US. My two key thinkers here are John Dewey and John Rawls. Both of these iconic liberal thinkers take a view of property which emphasizes its function as a social institution, one which has to be justified by its societal outcomes rather than its private and personal origins.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Personal Growth ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
William Godwin ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Henry Sidgwick

This book has explored some of the doubts and possibilities for different readings of the classical utilitarians, both positive and negative. It has shown how William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, and others were forever engaged in tackling both the reasons—or the pleasures and pains—and the persons together, instead of separating them, in often breathtaking visions of a future of maximally happy beings who had through education and personal growth achieved their utilitarian potential. It has also discussed how utilitarianism had become more entangled in imperialistic politics at precisely the point when it lost its foundational philosophical confidence, when it was forced to confront the incoherence of its own accounts of such fundamental notions as happiness, reason, pleasure, and pain.

Liberalism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
The Individual

This chapter explains what liberalism is. It is easy to list famous liberals, but it is harder to say what they have in common. John Locke, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Lord Acton, T. H. Green, John Dewey, and contemporaries such as Isaiah Berlin and John Rawls are certainly liberals. However, they do not agree on issues such as the boundaries of toleration, the legitimacy of the welfare state, and the virtues of democracy. They do not even agree on the nature of the liberty they think liberals ought to seek. The chapter considers classical versus modern liberalism, the divide within liberal theory between liberalism and libertarianism, and liberal opposition to absolutism, religious authority, and capitalism. It also discusses liberalism as a theory for the individual, society, and the state.

The Great Classical Tradition, 3

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
Classical Tradition ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Living Standard ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Pronounced Difference ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Low Wages

This chapter examines the ideas elaborated specifically in the refinement and defense of the classical tradition in economics. There were points of vulnerability and fault that required a defense of the classical tradition, including the pronounced difference between the wages and resulting living standard of the workers and those of the employers or capitalists, the unequal distribution of power inherent in the system, and the phenomenon referred to as a panic, crisis, depression or recession, with its associated unemployment and general despair. The chapter considers how the classical tradition dealt with inequality and oppressive power, focusing on the initial defense advanced for the low wages of the laborer in comparison with the revenues of the employer and landlord. It also discusses the defense from Utilitarianism, led by Jeremy Bentham, and the views of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Nassau Senior, and William Stanley Jevons.

3. The US rise to world power, 1776–1945

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter LaFeber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines how the United States evolved as a world power during the period 1776–1945. It first considers how Americans set out after the War of Independence to establish a continental empire. Thomas Jefferson called this an ‘empire for liberty’, but by the early nineteenth century the United States had become part of an empire containing human slavery. Abraham Lincoln determined to stop the territorial expansion of this slavery and thus helped bring about the Civil War. The reunification of the country after the Civil War, and the industrial revolution which followed, turned the United States into the world’s leading economic power by the early twentieth century. The chapter also discusses Woodrow Wilson’s empire of ideology and concludes with an analysis of U.S. economic depression and the onset of the Cold War.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document