Research Catalog

Title

The defenders of liberty : human nature, individualism, and property rights / Neema Parvini.

Author

Parvini, Neema

Publication

• Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2020]
• ©2020

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xv, 318 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

The Defenders of Liberty presents a history of economic liberalism from the Renaissance to the present. It chronicles the tradition of thought that sees human nature as social yet self-interested, methodological individualism as its key analytical tool, and property rights as foundational to a civilised society. In the development of this way of thinking, it considers the contributions of many key thinkers including Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Richard Cantillon, A.J.R. Turgot, David Hume, Adam Smith, Nassau William Senior, Richard Cobden, Herbert Spencer, Jean-Baptiste Say, Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, Gaetano Mosca, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Vilfredo Pareto, Phillip Wicksteed, Edwin Cannan, Ludwig von Mises, Lionel Robbins, F.A. Hayek, W.H. Hutt, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Murray N. Rothbard, James M. Buchanan, and Thomas Sowell. The book contends that liberalism needs to be grounded in realism, and that it has been derailed whenever economists have deviated from an explicitly realist understanding of human nature, individualism and property rights. It argues that the cause of liberalism was compromised by errors in economic reasoning by such major figures as David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, A.C. Pigou, and John Maynard Keynes. In diagnosing what has gone wrong for liberalism in the twenty-first century, The Defenders of Liberty argues against substituting mathematical abstraction for causal realism; it opposes interventionist central banking; it seeks to recover economic liberalism from social and political liberalism, which are somewhat unrelated schools of thought; it resists a view of human nature rooted in selfishness or atomised individualism; and finally alerts defenders of freedom to the ruthless but effective language games played by their opponents. This book will be of interest to the educated general reader as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in disciplines such as economics, political theory and phi losophy.

Subjects

• Liberalism
• Liberalism > History
• History

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-305) and index.

Contents

1. Liberty, Human Nature, Individualism, and Property Rights -- 2. The Machiavellians -- 3. Hobbes and Locke on Human Nature; Locke on Property Rights -- 4. The Enlightenment -- 5. The Nineteenth Century -- 6. The Austrian School -- 7. The London School -- 8. What Went Wrong and What is to be Done?.

Call Number

JFD 20-3725

ISBN

• 3030394514
• 9783030394516
• 9783030394523 (canceled/invalid)

OCLC

1130902720

Author

Parvini, Neema, author.

Title

The defenders of liberty : human nature, individualism, and property rights / Neema Parvini.

Publisher

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2020]

Copyright Date

©2020

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-305) and index.

Research Call Number

JFD 20-3725