Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism

Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism

Author: George H. Smith

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 2017-07-18

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1944424407

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There is a well-worn image and phrase for libertarianism: ?atomized individualism.? This hobgoblin has spread so thoroughly that even some libertarians think their philosophy unreservedly supports private persons, whatever the situation, whatever their behavior. Smith?s Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism, corrects this misrepresentation with careful intellectual surveys of Hume, Smith, Hobbes, Butler, Mandeville, and Hutcheson and their respective contributions to political philosophy.


Spite

Spite

Author: Simon McCarthy-Jones

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1541646983

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Spite angers and enrages us, but it also keeps us honest. In this provocative account, a psychologist examines how petty vengeance explains human thriving. Spite seems utterly useless. You don't gain anything by hurting yourself just so you can hurt someone else. So why hasn't evolution weeded out all the spiteful people? As psychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones argues, spite seems pointless because we're looking at it wrong. Spite isn't just what we feel when a car cuts us off or when a partner cheats. It's what we feel when we want to punish a bad act simply because it was bad. Spite is our fairness instinct, an innate resistance to exploitation, and it is one of the building blocks of human civilization. As McCarthy-Jones explains, some of history's most important developments—the rise of religions, governments, and even moral codes—were actually redirections of spiteful impulses. A provocative, engaging read, Spite shows that if you really want to understand what makes us human, you can't just look at noble ideas like altruism and cooperation. You need to understand our darker impulses as well.


A Letter to Dion

A Letter to Dion

Author: Bernard Mandeville

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2020-08-14

Total Pages: 53

ISBN-13: 3752437448

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Reproduction of the original: A Letter to Dion by Bernard Mandeville


The Oxford Handbook of Freedom

The Oxford Handbook of Freedom

Author: David Schmidtz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 0199989435

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We speak of being 'free' to speak our minds, free to go to college, free to move about; we can be cancer-free, debt-free, worry-free, or free from doubt. The concept of freedom (and relatedly the notion of liberty) is ubiquitous but not everyone agrees what the term means, and the philosophical analysis of freedom that has grown over the last two decades has revealed it to be a complex notion whose meaning is dependent on the context. The Oxford Handbook of Freedom will crystallize this work and craft the first wide-ranging analysis of freedom in all its dimensions: legal, cultural, religious, economic, political, and psychological. This volume includes 28 new essays by well regarded philosophers, as well some historians and political theorists, in order to reflect the breadth of the topic. This handbook covers both current scholarship as well as historical trends, with an overall eye to how current ideas on freedom developed. The volume is divided into six sections: conceptual frames (framing the overall debates about freedom), historical frames (freedom in key historical periods, from the ancients onward), institutional frames (freedom and the law), cultural frames (mutual expectations on our 'right' to be free), economic frames (freedom and the market), and lastly psychological frames (free will in philosophy and psychology).