Provides one of the most substantial statements about the importance, relevance, and potential excitement of this form of historical enquiry.

Liberal individualism, or "classical liberalism" as it is often called, refers to a political philosophy in which liberty plays the central role. This book demonstrates a conceptual unity within the manifestations of classical liberalism by tracing the history of several interrelated and reinforcing themes. Concepts such as order, justice, rights, and freedom have imparted unity to this diverse political ideology by integrating context and meaning. However, they have also sparked conflict, as classical liberals split on a number of issues, such as legitimate exceptions to the "presumption of liberty," the meaning of "the public good," natural rights versus utilitarianism, the role of the state in education, and the rights of resistance and revolution. This book explores these conflicts and their implications for contemporary liberal and libertarian thought.

Reflects on histories of freedom and republicanism through a major new reappraisal of Quentin Skinner's Liberty before Liberalism.

This extended essay by one of the world's leading historians seeks, in its first part, to excavate, and to vindicate, the neo-Roman theory of free citizens and free states as it developed in early-modern Britain. This analysis leads on to a powerful defence of the nature, purposes and goals of intellectual history and the history of ideas. As Quentin Skinner says, 'the intellectual historian can help us to appreciate how far the values embodied in our present way of life, and our present ways of thinking about those values, reflect a series of choices made at different times between different possible worlds'. This essay thus provides one of the most substantial statements yet made about the importance, relevance and potential excitement of this form of historical enquiry. Liberty before Liberalism is based on Quentin Skinner's Inaugural Lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, delivered in November 1997. Professor Skinner has been awarded the Balzan Prize Life Time Achievement Award for Political Thought, History and Theory. Full details of this award can be found at http://www.balzan.it/News_eng.aspx?ID=2474

Excerpt from Liberty and Liberalism: A Protest Against the Growing Tendency Toward Undue Interference by the State, With Individual Liberty, Private Enterprise and the Rights of Property Bearing the foregoing facts in view, I have drawn a great number and variety of my illustrations from the legislative and other public proceedings of the particular colony mentioned; Side by side with-this unusual development of political activity and intelligence, which is specially noticeable in that colony, there has unfortunately grown up a most serious misconception or misrepresentation, as to the true meaning of the political term, concerning which I have more particularly treated and there is distinctly apparent - there, as in Great Britain - all the symptoms of a return to class legislation of the most despotic character; not, as of old, in favour of the wealthy and aristocratic orders: but in the opposite direction, of conferring positive benefits upon the working classes - that is to say, the manual work ing classes - at the expense of the remainder of the com munity. Indeed the extreme Radical party of Great Britain have already acknowledged that there is scarcely an organic change which has found a place in the programme of doom Liberalism, that has not been accepted, and voluntarily introduced at the Antipodes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.