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The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close, Editors The Independent Institute, 2006
Readers who are interested in the "philosophy of a free society" - known as "classical liberalism" and sometimes equated with "libertarianism" - will find this compendium of twenty articles from The Independent Review valuable on two very different levels. For those who are already well versed in the classical liberal canon, and especially in the writings of the Scottish Enlightenment (Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Bernard Mandeville, and such latter-day figures as Carl Menger, F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises), this will serve as a follow-up volume that shows what contemporary classical liberal scholars are making of their work. For those who are not well acquainted with those earlier writings, the value of this collection will mostly lie in attracting the attention of the reader to the writings of the founders. This is so because that foundational knowledge is almost certainly needed for a full understanding of much that is discussed in these essays.
The subtitle "Classical Liberalism Today" might be misleading. As a collection of articles on a variety of subjects, the essays make no attempt to be a systematic examination of all schools of thought within contemporary classical liberalism. They represent the particular point of view of the Independent Institute and its refereed journal The Independent Review.
Some of the authors espouse "anarchocapitalism" (a market economy and no government) while others favor "the minimal state." This "libertarianism" hardly equates with the totality of classical liberalism, even though at least one of the authors does treat them as synonymous. Even within the more restricted sphere of "libertarianism," the articles here are highly critical of "rationalistic, rights-based" theories, which make up a good deal of libertarian thought. The compendium is heavily weighted toward those who prefer the "evolutionist" and "spontaneous order" rationale expounded by the Scottish thinkers and their heirs, especially Hayek in his later writings.An interesting thing about the articles is the extent to which they illustrate how much all social philosophies have become the subjects of elaborate academic explication during the past century. One now finds references to such things as "one-dimensional continuous variables," "transaction costs," "forming the template," and...