Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - Softcover

Stephen, James Fitzjames

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865971110 ISBN 13: 9780865971110

Publisher: Liberty Fund, 1993

Synopsis

Stephen's book is the finest exposition of conservative thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

—Sir Ernest Barker, Political Thought in England—1848 to 1941

Students of political theory will welcome the return to print of this brilliant defense of ordered liberty. Impugning John Stuart Mill's famous treatise, On Liberty, Stephen criticized Mill for turning abstract doctrines of the French Revolution into "the creed of a religion."

Only the constraints of morality and law make liberty possible, warned Stephen, and attempts to impose unlimited freedom, material equality, and an indiscriminate love of humanity will lead inevitably to coercion and tyranny. Liberty must be restrained by custom and tradition if it is to endure; equality must be limited to equality before the law if it is to be just; and fraternity must include actual men, not the amorphous mass of mankind, if it is to be real and genuine.

Stuart D. Warner is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Roosevelt University.

About this title

Book Description:

R. J. White's 1967 edition made Fitzjames Stephen's classic available for the first time since 1914. Stephen's work is written as a systematic denunciation of John Stuart Mill's political thought. It is thus of great importance in the history of Utilitarianism, and as the most forthright of the Victorian attacks on democracy.

About the Author:

Warner is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Roosevelt University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Liberty Fund
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0865971110
• ISBN 13: 9780865971110
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 299
• Editor: Warner Stuart D.