Liberal Moments ─ Reading Liberal Texts

"Liberalism has been one of the leading incarnations of political thought for the past two centuries and it was also the first form of political theory to acquire a truly global reach. This volume examines the work of the most pivotal thinkers in the liberal tradition, starting with Montesquieu and proceeding to a wide range of authors from the French Revolution to the present. The book is distinctive in encompassing the wide spectrum of views historically encompassed by liberalism, revealing its geographical as well as intellectual scope by including conceptions of liberalism formed in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Twenty-four chapters cover thinkers including Madame de Stael, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, John Stuart Mill Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, John Dewey, Hu Shih, Hannah Arendt and John Rawls. Each chapter offers a commentary on a short critical passage from the author concerned. Essayists use their chosen passage to explore the meaning and significance of the author's work forboth the historical tradition of liberalism and for political thought more generally. The book is organized chronologically, building up a richly detailed overview of the tradition of liberalism and its key writings. The book will be an indispensible companion to courses on liberal thought, on political ideologies and on the history of political thought and will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy and history. "--

Ewa Atanassow is Junior Professor at Bard College Berlin. She is the co-editor of Tocqueville and the Frontiers of Democracy (2013).

Alan S. Kahan is Professor of British Civilization at the Universite de Versailles/St. Quentin-en-Yvelines, and a member of the faculty at Sciences Po St. Germain-en-Laye, France. He is the author of Mind versus Money: The War Betwen Intellectuals and Capitalism (2010), Alexis de Tocqueville (2010) in Bloomsbury's Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers series, Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (2003) and Aristocratic Liberalism (1992).