This book offers a new interpretation of German law and politics during the era between the Thirty Years’ War and the French Revolution. Liberal ideas of freedom and equality were prototyped in Germany in property law: through the free disposition of estates, freedom from taxation and other extractions, and free use of paper money. Civil liberty, ideas about equality, and restrictions on arbitrary state power were real, recognized, and meaningful. These freedoms were enjoyed by all classes of Germans. They were thought to have been built atop Germans’ ancient heritage of freedom and a federalist imperial constitution which inspired Montesquieu and the American Founders. Driving these trends were ideas about political economy, enlightened reform, practical problem-solving, as well as forces of supply and demand in everything from the market for books to the market for justice. This book places the story of early modern German freedom close by the side of more familiar stories of England, North America, France, and the Netherlands.

The Free Development of Each collects twelve essays on the history of German philosophy by Allen W. Wood, one of the leading scholars in the field. They explore moral philosophy, politics, society, and history in the works of Kant, Herder, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx, and share the basic theme of freedom, as it appears in morality and in politics. All of the essays have been re-edited and revised for this collection, and five are previously unpublished. They are accompanied by an Introduction which sets out the central, philosophical viewpoint of the volume, and a comprehensive bibliography.

A systematic account of Rousseau's significance in relation to Kant's, Fichte's and Hegel's views on freedom, dependence and necessity.

Collection of over 350 German immigrant letters composed by one individual or family group.

Alan Patten presents an original interpretation of Hegel's idea of freedom and offers answers to a number of central questions about his ethical and political thought. Freedom is the value that Hegel most admired and the core of his social philosophy.

DIVTranslated into English for the first time, this work portrays a different side of Hegel -- not just as a philosopher preoccupied with abstract ideas but a man deeply enmeshed and active in the pressing, concrete political issues of his time./div

"The intimate papers of Colonel House begin with the entrance of the United States into the World War and end with Colonel House's attempt to secure some compromise on the basis of which the Senate might ratify the Versailles Treaty" pr.

Winner of the PROSE Award An NRC Handelsblad Best Book of the Year “Ambitious and impressive...At a time when the very survival of both freedom and democracy seems uncertain, books like this are more important than ever.” —The Nation “Helps explain how partisans on both the right and the left can claim to be protectors of liberty, yet hold radically different understandings of its meaning...This deeply informed history of an idea has the potential to combat political polarization.” —Publishers Weekly “Ambitious and bold, this book will have an enormous impact on how we think about the place of freedom in the Western tradition.” —Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough “Brings remarkable clarity to a big and messy subject...New insights and hard-hitting conclusions about the resistance to democracy make this essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of our current dilemmas.” —Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters For centuries people in the West identified freedom with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed. The equation of liberty with restraints on state power—what most people today associate with freedom—was a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking. So what triggered this fateful reversal? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of Western thinking about freedom, Annelien de Dijn argues that this was not the natural outcome of such secular trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the French and American Revolutions. The notion that freedom is best preserved by shrinking the sphere of government was not invented by the revolutionaries who created our modern democracies—it was first conceived by their critics and opponents. De Dijn shows that far from following in the path of early American patriots, today’s critics of “big government” owe more to the counterrevolutionaries who tried to undo their work.

To those who penned the Magna Carta in England, and the American founding fathers who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, protection of private property was of utmost importance. Today, property rights are threatened by a variety of state, national, and international forces. This Hoover Classic seeks to explain the crucial connection among secure property rights, freedom, and prosperity. Drawing on thoughts of philosophers, political thinkers, economists, and lawyers, Property Rights presents a blueprint on how societies can encourage or discourage freedom and prosperity through their property rights institutions. The authors detail step-by-step what property rights are, what they do, how they evolve, how they can be protected, and how they promote freedom and prosperity--Publisher's description.