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Freedom of Thought
Freedom of thought is a generic label that includes freedom of religion, speech, press, and artistic creation. It also was affiliated with a tradition of religious skepticism known as “freethinking” and “freethought.” It is scarcely coincidental that 18th-century freethinkers were often associated with libertarian causes, such as freedom of speech and press. When dealing with an established church, such as the Anglican Church in England or the Catholic Church in France, to criticize the doctrines of Christianity also was to challenge the political status quo and render oneself vulnerable to potentially severe punishments for blasphemy.
The words freethinking said freethinker made their first appearance in English literature during the latter part of the 17th century, when they were applied to Pantheists, Epicureans, Pelagians, Socinians, Deists, and ...
- Biographical
- Acton, Lord
- Adams, John
- Aquinas, Thomas
- Aristotle
- Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von
- Bastiat, Frédéric
- Bauer, Peter
- Becker, Gary S.
- Bentham, Jeremy
- Branden, Nathaniel
- Bright, John
- Brown, John
- Buchanan, James M.
- Buckle, Henry Thomas
- Burke, Edmund
- Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques
- Cantillon, Richard
- Childs, Roy A.
- Chodorov, Frank
- Cicero
- Clark, Ed
- Coase, Ronald H.
- Cobden, Richard
- Coke, Edward
- Comte, Charles
- Condorcet, Marquis de
- Constant, Benjamin
- Dicey, Albert Venn
- Diderot, Denis
- Douglas, Frederick
- Dunoyer, Charles
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo
- Epstein, Richard A.
- Ferguson, Adam
- Fisher, Antony
- Foucault, Michel
- Friedman, David
- Friedman, Milton
- Garrison, William Lloyd
- Gladstone, William Ewart
- Godwin, William
- Goldwater, Barry
- Harper, Floyd Arthur “Baldy”
- Hayek, Friedrich A.
- Hazlitt, Henry
- Heinlein, Robert
- Herbert, Auberon
- Hess, Karl
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- Hodgskin, Thomas
- Hospers, John
- Humboldt, Wilhelm von
- Hume, David
- Hutcheson, Francis
- Jacobs, Jane
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jouvenel, Bertrand de
- Kant, Immanuel
- Kirzner, Israel M.
- Knight, Frank H.
- La Boétie, Etienne de
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- Leggett, William
- Locke, John
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- Madison, James
- Maine, Henry Sumner
- Mandeville, Bernard
- Mason, George
- Mencken, H. L.
- Menger, Carl
- Meyer, Frank S.
- Mill, John Stuart
- Milton, John
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- Montesquieu, Charles de Secondât de
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- Nathan, Tonie
- Nietzsche, Friedrich
- Nock, Albert Jay
- Nozick, Robert
- Oppenheimer, Franz
- Ortega y Gasset, José
- Orwell, George
- Ostrom, Vincent and Elinor
- Paine, Thomas
- Paterson, Isabel
- Paul, Ron
- Popper, Karl
- Posner, Richard A.
- Pound, Roscoe
- Price, Richard
- Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph
- Röpke, Wilhelm
- Rand, Ayn
- Rawls, John
- Read, Leonard E.
- Ricardo, David
- Rothbard, Murray
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Say, Jean-Baptiste
- Schumpeter, Joseph
- Senior, Nassau William
- Shaftesbury, Third Earl of
- Sidney, Algernon
- Simon, Julian
- Smith, Adam
- So well, Thomas
- Spencer, Herbert
- Spooner, Lysander
- Stigler, George J.
- Stirner, Max
- Sumner, William Graham
- Szasz, Thomas
- Taft, Robert A.
- Thoreau, Henry David
- Tocqueville, Alexis de
- Tracy, Destutt de
- Tucker, Benjamin R.
- Tullock, Gordon
- Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques
- Voltaire
- Washington, George
- Wicksell, Knut
- Wilberforce, William
- Wollstonecraft, Mary
- Policy
- Abortion
- Affirmative Action
- Antitrust
- Arts and Public Support
- Bioethics
- Black Markets
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- Capital Punishment
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- Conscription
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- Development, Economic
- Drug Prohibition
- Education
- Eminent Domain/Takings
- Environment
- Euthanasia
- Family
- Feminism and Women's Rights
- Foreign Policy
- Free Trade
- Freedom of Speech
- Freedom of Thought
- Gambling
- Genetics
- Globalization
- Health Care
- Illicit Drugs
- Immigration
- Intellectual Property
- Internet
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- Money and Banking
- Paternalism
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- Price Controls
- Privacy
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- Psychiatry
- Public Choice Economics
- Racism
- Regulation
- Rent Seeking
- Restitution for Crime
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- Right to Bear Arms
- Rule of Law
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- Topical
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- Social Darwinism
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- Whiggism
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