This major new Handbook provides a definitive state-of-the-art review to political theory, past and present. It offers a complete guide to all the main areas and fields of political and philosophical inquiry today by the world's leading theorists. The Handbook is divided into five parts which together serve to illustrate: - the diversity of political theorizing - the substantive theories that provide an over-aching analysis of the nature/or justification of the state and political life - the political theories that have been either formulated or resurgent in recent years - the current state of the central debates within contemporary political theory - the history of western political thought and its interpretations - traditions in political thought outside a western perspective. The Handbook of Political Theory marks a benchmark publication at the cutting edge of its field. It is essential reading for all students and academics of political theory and political philosophy around the world.

Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism: The Liberty Tradition

Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism: The Liberty Tradition

Classical liberalism and libertarianism: The liberty tradition
EricMack and Gerald F.Gaus

The Liberty Tradition

Alasdair MacIntyre provides a helpful characterization of what constitutes a ‘tradition’ within moral or political thought. He says that such a tradition is:

an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretative debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted. (1988:12)

In MacIntyre's sense, libertarianism and classical liberalism constitute a tradition of political thought. Within a tradition ...

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