The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan / Edition 1

The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan / Edition 1

by James M. Buchanan
ISBN-10:
0865972265
ISBN-13:
9780865972261
Pub. Date:
07/01/2000
Publisher:
Liberty Fund, Incorporated
ISBN-10:
0865972265
ISBN-13:
9780865972261
Pub. Date:
07/01/2000
Publisher:
Liberty Fund, Incorporated
The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan / Edition 1

The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan / Edition 1

by James M. Buchanan
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Overview

Published originally in 1975, The Limits of Liberty made James Buchanan’s name more widely known than ever before among political philosophers and theorists and established Buchanan, along with John Rawls and Robert Nozick, as one of the three new contractarians, standing on the shoulders of Hobbes, Locke, and Kant.

While The Limits of Liberty is strongly related to Buchanan’s Calculus of Consent (Vol. 3 in Liberty Fund’s Collected Works of James M. Buchanan), it is logically prior to the Calculus, according to Hartmut Kliemt in the foreword, even though it was published later. As Kliemt states, “[The Limits of Liberty] characterizes the status quo from the point where Paretian politics starts and at the same time describes conceivable processes of interindividual agreement that might lead from a natural equilibrium to a political one.”

Buchanan frames the central idea most cogently in the opening of his preface: “Precepts for living together are not going to be handed down from on high. Men must use their own intelligence in imposing order on chaos, intelligence not in scientific problem-solving but in the more difficult sense of finding and maintaining agreement among themselves. Anarchy is ideal for ideal men; passionate men must be reasonable. Like so many men have done before me, I examine the bases for a society of men and women who want to be free but who recognize the inherent limits that social interdependence places on them.”

James M. Buchanan (1919–2013) was an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and was considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780865972261
Publisher: Liberty Fund, Incorporated
Publication date: 07/01/2000
Series: The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan , #7
Edition description: Volume 7
Pages: 261
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

James M. Buchanan (1919-2013) was Professor Emeritus and Advisory General Director of the James Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University, where he also established the Center for the Study of Public Choice. He authored several books, including his most famous work, The Calculus of Consent, which he co-authored with Gordon Tullock. Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1986 for his work in public choice theory.

Table of Contents


Foreword xiii Preface xv 1. Commencement 3
2. The Bases for Freedom in Society 22
3. Postconstitutional Contract: The Theory of Public Goods 46
4. Constitutional Contract: The Theory of Law 69
5. Continuing Contract and the Status Quo 96
6. The Paradox of Being Governed' 116
7. Law as Public Capital 136
8. The Punishment Dilemma 165
9. The Threat of Leviathan 186
10. Beyond Pragmatism: Prospects for Constitutional Revolution 209 Selected Bibliography 229 Index 237
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