Lord Acton for Our Time

by Christopher Lazarski

Overview

Lord Acton for Our Time illuminates the thought of the English historian, politician, and writer who gave us the famous maxim: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Extracting lessons for our current age, Christopher Lazarski focuses on liberty—how Acton understood it, what he thought was its foundation and necessary ingredients, and the history of its development in Western Civilization.

Acton is known as a historian, or even the historian, of liberty and as an ardent liberal, but there is confusion as to how he understood liberty and what kind of liberalism he professed.

Lord Acton for Our Time provides an introduction that presents essentials about Acton's life and recovers his theory of liberalism. Lazarski analyzes Acton's type of liberalism, probing whether it can offer a solution to the crisis of liberal democracy in our own era. For Acton, liberty is the freedom to do what we ought to do, both as individuals and as citizens, and his writings contain valuable lessons for today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501771712
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2023
Series:	People for Our Time
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Christopher Lazarski is Professor of Politics and History at Lazarski University, and author of Power Tends to Corrupt.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1.
2.
3.
4.
Conclusions

What People are Saying About This

Murray N. Rothbard

Lord Action was the great Catholic libertarian historian.

Editorial Reviews

A man with intelligence so great that he was, and is, the only intellectual to ever face full-on the profound conundrums of religious faith, moral philosophy, economic activity, and political action.

speaking at the Acton Institute's 2013 Anniversar P.J. O'Rourke

A man with intelligence so great that he was, and is, the only intellectual to ever face full-on the profound conundrums of religious faith, moral philosophy, economic activity, and political action.

-- "P.J. O'Rourke, speaking at the Acton Institute's 2013 Anniversary Dinner"

From the Publisher

"Lord Action was the great Catholic libertarian historian."

Murray N. Rothbard

"A man with intelligence so great that he was, and is, the only intellectual to ever face full-on the profound conundrums of religious faith, moral philosophy, economic activity, and political action."

P.J. O'Rourke