Lexington Books
Pages: 312
Trim: 6⅜ x 9⅜
978-0-7391-3074-2 • Hardback • April 2009 • $116.00 • (£89.00)
978-0-7391-3076-6 • eBook • April 2009 • $110.00 • (£85.00)
Tibor R. Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University's Argyros School of B&E and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Chapter 1 Preface & Acknowledgments
Chapter 2 Introduction: Why Moral Judgments Can be Objective
Chapter 3 Chapter I: Theorists v. their Theories: The Case of Agent Causation
Chapter 4 Chapter II: Ethics and its Controversial Assumptions
Chapter 5 Chapter III: Individualism & Human Success
Chapter 6 Chapter IV: Virtue, Liberty, and Private Property: Aspects of Humanist Political Economy
Chapter 7 Chapter V: Economic Analysis and the Pursuit of Liberty
Chapter 8 Chapter VI: Human Rights and Poverty
Chapter 9 Chapter VII: Rights, Values, Regulation and Health Care
Chapter 10 Chapter VIII: The Morality of Smoking
Chapter 11 Chapter IX: Philosophy, Physics and Common Sense
Chapter 12 Chapter X: The Calculation Problem & the Tragedy of the Commons
Chapter 13 Chapter XI: Government Budget Crises
Chapter 14 Chapter XII: Right to Private Property
Chapter 15 Chapter XIII: Revisiting a Critique
Chapter 16 Chapter XIV: Leo Strauss & Neo-Conservatism
Chapter 17 Chapter XV: Tocqueville & Ayn Rand
Chapter 18 Chapter XVI: Should the Constitution be Rescued
Chapter 19 Chapter XVII: Distraction of Anarchism
Chapter 20 Chapter XVIII: On Owning Intellectual Stuff
Chapter 21 Chapter XIX: Fetal Rights & Liberty
Chapter 22 Chapter XX: Speculation on Post-Communism
Chapter 23 Chapter XXI: The Right to be Wrong
Chapter 24 Chapter XXII: Reflections on Democracy
Chapter 25 Chapter XXIII: The Flaws of Stakeholder Theory
Chapter 26 Chapter XXIV: Individualism Should Respect Rights
Chapter 27 Appendix: Self-Ownership and the Lockean Proviso
Chapter 28 Postscript: Ethics East & West
In this wide-ranging volume, Tibor Machan presents the reader with well-argued and well-documented philosophical considerations, arguing the case that liberty as a political ideal is both desirable and feasible. From foundational issues such as the nature of objectivity to specifics such as smoking bans and health care reform, Machan argues with both passion and rigor, in clear prose that will be of value to philosophers and lay readers alike.
— Aeon J. Skoble, Bridgewater State College
Machan's The Promise of Liberty continues his tenacious and sharp witted exploration of the basics as well as implications of a bona fide free society, as well as of several of the issues that critics claim are certainly the undoing of such a political economy. The topics are all fascinating—among them: smoking and liberty, fetal rights, ethics and science, negative externalities, do we have the right to be wrong, is stakeholder business management just, does the famous Lockean Proviso pose the problems for private property rights as those who deploy it claim, and numerous others that are routinely rolled out as if they easily destroyed the case for liberty. As Machan shows, they do not. This is perhaps Machan's most thoroughly integrated philosophical defense of the great promise of liberty for human community affairs.
— Nicholas Capaldi, Director, National Center for Business Ethics