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The ideals of individual liberty and limited government motivated the men and women who took part in the creation of the American Republic. The OLL includes critical primary sources that helped shape the nation’s cultural, religious,… more

Political, economic, and philosophical ideas are often expressed through works of art. The art collected in the OLL gives us another history of liberty to read–a history written with etchings, paints, pastels, and even carved in… more

Debates about education go far beyond the classroom and consider the way an understanding of education affects the human condition, while placing an emphasis on the advancement of society. Some of the questions our authors raise are:… more

The “Founders” refers to that generation of men and women who were active in the American Revolution and the formation of the early American Republic and the Constitution.

Donald Lutz drew up a list of the most frequently cited authors by members of the Founding Generation of the American Republic. A full list can be found here and there is a bibliographical essay on this topic by Forrest McDonald.

In the Goodrich Seminar Room in the Lilly Library at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana the limestone walls are engraved with the names of the political and legal documents and authors which Pierre Goodrich, the founder of… more

Whether it is David Hume’s eighteenth-century account of English history stretching from Julius Caesar to the Glorious Revolution or Edmund Burke’s analysis of the American and French Revolutions as he watched them unfold, our… more

Studies in Economic Theory was a collection of works edited by Laurence S. Moss and published by the Institute for Humane Studies in the mid- and late-1970s. These books were squarely within the Austrian tradition of economic… more

Liberty Fund recorded conversations with two dozen of the most original thinkers about liberty of our times, and these conversations are available on audio and/or video online. They included Armen A. Alchian, Manuel Ayau, Jacques… more

This is an ongoing series of interviews with Liberty Fund authors and academics on their work and its relationship to the study of liberty.

This is a list of one volume surveys of the classical liberal position which have appeared over the past two centuries. The defining characteristic is that they are an attempt to provide the reader with a survey of the basic… more

What does it mean to be a human? What is the best life to live, and how can we live it? These questions, and the texts which explore them, have long guided humanity in its struggle to understand itself.

Political theory encompasses debates over such issues as self-government, the rule of law, and constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press. From foundational writings to twentieth century perspectives, OLL’s… more

The right to inquire freely about questions of science is an important part of a free society. The discoveries that arise from this kind of open inquiry often help to build the free society even as they arise from it.

The modern form of socialism emerged in Britain, France and Germany in the 1830s and 1840s and has continued to evolve ever since. Various strands make up the socialist school of thought including voluntary socialists who wished to… more

How do human societies constitute themselves? How do they interact with one another? How do they preserve and change themselves? The study of sociology is the exploration of these questions.

The name given to an ideal political community, “Utopia,” comes from Thomas More’s work Utopia which was published in Latin in 1516. What is interesting about many conceptions of utopian communities is that the authors assumed that… more