The Reading Room

The OLL blog explores the fascinating, vital, and often surprising texts and people that fill our library. Come talk in our library!

Rousseau Dissents from the Modern World

By: Walter Donway

“I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence...[but] has anyone ever heard of a savage man who was living in liberty ever dreaming of complaining about his life and of killing himself?”  -- Jean Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality”
MORE

To Exonerate God, Rousseau Must Make Man Depraved

By: Walter Donway

Professor Alan Kors explains that the young Rousseau did not trust the Paris philosophes. He met with them in the cafes but did not like their deism. He had known and argued with atheists. The philosophes seemed to him to seize upon…
MORE

OLL’s November Birthday: Voltaire (November 21, 1694 – May 30, 1778)

By: Peter Carl Mentzel

November’s OLL Birthday Essay is in honor of François Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire. A playwright, poet, historian, philosopher, and satirist, Voltaire literally defined the Age of Enlightenment, sometimes…
MORE

Utilitarianism: Pleasure or Preference?

By: Bill Glod

Spend much time in discussion of ethics and you’ll likely hear standard objections to various utilitarian theories. In their single-minded drive to maximize some version of the good (e.g., desirable conscious states like pleasure),…
MORE

A Critique of Preferentism

By: Bill Glod

A previous essay suggested ways in which preference-satisfaction utilitarianism (“preferentism”) is superior to forms of utilitarianism that focus on promoting or maximizing desirable states of consciousness (such as pleasure).…
MORE

OLL’s October Birthday: Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784)

By: Peter Carl Mentzel

October’s OLL Birthday Essay is in honor of the French polymath Denis Diderot. Most famous as the editor and inspiration of the Encyclopédie, Diderot also published works on philosophy and art, as well as novels, and plays, and was…
MORE

Ilia Chavchavadze on Adam Smith, Free Trade, and the Future of the United States

By: Irakli Javakhishvili

In a previous article, we have already talked about the views of the founder of Georgian liberal thought, Prince Ilia Chavchavadze, on private property. It should be noted that his reviews were not limited to only internal issues;…
MORE

Anne Dowriche: War, Treason and Shakespeare.

By: Joanne Paul

Thirty years into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a small book appeared in the London market. The frontispiece identified it as ‘The French Historie’ and noted that it was ‘published by A. D.’. Only when the reader perused the…
MORE

The Three Theological Virtues Revealed: The Wife of Bath’s Tale

By: Nathaniel Birzer

The Wife of Bath’s Tale is likely the single-most selected work from Chaucer’s corpus to be used in the classroom. Yet this tendency to single it out also works to obscure the Tale’s role in the larger story, the connections which…
MORE

Future of Liberty Podcast Notes: Katherine Mangu-Ward on politics

By: Amy Willis

In the second episode of Liberty Fund’s new Future of Liberty podcast, hosted by Mitch Daniels, Daniels welcomes Reason magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward to discuss the ever changing role of journalism in a free…
MORE

Introducing The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776

By: Christy Lynn Horpedahl

Reading Room readers, meet your revolutionary new friend: The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776 Collection.
MORE

A Goodbye to a Good Man

By: Michael Zigismund

The movement for human freedom just lost one of its great champions. The Cato Institute’s “North Star,” David Boaz, passed away on June 7, 2024, at the age of 70. I commend you to read the many heartfelt remembrances already…
MORE

Joseph Priestley: “Enlightenment Man”

By: Walter Donway

If anyone does, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) warrants the description “Renaissance man.” But, to avoid confusion, since Priestley lived a couple of centuries after the Renaissance, let me argue here that this “Enlightenment man,” as…
MORE
The Reading Room Archives

Reading Room Contributors

Walter Donway

Walter Donway

Peter Carl Mentzel

Peter Carl Mentzel

Bill Glod

Bill Glod