Timothy Ferris and Lynn Hunt: The Cause of Liberty

03/23/2010 Jeff Riggenbach

Ferris’ book The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature is about the symbiotic relationship between science and liberalism. His liberalism was Lockean. One can do anything but bridge other’s rights. Science can only thrive in a liberal environment. And, liberalism needs science for health, wealth and happiness.

Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights posits that rights are self evident. Reason made this realization clear. But all of these ideas had to be learned. Novels allowed much of this learning to occur.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.