Literature of Liberty: Modern Philosophy & Libertarianism

Professor John Hospers’ principled life, voluminous writings, and precise scholarship are of a piece, wedding theory and practice in the Socratic pursuit and clarification of the true, the good, and the beautiful. His speculative analysis—practiced over thirty-​five years of a productive scholarly career —has advanced and illuminated his chief areas of philosophic concern: social-​political philosophy, ethics and art theory. All the while he engaged in the rigorous demands of a teacher and a scholar, he practiced what Theodore Roszak in The Dissenting Academy describes as “the spirit of Socrates,” the responsibility of the academic to participate in the discussion of the vital public issues of our individual rights and liberties. Making the proper and central business of the academy this Socratic examination of man’s life with respect to its moral qualities, Professor Hospers’s work is highly germane to the following bibliographical essay…