A provocative new history of liberalism that also provides a road map for today's liberals

Freedom from Fear offers a striking new account of the dominant political and social theory of our time: liberalism. In a pathbreaking reframing of the historical debate, Alan Kahan charts the development of Western liberalism from the late eighteenth century to the present. Examining key liberal thinkers and issues, Kahan shows how liberalism is both a response to fear and a source of hope: the search for a world in which no one need be afraid.

Freedom from Fear reveals how liberal arguments typically rely on three pillars: freedom, markets, and morals. But when liberals ignore one or more of these pillars, their arguments generally fail to persuade. Extending from Adam Smith and Montesquieu to today's battles between liberals and populists, the book examines the twists and turns of the "incomplete" or unfinished liberal tradition while demonstrating its fundamental continuity. It combines fresh accounts of familiar figures such as Tocqueville and Rawls with discussions of less-famous but pivotal thinkers such as A. V. Dicey and Jane Addams, and explores how liberals have dealt with crucial issues, from debates over male and female suffrage to colonialism and liberal anti-Catholicism.

By transforming our understanding of the history of liberal thought and practice, Freedom from Fear provides a new picture of the political creed today: the paths liberals need to follow, the questions they need to answer, and the dead ends they must avoid-if they are to win.

About the Author
Alan S. Kahan is Professor of British Civilization at the Universite Paris-Saclay. His many books include Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion; Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe; and Aristocratic Liberalism.

Reviews
"A Financial Times Best Book of the Year: Economics"
"The roots of both the market economy and the democratic state lie in liberalism. In this remarkable book, Kahan recounts in persuasive detail the history of this transformative set of ideas."---Martin Wolf, Financial Times
"[A] stunningly comprehensive intellectual history of liberalism as a term, a contested movement, and an ideal, ably showing its development across time, divergences within the tradition, and the failings that have led to contemporary challenges. . . . [Freedom from Fear] is a valuable reference work as well as a sort of broader intellectual history; it bears keeping on the shelf to brush up on both original sources and on an impressive breadth of secondary scholarship."---Philip D. Bunn, University Bookman



Book Information
ISBN 9780691191287
Author Alan S. Kahan
Format Hardback
Page Count 528
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press