June 6 marks major life events of two eminent British philosophers, Jeremy Bentham’s death (1832) and Isaiah Berlin’s birth (1909).
Bentham was known as a “philosophical radical” and a major influence on the British utilitarian tradition. He authored numerous books, including Defence of Usury (1787) and An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).
Berlin was best known for several dozen brilliant essays, including the famous, much-quoted “Two Concepts of Liberty.”
The propensity of men to trade must accordingly have some other reason than enjoyment of trading as such. If trading were a pleasure in itself, hence an end in itself, and not frequently a laborious activity associated with danger and economic sacrifice, there would be no reason why men . . . should not trade back and forth an unlimited number of times. But everywhere in practical life, we can observe that economizing men carefully consider every exchange in advance, and that a limit is finally reached beyond which two individuals will not continue to trade at any given time.
Carl Menger, Principles of Economics (1871; English translation, 1950), Spring 1977, chapter IV, “The Theory of Exchange.”
As the political summer heats up, violence wells. What are we to make of it?
Click on over to Townhall, for a full consideration. Then come back here for even more reading.
Photo hails from KCRA.
To hurt in any degree the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign owes to all the different orders of his subjects.
Adam Smith, The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
On June 5, 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, started its ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
In the last few weeks we have learned how wrong much of what we are told about who legally and effectively picks the presidential candidates in the major political parties.
Who has an interest in not telling the truth, and undermining the integrity of America’s political parties?
There is no better means of reducing a fallacious variety of thought to absurdity than to let it live itself out completely.
Attributed to Carl Menger in Ludwig Von Mises, “Comments about the mathematical treatment of economic problems.” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Spring 1977, 1(2), p. 100.
June 4 marks Finland’s Armed Forces Day, Tonga’s Emancipation [or Independence] Day (commemorating the abolition of serfdom in Tonga by King George Tupou in 1862, and the independence of Tonga from the British protectorate in 1970), Estonia’s Flag Day, and the international Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day.
Gratitude is the virtue of wise and generous minds. Ingratitude is the fault of fools and clowns.
La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, (1665, 1678), maxims 688 and 689.
On June 3, 1959, Singapore adopted a constitution.