Liberalism: A Counter-History

One of Europe’s leading intellectual historians deconstructs the dark side of liberalism, sifting through 3 centuries of liberal writings by John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others.

In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery.

Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, and Siey鑚, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order.

Author: Domenico Losurdo
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Verso
Published: 02/04/2014
Pages: 384
Weight: 0.9lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781781681664
Language: English