In Hidden Agender, Gerard Casey develops a timely and provocative defence of free speech and toleration against the transgenderist ideology that has infiltrated so much of the media, the political establishment and the law.Opposing ideas, not individuals, Hidden Agender provides a compelling critique of the transgender ideologists and trans activists, and the new reactionary form of legal intolerance of our right to free thought and free speech.As a libertarian, Casey believes that we shou...

In Freedom's Progress?, Gerard Casey argues that the progress of freedom has largely consisted in an intermittent and imperfect transition from tribalism to individualism, from the primacy of the collective to the fragile centrality of the individual person and of freedom. Such a transition is, he argues, neither automatic nor complete, nor are relapses to tribalism impossible. The reason for the fragility of freedom is simple: the importance of individual freedom is simply not obvious to ...

We're all in favour of free speech — except when we’re not! Often it’s a case of 'free speech for me, but not for thee’. The regulation of speech is a matter that is typically dealt with arbitrarily without there being any obvious principled basis for the decisions that are made. Is hate speech, so-called, a form of free speech? What of blasphemy, in either its ancient or contemporary forms? Should certain forms of speech be mandatory?As with free speech, we’re all in favour of tolerance —...

Political philosophy is dominated by a myth, the myth of the necessity of the state. The state is considered necessary for the provision of many things, but primarily for peace and security. In this provocative book, Gerard Casey argues that social order can be spontaneously generated, that such spontaneous order is the norm in human society and that deviations from the ordered norms can be dealt with without recourse to the coercive power of the state.Casey presents a novel perspe...

Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) was an economist, historian, philosopher, and legal theoretician. His work was unified by a passionate and resolute commitment to a libertarianism that may be characterized as 'anarcho-capitalism' and which implied a belief that even the legal system may be provided privately without the need for a coercive collective authority. Hence, anarcho-capitalists envisage a society where the traditional role of government is wholly subsumed by private, profit-making ent...

The capacity for reasonable argument about practical and political matters is important to our daily lives. Yet what does arguing really involve? Often, our very concept of what it is to argue seems systematically distorted. Practical, political arguing is too often stylized as hyper-cognitive, ending by treating people as objects rather than other selves — in ways that are fundamentally unreasonable.This book examines what follows from seeing people as deliberating and acting in wa...

This is a book about the answers that historians, philosophers, theologians, practising politicians and would-be revolutionaries have given to one question:how should human beings best govern themselves? That question raises innumerable others: can we manage our own affairs at all? Should we even try? Many people in the past have thought that only some individuals were either able or entitled to practise self-government: Greeks, but not Persians; men, but not women; the better-off minority...

In this provocative but balanced essay, Kenneth Minogue discusses the development of politics from the ancient world to the twentieth century. He prompts us to consider why political systems evolve, how politics offers both power and order in our society, whether democracy is always a good thing, and what future politics may have in the twenty-first century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subjec...

PREORDER KATHLEEN STOCK'S NEW BOOK DO NOT GO GENTLE: THE CASE AGAINST ASSISTED DEATH (APRIL, 2026)'A clear, concise, easy-to-read account of the issues between sex, gender and feminism . . . an important book' Evening Standard'A call for cool heads at a time of great heat and a vital reminder that revolutions don't always end well' Sunday TimesMaterial Girls is a timely and trenchant criti...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and a Times, Spectator and Observer Book of the Year 2021‘In the first decade of this century, it was unthinkable that a gender-critical book could even be published by a prominent publishing house, let alone become a bestseller.’ Louise Perry, New Statesman‘Thank goodness for Helen Joyce.’ Christina Patterson, Sunday Times‘Rea...

In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate the intricate ideological transformation that occurred, wherein the pursuit of material interests--so long condemned as the deadly sin of avarice--was assigned the role of containing the unruly and destructive passions of man. Hirschman here offers a new interpretation for the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the continuities between old and new, in contra...

Finally in a one-volume paperback edition, On Politics is one of the most ambitious and hugely readable histories of political philosophy in nearly a century.Praised widely upon hardcover publication, Alan Ryan’s “masterpiece” (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times) blends history and philosophy to examine three thousand years of political thought. Drawing on three decades of research, Ryan insightfully traces the origins of political philosophy from the ...