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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Pursuit of Certainty: David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Beatrice Webb

The Pursuit of Certainty: David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Beatrice Webb

Letwin, Shirley Robin

Paperback

PhilosophyGeneral Political Science

ISBN10: 0865971951
ISBN13: 9780865971950
Publisher: Liberty Fund
Published: Oct 1 1998
Pages: 454
Weight: 1.65
Height: 1.20 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.80
Language: English

By examining the thought of four seminal thinkers, Shirley Robin Letwin in The Pursuit of Certainty provides a brilliant record of the gradual change in the English-speaking peoples' understanding of what sort of activity politics is. As Letwin writes, the distinctive political issue since the eighteenth century has been whether government should do more or less. Nor, as many historians argue, did this issue arise because of the Industrial Revolution or new social conditions [that] aggravated the problem of poverty but, Letwin believes, because of the profoundly personal reflection of major thinkers, including Hume, Bentham, Mill, and Webb. David Hume, for example, believed that to reach for perfection, to seek an ideal, is noble, but dangerous, and is therefore an activity that individuals or voluntary groups may pursue, but governments certainly should not.

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