History of Classical Liberal Ideas

The PPE Podcast

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. David Hart, who shares is thoughts with us about the history of classical liberal ideas. We discuss some of the key thinkers of the past few centuries who have been instrumental in making the case for a free society. We also discuss some of the pushback against classical liberal ideas in the 19th century and early 20th century.

Dr. David Hart was born and raised in Sydney, Australia and has degrees from Stanford University and King’s College, Cambridge. He taught history at the University of Adelaide from 1986-2001 and was the Director of the Online Library of Liberty Project at Liberty Fund in Indianapolis from 2001-2019. He is author, editor and thought leader on liberty and a range of related issues. His research interests include the history of classical liberal thought in general, and the French classical liberal tradition in particular. He is the Academic Editor of Liberty Fund’s translation of the Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat (19th century French economist, writer, member of the French National Assembly and of the French Liberal School; developed the economic concept of opportunity cost). Recent publications include a chapter on “The Paris School of Liberal Political Economy, 1803-1853” for the Cambridge History of French Thought (2019) and the anthology Social Class and State Power (Palgrave, 2018) on classical liberal class analysis. In his spare time, he has also written a screenplay for a film on the activities of Frédéric Bastiat during the 1848 Revolution in Paris.