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The Pursuit of Certainty
This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.
The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as a design element in Liberty Fund books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.
© 1998 by Liberty Fund, Inc. Originally published in 1965 by Cambridge University Press.
Cover images courtesy of Corbis-Bettmann.
This eBook edition published in 2013.
eBook ISBNs:
978-1-61487-103-3
978-1-61487-221-4
Contents
David Hume: Pagan Virtues and Profane Politics
3 The Combat of Reason and Passion
5 Virtue in a Bundle of Perceptions
6 The Philosophical Enthusiasm Renounced
9 The Proper Political Disposition
10 The End of Profane Politics
Jeremy Bentham: Liberty and Logic
12 Utilitarianism—A System of Tolerance
13 A Perfect System of Legislation
John Stuart Mill: From Puritanism to Sociology
18 The Failure of Utilitarianism
25 Liberty and the Ideal Individual
Beatrice Webb: Science and the Apotheosis of Politics
I would like to thank the William Volker Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation for grants during the early stages of my work. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study and its director, Miss Constance Smith, for enabling me to complete the book under circumstances most unusually encouraging and agreeable.
I am grateful to the Passfield trustees for permission to read and quote from the unpublished diaries of Beatrice Webb, and to Mr. C. G. Allen of the library at the London
