Is economic liberty necessary for individuals to lead truly flourishing lives? Whether your immediate answer is yes or no, this question is deceptively simple. What do we mean by liberty? What constitutes the flourishing life? How are these related? How is economic liberty related to other goods that affect human flourishing? To answer these questions-and more-this volume brings to bear some of history's greatest thinkers, interpreted by some of today's leading scholars of their thought. How might Aristotle have understood the relationship between economic liberty and human flourishing? Hobbes and Locke, Mill, Rousseau, Burke, Adam Smith, Kant, de Tocqueville, and Marx? So much of the policy and political debates around issues of economic liberty are often cast in somewhat narrow terms. What is the precise magnitude of this elasticity? Is a certain policy popular among key constituencies? Of course, economic and political analysis have a vital role to play in shaping and understanding public policy. But it is helpful-and refreshing-from time to time to step back and examine the foundation. This volume endeavors to do exactly that.

Contents
Preface v
Michael R. Strain and Stan A. Veuger
Aristotle on Economics and the Flourishing Life 1
Harvey C. Mansfield
Hobbes, Locke, and the Problems of Political Economy 9
Peter B. Josephson
Rousseau on Economic Liberty and Human Flourishing 30
John T. Scott
Adam Smith and Human Flourishing 46
Ryan Patrick Hanley
Economic Liberty and Human Flourishing: Kant on
Society, Citizenship, and Redistributive Justice 58
Susan Meld Shell
Edmund Burke¿s Economics of Flourishing 84
Yuval Levin
Capitalism as a Road to Serfdom? Tocqueville on
Economic Liberty and Human Flourishing 96
Steven Bilakovics
John Stuart Mill on Economic Liberty and Human
Flourishing 108
Richard Boyd
Economic Liberty as Anti-Flourishing:
Marx and Especially His Followers 129
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
About the Authors 150

Michael R. Strain is director of Economic Policy Studies and resident scholar at AEI.
Stan A. Veuger is resident scholar at AEI and the editor of AEI Economic Perspectives.