Schools brief

Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche

The prophets of illiberal progress

Terrible things have been done in their name

Rawls rules

Three post-war liberals strove to establish the meaning of freedom

Berlin, Rawls and Nozick put their faith in the sanctity of the individual

The exiles fight back

Hayek, Popper and Schumpeter formulated a response to tyranny

Their lives and reputations diverged, but their ideas were rooted in the traumas of their shared birthplace

Freedom v economics

Was John Maynard Keynes a liberal?

People should be free to choose. It was their freedom not to choose that troubled him

Liberal thinkers

De Tocqueville and the French exception

The gloomiest of the great liberals worried that democracy might not be compatible with liberty

The father of liberalism

Against the tyranny of the majority

John Stuart Mill’s warning still resonates today

Timeline

Liberalism: A brief history

From Locke to Rawls, here are the people, ideas and world-shaking events that made liberalism what it is, and isn’t, today

Primer six

Planets and life

At least one planet is deeply biological in a distinctive and illuminating way: our own

Primer five

Species and evolution

Why finding what defines a species is so fiendishly hard

Primer four

Life cycles and reproduction

How autonomous individuals begin life, grow and mate

Primer three

Organs and organisation

Like any well-run operation, your body is made up of specialised parts. Here is how they work

Primer two

Cells and membranes

Almost everything you recognise as alive—animal, plant or fungus—is composed of a set of cells