Search results for ""author christopher lazarski""
Cornell University Press Power Tends To Corrupt: Lord Acton's Study of Liberty
Lord Acton (1834–1902) is often called a historian of liberty. A great historian and political thinker, he had a rare talent to reach beneath the surface and reveal the hidden springs that move the world. While endeavoring to understand the components of a truly free society, Acton attempted to see how the principles of self-determination and freedom worked in practice, from antiquity to his own time. But though he penned hundreds of papers, essays, reviews, letters and ephemera, the ultimate book of his findings and views on the history of liberty remained unwritten. Reading a book a day for years he still could not keep pace with the output of his time, and finally, dejected, he gave up. Today, Acton is mainly known for a single maxim, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In Power Tends to Corrupt, Christopher Lazarski presents the first in-depth consideration of Acton's thought in more than fifty years. Lazarski brings Acton's work to light in accessible language, with a focus on his understanding of liberty and its development in Western history. A work akin to Acton's overall account of the history of liberty, with a secondary look at his political theory, this book is an outstanding exegesis of the theories and findings of one of the nineteenth century's keenest minds.
£39.60
Cornell University Press Lord Acton for Our Time
Lord Acton for Our Time illuminates the thought of the English historian, politician, and writer who gave us the famous maxim: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Extracting lessons for our current age, Christopher Lazarski focuses on liberty—how Acton understood it, what he thought was its foundation and necessary ingredients, and the history of its development in Western Civilization. Acton is known as a historian, or even the historian, of liberty and as an ardent liberal, but there is confusion as to how he understood liberty and what kind of liberalism he professed. Lord Acton for Our Time provides an introduction that presents essentials about Acton's life and recovers his theory of liberalism. Lazarski analyzes Acton's type of liberalism, probing whether it can offer a solution to the crisis of liberal democracy in our own era. For Acton, liberty is the freedom to do what we ought to do, both as individuals and as citizens, and his writings contain valuable lessons for today.
£16.99
