No Crowns, No Cap: The Libertarian Tradition from the Bible to Black Political Thought

Undergraduate

How have thinkers across time contested concentrated political authority and argued for limits on political power? This course examines the intellectual and historical development of libertarian thought from the biblical warning against kings in the Book of Samuel through the American Revolutionary era and into twentieth-century political philosophy and contemporary debate. Across the term, students will encounter recurring libertarian themes—individualism, free markets, individual rights, voluntary order, and skepticism of power—through canonical figures such as Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Robert Nozick. Rather than treating these engagements as external critiques or applications, the course uses them to illuminate the internal tensions, limits, and possibilities of libertarianism as a moral, political, and institutional framework. Particular attention is given to how abstract commitments to liberty, responsibility, consent, and voluntary order operate differently when brought to bear on concrete questions of education, labor, welfare, and civil society.