GOVT 86.67 No Crowns, No Cap: The Libertarian Tradition from the Bible to Black Political Thought
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.
In addition to these classic texts, the course treats libertarianism as a living argumentative tradition by examining how its core claims are translated, tested, and contested in modern institutional settings. To that end, students engage works by three black classical liberals—Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Anne Wortham—whose extensive writings systematically deploy or test libertarian claims to assess the moral and political consequences of state power, market order, and social responsibility under conditions shaped by race, segregation, and exclusion. Readings from figures such as Frederick Douglass and Zora Neale Hurston will also situate these debates within the longer history of African American political thought.
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.
Department-Specific Course Categories
Government