On October 25th, starting at 5:00pm, the great Deirdre McCloskey will deliver a lecture in the Hayek Speaker Series at GMU’s Fairfax campus. Her title is “Humane Libertarianism: A New American Liberalism.” Please see here for more information – including on how to register to attend. It will surely be a memorable and enlightening event.
(Regular readers of Cafe Hayek know that my admiration for Deirdre McCloskey – both as a person and as a scholar – is vast. Few thinkers have done as much as has Deirdre to influence my view of the world and of the role of science in interpreting the world. So it is with the most friendly attitude that I say for the record that I’m not keen on the title of Deirdre’s lecture. I have never encountered an inhumane libertarianism – although I have indeed encountered inhumane and decidedly non-libertarianian ideologies that are embraced by people who sometimes call themselves, and are called by others, “libertarian,” as well as explanations of libertarianism that are so carelessly expressed that others can be forgiven for mistaking that which is explained as being less than humane.)
