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The Architects of Liberty

Locke lays the foundation: government by consent, natural rights, the right to revolution. Rousseau rebuilds the social contract from scratch. Burke watches the Revolution consume itself and writes the founding text of conservatism in reply. Paine lights the match twice, in America and in France. Wollstonecraft demands that liberty include women. Beauvoir insists that it actually does.

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  1. 1
    Two Treatises of GovernmentJohn Locke (1689)
  2. 2
    The Social ContractJean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
  3. 3
    Reflections on the Revolution in FranceEdmund Burke (1790)
  4. 4
    Common SenseThomas Paine (1776)
  5. 5
    A Vindication of the Rights of WomanMary Wollstonecraft (1792)
  6. 6
    The Second SexSimone de Beauvoir (1949)
  7. 7
    LeviathanThomas Hobbes (1651)
  8. 8
    On LibertyJohn Stuart Mill (1859)
  9. 9
    Democracy in AmericaAlexis de Tocqueville (1835)
  10. 10
    The Federalist PapersAlexander Hamilton, James Madison & John Jay (1788)