Carlyle and Personal Freedom

Paper Summary:

The paper explores the issue of the importance of personal freedom and its limits in the work of Thomas Carlyle, "Past and Present" written in 1843. The paper refers to the beliefs of John Stuart Mill and then explains Carlyle's view of freedom that personal freedom must be limited by the communal good otherwise it produces bad consequences for all.

From the Paper:

"The book Past and Present was an effort to explain the social order of Britain at a time of crisis, the crisis being an economic crisis then prevailing in England. The Industrial Revolution was changing the nature of work and the society organized around work, and the process was now affected by a recession that led to the closure of factories, the loss of jobs, an increase in the slums of the cities, and more people starving in the streets. This crisis caused Carlyle to consider the nature of the leadership the nation then had and to compare them to leaders from other eras and other situations."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Carlyle, Thomas. Past and Present. The Gutenberg Project (27 Sept 2004). July 16, 2007. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13534.
• Himmelfarb, Gertrude. On Liberty and Liberalism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.
• Kelly, J.M. A Short History of Western Legal Theory. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1992.
• Magid, Henry M. "John Stuart Mill." In History of Political Philosophy, Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (eds.), 798-802. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
• Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1979.

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