You should read Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Mill via EarlyModernTexts.com

By Arjun Panickssery @ 2025-01-30T12:35 (+39)

This is a linkpost to https://arjunpanickssery.substack.com/p/you-should-read-hobbes-locke-hume

This is a crosspost, probably from LessWrong. Try viewing it there.

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Dustin Crummett @ 2025-01-30T19:16 (+8)

The EarlyModernTexts versions are what I read when I had to do my comprehensive history exam in grad school. I recommend them.

WillieG @ 2025-01-30T18:14 (+3)

I didn't realize there was a resource out there to make these works more accessible. That's awesome!

I've been meaning to write a post about how Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" should be required reading for anyone who wants to change the world. I wish I had read it before joining an (ultimately doomed) effort to promote human rights and democracy in a country where the average person can't read. In hindsight, investing in literacy would've been a better use of our time. 

danielechlin @ 2025-01-31T15:55 (+1)

So say we have like, a finite amount of time, and there are probably better and worse compromises between "get the gist" and the main plot of history and "read thousands of pages of moderately difficult prose and probably miss the point anyway." (Like you're not mentioning that all these writers are writing against a context -- forex, we shouldn't assume Adam Smith would defend free markets in the Gilded Age, but he very much thought they were better than mercantile policy.)

Any thoughts on learning that way?

James Herbert @ 2025-01-30T16:04 (+1)

This is cool and I didn't know it existed. Thanks for sharing!