Alberto Mingardi — Herbert Spencer, the misunderstood libertarian

Why Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), you may ask. Spencer was an intellectual giant towering over his age along with several other intellectual giants, even though he is almost forgotten today as a major thinker and influencer. But he was a prominent influencer at the time that economic liberalism was in its later formative stages. We remember his contemporaries Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, for example, for their lasting influence, but Spencer's influence has been submerged in the general cultural paradigm and mostly overlooked. See The Man Versus The State, with Six Essays on Government, Society, and Freedom.

I would also call attention to Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) as an important but largely forgotten early liberal influencer. See Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Sphere and Duties of Government (The Limits of State Action) (1854 ed.)[1792], Translator: Joseph Coulthard.

EconLog
Herbert Spencer, the misunderstood libertarian

Alberto Mingardi | Director General of Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy's free-market think tank