The Man versus the State
by Herbert Spencer
On This Page
Description
Spencer develops various specific disastrous ramifications of the wholesale substitution of the principle of compulsory cooperation--the statist principle--for the individualist principle of voluntary cooperation. His theme is that "there is in society . . . that beautiful self-adjusting principle which will keep all its elements in equilibrium. . . . The attempt to regulate all the actions of a community by legislation will entail little else but misery and compulsion." Herbert Spencer show more joined the staff of the London and Birmingham Railway as an engineer in 1837 and in 1848 took a position as editor of The Economist. Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon , Barnes and Noble , and iTunes . show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
Member Reviews
Spencer was, perhaps, the strongest Victorian proponent of individualism and reduced government.... In his extreme individualist notion of an ideal world there would be no concept of "obligation." Each person is thereby accorded only the potential they carry and exhibit, with no favors handed out; Nature is left to the task of sorting out the "fittest." ...Yet, whereas Darwin was concerned with the morally neutral mechanical development of specific traits among animal species, Spencer considered survival in evolution a moral judgement of worth. - The Classics of Liberty
FG-6
Nov 17, 2020Catalan
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
Libertarian Books
102 works; 19 members
Política - Clásicos
164 works; 2 members
Books cited in Progress by Samuel McDonald
160 works; 1 member
Author Information
128+ Works 1,260 Members
Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher-scientist, was---with the anthropologists Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan---one of the three great cultural evolutionists of the nineteenth century. A contemporary of Charles Darwin (see Vol. 5), he rejected special creation and espoused organic evolution at about the same time. He did not, show more however, discover, as did Darwin, that the mechanism for evolution is natural selection. He was immensely popular as a writer in England, and his The Study of Sociology (1873) became the first sociology textbook ever used in the United States. With the recent revival of interest in evolution, Spencer may receive more attention than he has had for many decades. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Notable Lists
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Thinker's Library (78)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Man versus the State
- Original publication date
- 1884
Classifications
- Genres
- Politics and Government, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Economics, General Nonfiction, Sociology
- DDC/MDS
- 320.5 — Society, Government, and Culture Political science Types of Government Political ideologies
- LCC
- JC571 .S75 — Political Science Political theory Political theory. The state. Theories of the state Purpose, functions, and relations of the state
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 267
- Popularity
- 119,551
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.50)
- Languages
- 7 — Catalan, English, French, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 34
- ASINs
- 12
