Shelley's Philosophy of Liberty

The dislocation of established patterns of thought and behavior, under pressure of the kaleidoscopic changes that for convenience we often ascribe to the French and Industrial Revolutions, led many to turn nostalgically to the safety of precedent and custom. Others, however, looked forward expectantly to the actualization of glorious potentialities that would release society from the shackles of the past. The late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries thus became an arena where many of the doctrines of authority and of liberty which form the staple of much modern political thought battled for supremacy.

Volume 6, Number 2 (1982)