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The British Intellectual Inheritance

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The Anglo-American Conception of the Rule of Law

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism ((PASTCL))

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Abstract

We present a history of the British mind-set from Ockham to Oakeshott (including Bacon, the seminal role of Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Scottish Enlightenment, Hume (especially the pivotal History of England), Smith, Burke, Mill, and the expatriates Polanyi, Popper, Wittgenstein, and Hayek). Our main thesis here is that there is a significant and distinctively British way of thinking that emerged in the first millennium and has been sustained down to the present. Reality is composed of distinct individual entities (nominalism), the human world is sui generis and intellectually prior to the understanding of the physical world. Reality can never be reduced to an abstract system of any kind and therefore cannot be expressed deductively from first principle(s).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southern University Law Center, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Nadia E. Nedzel

  2. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

Authors
  1. Nadia E. Nedzel
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  2. Nicholas Capaldi
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Nedzel, N.E., Capaldi, N. (2019). The British Intellectual Inheritance. In: The Anglo-American Conception of the Rule of Law. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26361-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26361-4_3

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26360-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26361-4

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