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Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche
Terrible things have been done in their name
Rawls rules
Berlin, Rawls and Nozick put their faith in the sanctity of the individual
The exiles fight back
Their lives and reputations diverged, but their ideas were rooted in the traumas of their shared birthplace
Freedom v economics
People should be free to choose. It was their freedom not to choose that troubled him
Liberal thinkers
The gloomiest of the great liberals worried that democracy might not be compatible with liberty
The father of liberalism
John Stuart Mill’s warning still resonates today
Timeline
From Locke to Rawls, here are the people, ideas and world-shaking events that made liberalism what it is, and isn’t, today
Primer six
At least one planet is deeply biological in a distinctive and illuminating way: our own
Primer five
Why finding what defines a species is so fiendishly hard
Primer four
How autonomous individuals begin life, grow and mate
Primer three
Like any well-run operation, your body is made up of specialised parts. Here is how they work
Primer two
Almost everything you recognise as alive—animal, plant or fungus—is composed of a set of cells