Introduction / Ewa Atanassow and Alan S. Kahan -- Part 1. Liberal Beginnings: 1. Montesquieu / Catherine Larrère -- 2. In Praise of Liberty: Madame de Staël’s Considerations / Aurelian Craiutu -- 3. Benjamin Constant on the Liberty of the Ancients and the Moderns/ Jeremy Jennings -- 4. Jeremy Bentham / Emmanuelle de Champs -- 5. James Madison / Michael P. Zuckert -- 6. Tocqueville’s New Liberalism / Ewa Atanassow -- Part 2. Liberalism Confronts the World: 7. Abraham Lincoln’s Commentary on the ‘Plain Unmistakable Language’ of the Declaration of Independence / Diana J. Schaub -- 8. John Stuart Mill /Nicholas Capaldi -- 9.
Alexander Herzen / Robert Neil Harris -- 10. T. H. Green / John Morrow -- 11. Sarmiento: Liberalism between Civilization and Barbarism / Iván Jaksić -- 12. Namik Kemal’s Constitutional Liberalism: Sovereignty, Justice and the Critique of the Tanzimat /
H Ozan Ozavci -- 13. Khayr al-Din Basha / Nouh El Harmouzi -- 14. Jacob Burckhardt’s Dystopic Liberalism / Alan S. Kahan --
Part 3. Liberalism Confronts the Twentieth Century: 15. Max Weber / Joshua Derman -- 16. Was Keynes a Liberal? / Reinhart Blohmert -- 17. John Dewey and Liberal Democracy / James T. Kloppenberg -- 18. Hu Shih’s Reflections / Lei Yi -- 19. Hannah Arendt: Power, Action and the Foundation of Freedom / Roger Berkowitz -- 20. Reading F. A. Hayek / Edwige Kacenelenbogen --
21. Japan / Reiji Matsumoto -- 22. Liberty and Value Pluralism: Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Freedom’ / George Crowder --
23. Czesław Miłosz / Michel Maslowski -- 24. John Rawls / Chad Van Schoelandt.

Liberalism today has perhaps more supporters and adversaries than any other political movement. This volume traces liberalism's global ascent through essays about some of the thinkers and actors who participated in its rise and spread. The essays included here present for the first time in one place the geographic and ideological diversity of liberal thought and practice as it developed since the eighteenth century. By exploring thinkers as diverse as Montesquieu, Abraham Lincoln, Jacob Burckhardt, Khayr al-Din, Hu Shih, John Rawls, and Czeslaw Milosz, this volume contributes toward a better understanding of liberalisms past and present.
Each chapter opens with a critical passage from the author under consideration and explores the author’s significance for liberalism. By facilitating a direct encounter with influential authors and texts, the volume serves as an introduction both to the multiple dimensions of liberalism and to reading texts in political thought. By engaging with particular liberal moments, the essays allow readers to create and explore conversations among liberalisms across time and space. It thus encourages a broader and more nuanced understanding of the nature and history of liberalism. Stimulating, accessible and interdisciplinary, Liberal Moments will appeal to students and scholars in the history of political thought, intellectual history and beyond.