Distributed for University of Wales Press
Recovering Richard Price
Presents a collection of essays on the Welsh philosopher whose tercentenary was celebrated in 2023.
In his own time, Price was dubbed "the Apostle of Liberty" because of his vocal and controversial defense of the American and French Revolutions, with US politicians such as his close friend Benjamin Franklin seeking his advice on a wide range of political and economic issues. Price’s reputation was obscured at least in part due to Edmund Burke’s accusations during the French Revolution, despite Price’s numerous feats as a polymath, with contributions in the fields of mathematics, science, theology, finance, and insurance, in addition to his standing as a philosophical and political thinker. His good name as a public intellectual was partially reinstated in the mid-twentieth century, when Price was hailed as a key eighteenth-century moral philosopher and liberal republican thinker, a major representative of the European Enlightenment, and the foremost Welsh political thinker. The work of D.O. Thomas, the Welsh philosopher, was of particular importance during this time, as were the contributions of other American and French intellectuals.
As the title implies, this book aims to “recover” Price for a contemporary audience. Recovering Richard Price does so by presenting a variety of writings that cover an array of contributions that this “Renaissance man” created during the Age of Enlightenment.
Table of Contents
Section I – Price in History
Anthony Page, University of Tasmania: ‘Price in the Wodrow–Kenrick correspondence’
Rémy Duthille, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne: ‘The Reception of Price in Continental Europe’
Marion Loeffler, Cardiff University: ‘Echoes of Price’s influence and ideas in Wales’
Paul Frame: Did Richard Price visit Paris in 1781?
Section II – Price in the History of Ideas
Iwan Rhys Morus, Aberystwyth University: ‘Electrifying Thinkers’
Patrick Spero, Director of the American Philosophical Society: ‘Revolutionary Friendships: Richard Price, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the Cause of Independence’
Wyn James and Huw Williams, Cardiff University: Price the Welsh Theologian
John Tucker, Swansea University: ‘Richard Price and his Midnight Calculations’
Section III – Price the Philosopher
Francesco Allegri, Pegaso University – Price’s Normative Ethics
Roger Crisp, St Anne’s College Oxford: ‘The Prima Facie/Overall Duty Distinction: What is it? Where did it come from? Why does it matter?’
Yiftah Elazar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: ‘The Republican Goliath’
David McNaughton, Edinburgh University: ‘Price, Clarke, and Fitness’
Section IV – Price in Politics & Economics
Rachel Z. Friedman, Tel Aviv University: ‘Richard Price on the Politics of Probability’
Nicole Whalen, University of Chicago: ‘Recovering the Case for Common Property and Republican Freedom’
Karl Ameriks, University of Notre Dame: ‘Kant, Price, & American Independence’
Quentin Skinner, Queen Mary University of London: ‘Price on Civil Liberty: The Critical Response’
Alan Coffee, King’s College London: ‘Richard Price and Mary Wollstonecraft––Apostles of Liberty’
Conclusions