Eric Mack

Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University

Eric Mack is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University. As a member of the Department of Philosophy and a faculty member of the Murphy Institute of Political Economy at Tulane, he taught courses in ethical theory, the philosophy of law, political economy, political philosophy, and the history of political theory. His primary scholarly project has been the refinement and extension of the sort of natural-rights doctrine that John Locke advocated in his political writings.

To that end, he has published about 100 scholarly essays on the moral foundations of natural rights, the basis and nature of property rights, economic justice, the nature of law and of spontaneous economic and social order, the scope of legitimate coercive institutions, and the exploration of these topics by 17th and 19th century classical liberal and libertarian theorists. He is the editor of Auberon Herbert’s The Rights and Wrongs of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (Liberty Press) and Herbert Spencer’s The Man versus the State (Liberty Press). He is also the author of John Locke (Bloomsbury Press) and, most recently, Libertarianism (Polity Press).

He exercises his freedom and rugged self-reliance by hiking and backpacking in the mountains and canyon country of the American West.

Recent Research by Eric Mack

— Mar 12, 2020
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The Essential John Locke (by Eric Mack, professor emeritus of philosophy at Tulane University) and its accompanying website and animated videos provide an overview of the key ideas of John Locke, an English philosopher commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism” whose pioneering ideas about equality, individual rights and the role of the state helped lay the foundation for modern societies.