Antony Flew

The 2001 Schlarbaum Laureate is Antony G. N. Flew, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Reading, England ... He has been a leading light in British philosophy for the past half-century ... In political philosophy, Flew vigorously defends classical liberalism against the fallacies of egalitarianism. He finds the influential A Theory of Justice, by the Harvard philosopher John Rawls, entirely lacking in the clarity he believed an essential philosophical virtue ... In Thinking Straight (1977) he argues that the ideological conclusions of the left were more central to them than scientific integrity itself.

Antony Flew's 'Social Democracy and the Myth of Social Justice' needs to be in the arsenal of anyone who wants to combat the constant cry of the statists that various coercive measures must be implemented in order to advance social justice. Hayek attacked the notion of social justice in the second volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty, but Flew improves upon Hayek's criticism, taking pains to argue that social justice as customarily conceived is precisely not a kind of justice. He leaves in tatters the theories of Rawls and other ... advocates of the idea that state-sanctioned coercion can make for a more just world.

After all the privatizations of the Thatcher years, the British-maintained school system is one of the two largest industries that still remain under state ownership and control. (The other is the National Health Service.) Both are effectively monopolistic and therefore liable to all the notorious faults of monopolies, particularly those run by the government. ... In helping to undermine the intellectual support for government education and, in the current book, demonstrating that private enterprise is providing superior education alternatives for people around the globe, James Tooley has done truly valuable work.

John Milton was one of the iconic figures of English literature. He is most familiar for his epic poem Paradise Lost and, in particular, his depiction of Satan. However, his legacy extends far beyond that one monumental work and indeed beyond poetry: He was a forceful and courageous writer on matters political and theological. ... In his final years, Milton produced a history of England ... His last great poetic work was Samson Agonistes: a tragic setting of the tale of the Israelite judge whose individual salvation was assured at the moment of his death as his nation lay in ruins about him.