Alan Ryan

Biographic Data

ID3626875
NAMEAlan Ryan
GIVEN NAMESAlan
FAMILY NAMERyan
SIGNATURERYAN A
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Saskatchewan
ORCID0000-0001-8422-4287
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS96
TOTAL CITATIONS107
AUTHOR COUNT96
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1964
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX5

  • Liberalism and Its Critics

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2025

    The essay argues that liberalism is presently under siege institutionally but has no persuasive intellectual critics. The essay lays out the components of liberalism as a preface to arguing that these have not been intellectually challenged so much as institutionally subverted. The components are an emphasis on fear, commitment to separation of church and state, acceptance of modernity with a regime of individual rights such as freedom of religio…

  • A Proposed VR Platform for Supporting Blended Learning Post Covid-19

    Open AccessSimon Colreavy-Donelly, Alan Ryan et al.ARTICLEEducation Sciences2022

    The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in teaching practice towards blended learning for many higher education institutions. This led to the rapid adoption of certain digital technologies within existing teaching structures as a means to meet student access needs. This paper is an attempt to summarise and extend pre-COVID-19 pedagogical research to leverage digital immersive technologies for blended teaching in the post-pandemic era. This paper for…

  • Freedom of Association

    Daniel A Bell, Sam Fleischacker et al.BOOKFreedom of Association2020

  • The Questionable Consolations of Philosophy

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2020

    The Questionable Consolations of Philosophy Alan Ryan (bio) as i write, the united kingdom is four weeks into its lockdown. Bars, restaurants, and the majority of stores other than food shops and pharmacies are shut, and most of their workers have been laid off. The death toll from the novel coronavirus is, viewed against first expectations, not astonishingly high; in another, more alarming light, it has just about doubled the mortality rate for …

  • Escaping the War of All against All: Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2018

    Excerpt: Is Leviathan persuasive? One might think that the existence of the United States is sufficient refutation of Hobbes's insistence that there can be only one source of law in a coherent political system; if federalism is one problem, the separation of powers is another. Hobbes was deeply hostile to judges who thought that their expertise in the Common Law gave them an authority equal or superior to the sovereign's. On the other hand, one m…

  • Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanCHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of Classics…2017

    This chapter on Isaiah Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty centers on the most famous piece in it, “Two Concepts of Liberty.” As a matter of genre, it is an essay in conceptual analysis. Because liberty is a historically inflected concept, it is also an essay in the history of ideas. The chapter argues that Berlin was a “Cold War liberal” only in the limited sense that he campaigned against all doctrines that licensed the sacrifice of real individual…

  • On the Muslim Question

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLEJournal of Church and State2015

    Severe critics damn the book they are reviewing with faint praise. Anxious critics fear they may damn the book they are reviewing with an excess of praise. Still, it is hard to resist the temptation to shower superlatives on Anne Norton's book. On the Muslim Question combines virtues rarely found in one place. It is scrupulously attentive to the everyday facts about the ways in which the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds interact and devastatingly sha…

  • Karl Marx: Thoroughly Revised Fifth Edition

    Open AccessIsaiah Berlin, Alan Ryan et al.BOOKKarl Marx2013

  • Isaiah Berlin: The history of ideas as psychodrama

    Open AccessAllanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLEEuropean Journal of Political…2013Cited by: 4

    The essay is a ‘personal impression’ of Isaiah Berlin and his liberalism, beginning with some intellectual biography, and turning to the question of how the way Berlin wrote about political ideas illuminates the liberalism he espoused. The essay discounts Berlin’s self-description as a historian of ideas who had abandoned philosophy, and follows Bernard Williams in arguing that the historicity of our political values demands a dialogical approach…

  • The Planners and the Planned

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLECritical Review2013Cited by: 1References: 1

    Much of what makes Hayek so controversial can be found in The Road to Serfdom, the theoretical basis of which is provided by The Counter-Revolution of Science. The first book, a polemic against the “planning mentality,” did not defend complete laissez faire, but argued that planning disrupts the coordination between prices and supply and demand; that effective planning is thus impossible in a modern industrial society; that it is coercive; and, o…

  • Conceptions of Corruption, Its Causes, and Its Cure

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2013

    Corruption was an obsession of eighteenth-century political theorists, and the target of radicals of all stripes at the end of the century. The obverse of the coin was a perhaps too uncritical worship of the stern republicans of ancient Rome and Sparta - the latter being notoriously open to bribes, and as greedy as the next man when not at home under the watchful eyes of their fellows. I begin with Mandeville, whose Fable of the Bees emphasized t…

  • The Making of Modern Liberalism

    Open AccessAllanah Ryan, Alan RyanBOOKThe making of modern liberalism2012

    This book is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of more than four decades during which the author reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism. The book consists of…

  • Happiness and Political Theory

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2010

    I here tackle three topics: first, the lowly place of happiness among the goals of political action in the great tradition of political thought; second, the novelty of the idea of happiness is the proper aim or public policy; and last, the importance of the distinction between what was aptly described by T.H. Green as "hindering hindrances to the good life" and the promotion of happiness by political action. As that might suggest, I shall say som…

  • Free Inquiry: Easy Times Can Be Difficult Too

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2009

    This paper begins with some brief reflections on the 19th century apprehensions of Tocqueville and Mill and their relevance to ourselves, and goes on to ask for what and for whom universities exist. There is no incontrovertible answer, but one can distinguish two ideal types of a modern university, as I do. I praise one of them, without being dismissive of the others, and pose some problems about their institutionalization, and raise some old que…

  • Universities under Conditions of Duress: Question and Answer Session

    Shlomo Avineri, Richard Bernstein et al.ARTICLESocial research2009

    Shlomo Avineri, Richard Bernstein, Jonathan R. Cole, Hans-Peter Kruger, and Alan Ryan Universities under Conditions of Duress: Question and Answer Session RICHARD BERNSTEIN: Iunderstand Socrates and Kant. Couldyou explainwhy the Protestant God is the thirdpresiding deity ofthe liberal arts college? A L A N R Y A N : Because the Protestant God is the one that said every man was to be his own priest, was to read the Bible for himself, and was to ma…

  • Newer Than What? Older Than What?

    Open AccessAllanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial Philosophy and Policy2007

    The essay approaches the question: Older Than What; Newer Than What? as naively as possible; it begins by asking whether there can be, and perhaps was, liberalism before the word was coined, and argues that there could have been but as a matter of fact was not. It then changes tack to ask whether liberalism is in essence a modern phenomenon, and answers that it is. This, however, raises the further question of what, if anything, lends coherence t…

  • Fairness and Philosophy

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2006Cited by: 2

    Alan Ryan Fairness and Philosophy THE IMPORTANCE OF DISCUSSIONS OF FAIRNESS IN THE POLITICAL philosophy o f the past half-century needs no demonstration. Mentioning John Rawls is enough. But I mention him only to say that what follows is not much indebted to his extraordinary work and the over 2,000 pieces of commentary it has provoked. I think my most fruit­ ful contribution will be to throw out a half-dozen suggestions about why fairness matter…

  • Keeping Busy

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2005

    Alan Ryan Keeping Busy PIRA NDELLO’S PLAY SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR HAS spawned endless feeble witticisms o f the form “six x in search o f a y.” I was tempted to begin this paper with another: six episodes in the history of ideas about work and leisure in search of a common theme. The temptation was easy to resist; I have a theme looking for a grounding in my six episodes. I begin with a short introduction to lay out my theme, then m…

  • Utilitarianism and Other Essays

    Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill et al.BOOKUtilitarianism and Other Essays2004

  • Professional Liars

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2004Cited by: 1

    Alan Ryan Professional Liars PREAMBLE: WHAT IS THE SUBJECT? MY TITLE IS A COME-ON, BUT IT SU GGESTS THE ISSU E S THE PAPER embraces. The notion of a professional liar suggests someone who tells lies for a living, perhaps someone who tells lies well, with conviction and with aplomb, certainly someone whose stock in trade includes the capac­ ity to utter the well-judged falsehood. The sort of example I have in mind is the beau ideal of a British ci…

  • Intellectual Courage

    Allanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial research2004

    Alan Ryan Intellectual Courage THIS IS AN ARTLESS PAPER, WITH MORE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CONTENT than is proper. The autobiographical content may be excused by this consideration: teaching political philosophy for 40 years in a great variety of institutions, I have been puzzled and amused by the ways in which different writers and their work have attracted or repelled their readers. In particular, there is often a sharp disconnect between the narrowly…

  • Less Reckless Than He Fears

    Alan RyanARTICLEPerspectives on Political Science2003

  • Does Inequality Matter—for Its Own Sake?

    Open AccessAllanah Ryan, Alan RyanARTICLESocial Philosophy and Policy2002

    This is a simple essay. It raises a familiar question about equality, adduces a very small amount of empirical evidence about the social consequences of equality as distinct from prosperity , and broods on the difficulty of providing a really persuasive answer to the question raised. I begin with the view that there simply cannot be anything intrinsically wrong with inequality, move on to the view that there are extrinsic reasons for anxiety, div…

  • Karl Marx: His Life and Environment

    Isaiah Berlin, Allanah Ryan et al.BOOKKarl Marx2002

    First published over fifty years ago, Isaiah Berlin's compelling portrait of the father of modern Communism has long been considered the best short account written of Marx's life and thought. It provides a penetrating, lucid and comprehensive introduction to Marx as theorist of the socialist revolution, illuminating his personality and ideas, concentrating on those which have historically formed the central core of Marxism. In turn, Berlin presen…

  • The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community

    Open AccessMichael Freeden, Rex Martins et al.BOOKNew Liberalism2001

    The 'New Liberalism' of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century is an unjustifiably neglected strand of the liberal tradition. By emphasising community as well as rights and liberty, thinkers such as T. H. Green, J. A. Hobson and L. T. Hobhouse support, but in distinctive ways, recent challenges to the established dichotomy between communitarianism and liberalism. These essays examine new liberal thinking and conclude that liberal and communi…