This paper first appeared in Ludwig von Mises’s Money, Method and the Market Process: The Essays of Ludwig von Mises (Richard M. Ebeling, ed.).
Enlightenment philosophy as a precious achievement of the principle of toleration, the freedom to maintain one’s thoughts in matters of religion and philosophy without government harassment. It was less of a concern to give everyone the right to choose the way he planned to integrate himself into a system of social cooperation. The great idea of the classical liberal era was freedom, the freedom to plan one’s own life.
