Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

PREFACE
ROBERTA MODUGNO HAS IN HER scholarly career made a habit
of “getting there first.” She wrote the first book in any language
on the thought of Murray Rothbard, Murray N. Rothbard
e l’anarco-capitalismo americano, published by Rubbettino
in 1998, and she also is the author of the first Italian
book on Mary Wollstonecraft’s political thought. In the present
book, she has once more led the way.
Murray Rothbard was a prolific scholar, as a mere glance
at his bibliography will disclose. But his published books and
articles, even including those that have appeared posthumously,
do not exhaust his scholarly contributions. When he
died in January 1995, he left his papers and correspondence
to the Mises Institute. The most important of these papers,
from the point of view of libertarian scholarship, consist of
reports he wrote when he worked for the William Volker
Fund. In these reports, Rothbard commented on a wide variety
of subjects, including economics, history, political theory,
philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. Like Terence, Rothbard
could say, “Nothing human is alien to me.” These reports
often provide more details of his views on particular points
than are available from his published books; in some cases,
these reports raise altogether new issues.
It is Roberta Modugno’s great merit to have been the first
scholar to make some of this material available to the public.
After she gained access to the unpublished papers, she published
(also with Rubbettino) a selection of them, translated
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