In what circumstances might technology threaten our liberty? Adam Smith and others in his tradition argue that while political and economic liberty are vital, a deeper kind of psychological freedom, an independence of mind and judgment, is essential to the practice of liberty and the development of virtue. When machines harm that faculty of judgment or prevent its development, they present a threat to liberty as grave as any other. Using the works of Adam Smith and others, Philip D. Bunn will examine what these thinkers can teach us both about their own time and about threats to liberty in the technological present.
Philip D. Bunn
Covenant College
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Philip D. Bunn is an assistant professor of political science at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. His research has been published in Political Research Quarterly and American Political Thought, and his reviews and essays have appeared in The Review of Politics, Plough Quarterly, Comment Magazine, and The University Bookman, among other publications.
