Alan S. Kahan's Home Page

Alan S. Kahan is an historian, political theorist, translator, travel writer, and resident of Paris. He is a retired Professor of British Civilization at the University of Versailles/St. Quentin, and an active Research Associate at AGORA, CY Cergy Paris université.

His most recent work, Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism, was published by Princeton University Press in August, 2023. Fear not, the paperback edition will be released 24 February, 2026.

Some of Alan's thoughts:

Since we seem to be talking about walls and frontiers a lot these days: There are two things that don't need passports or visas to cross a border: ideas and money. Ideas fly over walls, and money tunnels beneath them. Under totalitarian regimes, the border-crossing procedure is reversed.

Kahan's Corollary to the Law of Unintended Consequences:

The most common unintended consequence of human action is that the action has no consequences at all. NB: This is a good thing.

Information about previous books:

Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion and Liberal Moments, can be found here and here

Mind vs. Money: The War Between Intellectuals and Capitalism, can be found here.

For information about another book, Alexis de Tocqueville, please click here.

Older work, still available for purchase to brighten the life of your favorite masochist:

Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville, click here.

Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage, click here.

Kahan's edition of John Stuart Mill On Liberty: With Supporting Documents, click here.

Kahan's edition of selected writings by Alexis de Tocqueville, The Tocqueville Reader, click here.

Kahan's translation of Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the Revolution, click here.

Alan Kahan's CV.

Contact: alan.kahan@cyu.fr

What if Tocqueville was Wrong.final.docx

For some of Alan Kahan's thoughts on the decline of democracy, see the above article from the Tocqueville Review

Liberal MomentsLiberalism today has perhaps more supporters and adversaries than any other political movement. This volume traces liberalism's global ascent through essays about some of the thinkers and actors who participated in its rise and spread. The essays included here present for the first time in one place the geographic and ideological diversity of liberal thought and practice as it developed since the eighteenth century. By exploring thinkers as diverse as Montesquieu, Abraham Lincoln, Jacob Burckhardt, Khayr al-Din, Hu Shih, John Rawls, and Czeslaw Milosz, this volume contributes toward a better understanding of liberalisms past and present.Each chapter opens with a critical passage from the author under consideration and explores the author's significance for liberalism. By facilitating a direct encounter with influential authors and texts, the volume serves as an introduction both to the multiple dimensions of liberalism and to reading texts in political thought. By engaging with particular liberal moments, the essays allow readers to create and explore conversations among liberalisms across time and space. It thus encourages a broader and more nuanced understanding of the nature and history of liberalism. Stimulating, accessible and interdisciplinary, Liberal Moments will appeal to students and scholars in the history of political thought, intellectual history and beyond.

"If poverty is the mother of crime, then stupidity is the father" - La Bruyère

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