cover image The Fortunes of Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics and the Ideal of Freedom

The Fortunes of Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics and the Ideal of Freedom

Friedrich A. Von Hayek. University of Chicago Press, $47.5 (287pp) ISBN 978-0-226-32064-9

In this scholarly work, Harrison, who teaches French and Italian literature at Stanford, traces the forest as a cultural entity through the ages. To early peoples it was a hostile place (the word ``forest'' derives from the Latin word for ``outside''); to a later civilization, the forest came between the people and their gods. Harrison cites the epic of Gilgamesh, Greek and Roman myths, and the tales of the brothers Grimm. Other sources are the works of 19th- and 20th-century writers--Wordsworth, Conrad, Sartre, Thoreau, Leopardi, John Clare and Andrea Zanzotto, among others? . Examining the German obsession with forests, Harrison notes that in the Western imagination the forest is a paradox--a place of danger and yet a sanctuary, at once sacred and profane. He looks at the etymologies of ``logos'' and ``ecology'' and concludes that we dwell not in nature but in relation to nature, thus offering a provocative view of the future in terms of Western culture, not just of the fate of forests. Illustrations not seen by PW. (May)