Reason Papers is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal appearing annually each fall. It features book reviews and review essays along with full-length articles, symposia, and discussion notes of previously published articles. All manuscripts submitted for consideration as Articles are subject to a blind peer-review process (see Submissions page for instructions), and all contributions are subject to internal editorial review.  Not limited to philosophy, we publish work by economists, legal scholars, political scientists, historians, and others, provided the content is normative in the philosophical sense. In addition to articles on moral, social/political, and legal philosophy, we also run essays on epistemology, aesthetics, art history, and classics.  Our Fall 2011 issue inaugurates a new section of the journal, “Afterwords,” devoted to brief commentaries on contemporary issues.

Current issue:  Volume 33 available now
Editors-in-Chief: Carrie-Ann Biondi and Irfan Khawaja
View the Editorial Board

All issues are now available for download in the Archive section.  [NOTE: We currently are experiencing a technical problem with the Jump Links at the top of the Archives page, so please simply scroll down the page to click on either the full issue or the individual article that you wish to read.  We'll rectify this issue as soon as possible, but it does not affect access to any of the journal's content.]  Reason Papers is an Open Access journal (ISSN: 03631893): readers thus have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of all content in our Archives for free (i.e., without charge either to the user or to his or her institution). This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. For further information on Open Access journals, consult the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Forthcoming: For our Spring 2012 (Imagining Better: Philosophical Issues in Harry Potter), Fall 2012 (Sari Nusseibeh’s What Is a Palestinian State Worth?), Spring 2013 (Jason Brennan’s The Ethics of Voting) and Fall 2013 symposia (Waco: Twenty Years Later), visit Forthcoming Symposia.

Calls for Papers and Book Reviews: For the Call for Papers for our 2014 symposium on the “Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics of Emergencies,” visit the 2014 Call for Papers. For information on book reviews, go to our Call for Book Reviews.

Recent and forthcoming contributions of note include:

• “Adam Smith on Economic Happiness”: Dennis C. Rasmussen vs. Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen.
• “Direct and Overall Liberty”: Daniel Klein and Michael Clark vs. Claudia Williamson and Walter Block.
• “Libertarian Arguments for Anarchism”: Stephen Kershnar on Aeon J. Skoble’s Deleting the State: An Argument about Government.
• Sari Nusseibeh and critics: What Is a Palestinian State Worth? (forthcoming, Fall 2012).   
• Roger Scruton on Dmitri Tymoczko’s A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice (forthcoming, Fall 2012).
• David Cook on Ibn Warraq’s Virgins? What Virgins? and Other Essays (forthcoming, Fall 2012).
• “Property and Progress”: Gordon Barnes queries David Schmidtz’s defense of the right to property (forthcoming, Fall 2012).

Plus: Tim Sandefur’s libertarian defense of the U.S. Civil War; David Keyt on Aristotle as anarchist; Crispin Sartwell’s Thoreau; J.G. Merquior on Ernest Gellner’s Psychoanalytic Moment; Joseph Boyle on Daniel Dennett’s Elbow Room; Chris Sciabarra on Ayn Rand’s critique of ideology; James Lennox vs. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. on the metaphysics and epistemology of health.   

The Editors of Reason Papers are pleased to announce the forthcoming appearance of a special issue of the journal on ”The Philosophy of Harry Potter.” The issue will consist of ten essays on that subject first presented this past fall at a conference coordinated by Carrie-Ann Biondi (“‘The Power to Imagine Better’: The Philosophy of Harry Potter,” Marymount Manhattan College, Oct. 29, 2011), with an introduction and additional essay by Carrie-Ann Biondi. We expect the issue to appear online in June 2012.

Special thanks to Stephan Kinsella for doing the tedious work of managing the PDF archives, to IT expert David Veksler, to Israel Curtis for site design and for moving us to WordPress, and to Jeff Tucker of the Mises Institute for volunteering to host the site.