Price, Richard

Related Category: Political Science: Biographies

1723–91, English nonconformist minister and philosopher. His philosophical importance rests on his ethical discussion, Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals (1757), in which Price stresses the power of reason in making moral judgments, a position closely allied to that of Kant. He achieved fame with his sponsorship of the American colonists' cause in a pamphlet called Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America (1776). He also defended the French Revolution and was subsequently criticized by Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Price's writings on governmental finance were also well known.

See studies by C. B. Cone (1952) and W. D. Hudson (1970).