Original Sources
Read the people being accused.
The archive begins from an unfashionable rule: before attributing a doctrine to a thinker or tradition, find the strongest representative statement in the original work.
The founding shelf
1759
Adam Smith
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Sympathy · propriety · justice · beneficence · self-command 1776Adam Smith
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Exchange · specialization · institutions · political economy 1945F. A. Hayek
“The Use of Knowledge in Society”
Prices · dispersed knowledge · coordination CONCEPTLauren Hall
“Self Interest Rightly Understood”
Ends · choice · plural motives · cooperation 1767Adam Ferguson
An Essay on the History of Civil Society
Unintended order · institutions · historical developmentArchive rule
A quotation is not decoration.
Every source must do identifiable work: establish what a thinker claimed, clarify a contested term, support a causal proposition, or expose a false genealogy. A pile of links is not scholarship.