Philosophy: Ethics 
Essential
The Market Economy and the Distribution of Wealth
By Ludwig M. Lachmann: "Everywhere today in the free world we find the opponents of the market economy at a loss for plausible arguments. Of late the “case for central planning” has shed much of its erstwhile luster. We have had too much experience of it. The facts of the last forty years are too eloquent."
An Arrow Against All Tyrants
By Richard Overton: "To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature not to be invaded or usurped by any."
On Liberty
By John Stuart Mill. "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection."
The Freedom Philosophy
This anthology includes 14 essays on the political, economic, and moral foundations of a free society. These classic writings by Leonard E. Read, Frank Chodorov, Benjamin Rogge, F. A. Harper, among others, demonstrate the superiority of individual choice and capitalism over any forms of collectivism.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
By Adam Smith: "Smith argues that we naturally share the emotions and to a certain extent the physical sensations we witness in others. Sharing the sensations of our fellows, we seek to maximize their pleasures and minimize their pains so that we may share in their joys and enjoy their expressions of affection and approval."
A Treatise of Human Nature
By David Hume: Hume’s first major work of philosophy published in 1739 when he was just 29 yeas old. It is made up of three books entitled “Of the Understanding”, “Of the Passions”, and “Of Morals”. In the book he uses his skeptical rationalism to create an ambitious “science of man”.
The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted
By Thomas Hodgskin: "In this series of letters to Lord Braugham Hodgskin distinguishes between the natural right of property (based upon Lockean principles of natural law) and the artificial right of property (which is decreed by parliament). He associated the doctrine of the artificial right of property with Benthamite reformers who were attempting to reform the English state."
Saving Rights Theory From Its Friends
By Tom G. Palmer, from Individual Rights Reconsidered, edited by Tibor Machan (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2001)
Myths of Individualism
By Tom G. Palmer, Cato Policy Report, Vol. XVIII, No. 5 (September/October 1996)
On Moral Duties
By Marcus Tullius Cicero: "This treatise, then, may be regarded as an exposition of the ethical system of the Stoics of Cicero’s time, yet with a special limitation, purpose, and adaptation."
Vices Are Not Crimes
By Lysander Spooner: "Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property."
The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
"This mini-encyclopedia of Objectivism is compiled from Ayn Rand's own statements on some 400 topics in philosophy, economics, psychology, and history." Now available online.
Recommended
Robert Nozick Vs. The U.S. Congress
Cato Adjunct Scholar, Richard Epstein, provides a philosophical analysis of the effort by the U.S. Congress to increase home ownership in society in this Forbes article. Contrasting the pattern principle of justice held by Congress against Nozick's justice in acquisition, it is a great work that shows how philosophy is important to the real world.
McCloskey on Capitalism and the Bourgeois Virtues
"Deirdre McCloskey of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of The Bourgeois Virtues talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about capitalism and whether markets make people more ethical or less. They also discuss Adam Smith's world view, whether people were nicer in the Middle Ages, and the role of prudence and love."
Government, Bound or Unbound?
By Anthony de Jasay: "Collective choice starts where unanimity ends, and involves some deciding for all, where the “some” control the apparatus of government. It is the potential for some to benefit morally and materially at the expense of others that creates the bone of contention and that limits on government are meant to move out of reach."
Atlas Shrugged and Public Choice: The Obvious Parallels
By Bryan Caplan: "Though there is little evidence of mutual influence, Ayn Rand and public choice converge on a strikingly similar vision of the political process. Both emphasize the contradiction between the propaganda of government intervention and the reality. Government supposedly intervenes to advance the interests of the majority. In reality, however, its goal to advance the interests of political insiders at the expense of everyone else."
A Bill of Rights Europe Did Not Need
By Anthony de Jasay: "Even if it were less woolly and silly, the Charter of Fundamental Rights could hardly become a force for good."
The Legacy of Ayn Rand
Reason Magazine Senior Editor and "Radicals for Capitalism" author Brian Doherty takes the modernist measure of novelist, philosopher, and cult figure Ayn Rand.
Rand and the Right: Reflections on the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged
By Brian Doherty: "Because of her opposition to New Deal government controls, novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand started off thinking of herself as a conservative. By the time her blockbuster novel, "Atlas Shrugged," was published 50 years ago this week, she'd changed her mind. She decided she was a radical -- a "radical for capitalism," that is."
The Humanitarian with the Guillotine
By Isabel Paterson: "Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends."
The Rise of Government and The Decline of Morality
By James Dorn: "One cannot blame government for all of society’s ills, but there is no doubt that economic and social legislation over the past 50 years has had a negative impact on virtue. Individuals lose their moral bearing when they become dependent on welfare, when they are rewarded for having children out of wedlock, and when they are not held accountable for their actions. The internal moral compass that normally guides individual behavior will no longer function when the state undermines incentives for moral conduct and blurs the distinction between right and wrong."
