Liberalism Proper and Proper Liberalism goes beyond the unsatisfactory definitions of liberalism of today and its various forms throughout history to the classical theory of liberalism as developed by such great thinkers as Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Jefferson. The author traces each of these great political thinkers' and philosophers' contributions to the development of liberalism in its original form using both their original writings and the major commentaries on them. He provides a clear, distinct representation of liberalism as these men saw it with an assessment of difficulty in connecting modern day liberalism with this original form.