On 3 June 2013, the Rafael del Pino Foundation organised a keynote lecture by Antony de Jasay entitled "From the Christian state to the secular state and its religion".
Anthony de Jasay was born in Aba, Hungary, in 1925. He was educated in Szekesfehervar and Budapest. He graduated in Agriculture. From 1947 to 1948 he worked as a free-lance journalist. His activities forced him to flee the country in 1948. After two years in Austria, he emigrated to Australia in 1950 where he did a part-time course in Economics at the University of Western Australia. He went to Oxford on a Hackett Scholarship in 1955 and was elected to the research staff of Nuffield College, where he remained until 1962. During this period he published several articles in the Economic Journal, The Journal of Political Economy and other journals.
In 1962 he moved to Paris and worked as a banker until 1979, initially for an institution and then on his own account. During this period he did investment business in several European countries and in the United States. In 1979, he retired to the Normandy coast, where he still lives. He has a wife and three children.
While his initial interests and training were in economics, his interests later shifted to the field of political philosophy. He is the author of seminal essays on political science such as "The State", "Against politics", and "Justice and its sourroundings". He has published five books, some of which have been translated into a total of six languages, as well as numerous articles, mainly in English, but also in French and German. He is regarded as one of the leading liberal philosophers.
