Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke

by Thomas L. Pangle

Book Overview

The Spirit of Modern Republicanism sets forth a radical reinterpretation of the foundations on which the American regime was constructed. Thomas L. Pangle argues that the Founders had a dramatically new vision of civic virtue, religious faith, and intellectual life, rooted in an unprecedented commitment to private and economic liberties. It is in the thought of John Locke that Pangle finds the fullest elaboration of the principles supporting...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226645479
• ISBN13: 9780226645476
• Release Date: October 1990
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A powerful Straussian reading of Locke and his influence

My basic belief about historical method is that it should be pretty much wide open. Certain methods seem custom designed for the researching and writing strengths of certain historians. One somewhat controversial methodology that has born recent brilliant fruit in the historiography of the American Founding period has been that of Leo Strauss. It is hard to read the works of Paul Rahe and Michael Zuchert and not come away from that reading feeling that Strauss' approach to intellectual history can be incredibly revealing in the right hands. Thomas Pangle has the right hands. This is one of the earliest books (1988) in the Straussian revival of the last few decades. Pangle provides the reader with a reading of Locke that is convincing (at least, for someone like me who hasn't read any Locke in over 15 years) and disturbing. What I find disturbing about reading some of the Straussians sometimes is that it makes some of the scholars that I have read or studied with seem sloppy or, worse, lazy. One example would be Pangle's approach to Locke's First Treatise. Some interpreters and many teachers of Locke completely blow off this book. Pangle reads it as being the Lockean equivalent of Spinoza's Theologico-political Treatise(p. 135). In other words, he sees it as an important attempt to criticize the traditional understanding of the Bible and to use rationality as the guideline for doing so. This undermining of traditional readings of the Bible is read by Pangle as essential to understanding Locke's ideas on property, on natural law and on education. Another strength of Pangle's approach to reading Locke is that it is based on Locke's own suggestions about how to interpret difficult thinkers (see p.137 for a good example but there are many others). I have two arguments with Pangle's interpretation. First, it seems to lead inevitably to the conclusion that Locke was so close to being an atheist that the only way we can save his religion is to declare him something like a weak Deist. Pangle resists the direction of his own reading (see his statement on p. 149). The second argument is one that I have with Straussians in general. Part of the power of Leo Strauss' thought is that it provides an overarching narrative to the entire history of Western (and some non-Western)political thought. It talks about the differences between the ancients and the moderns and locates the developing breach in Machiavelli-Bacon-Descartes-Spinoza-Locke. It culminates in the baleful influence on Western thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger. It then suggests that if we just listen to our boy Leo that we (or at least, the more philosophical among us) might be able to focus once again on the perennial questions that are really the only ones worth asking. By providing that overarching narrative, it seems to me as if sometimes Straussians sometimes read all of philosophical history as leading up to Strauss. He seems to serve the same function in his own philosophy as Hegel did in his