The Declaration echoed the united voices of the ancients and moderns on the idea of nature’s relevance for politics, and highlighted the constructive character of preceding European political thought. Historians of political thought tend to focus their scholarly powers on showing how important particular lines of influence were to the Declaration’s background at the expense […]
LATEST ARTICLES
Author Interview with Ryan Patrick Hanley
A Political Theory Review interview with Ryan Patrick Hanley, Mellon Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, about his new book, Love’s Enlightenment: Rethinking Charity in Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Hear more interviews from The Political Theory Review.
Plutocrats and Demagogues: The Prophetic Warning of Montesquieu
The French political thinker Baron de Montesquieu predicted the divisiveness of our current political climate. He also anticipated the two major threats likely to emerge in large democratic republics like the United States: plutocrats and tyrant demagogues. Historians may one day regard the 21st Century as the epoch in which the steady march of globalization […]
James Madison: Politician or Political Theorist? Part I
Was James Madison a politician or a political theorist? Of course he was both – I don’t think that will be disputed. The trickier question is to what degree these two roles harmonized or conflicted with one another. For instance, did Madison reinvent his political principles to advance his own political career? Alexander Hamilton thought [...]
James Madison: Politician or Political Theorist? Part II
Hamilton’s “interpreting the Constitution expansively” amounted to “ignoring the Constitution at pleasure.” Hamilton implied that Madison had done something nefarious by ceasing to support having the general government charter a bank after the US Constitution was implemented, but Hamilton here mischaracterized the situation: it was Hamilton, not Madison, who in regard to the same constitutional [...]
