American Political Thought Journal: Spring 2020 Issue
American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture, has recently published its Spring 2020 issue, which features pieces by JMC fellows and faculty partners Daniel Cullen, Jason Ross, Gregory Koutnik, Justin Dyer, Jerome Foss, and Michael Munger.
>> Table of Contents <<
In Memoriam:
- “Roger Scruton, 1944-2020: Conservatism Unmodified,” Daniel Cullen
Articles:
- “William Lloyd Garrison’s Shattered Faith in Antislavery Constitutionalism: The Origins and Limits of the ‘Garrisonian Critique,'” Jason Ross
- “Aldo Leopold and the Stewardship Vocation: A Civic Education in Ecological Perception,” Gregory Koutnik
- “Reason, Revelation, and the Law of Nature in James Wilson’s Lectures on Law,” Justin Buckley Dyer
- “Democracy versus Neoliberalism: The Second Dewey-Lippmann Debate,” William M. Curtis
- “The Intellectual Affinity of Flannery O’Connor and Alexis de Tocqueville,” Jerome C. Foss
Book Reviews:
- “Governing Least: A New England Libertarianism, by Dan Moller,” Bob Pepperman Taylor
- “Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing ‘Democracy and Social Ethics,’ by Marilyn Fischer,” Patricia M. Shields
- “The Politics of Richard Wright: Perspectives on Resistance, edited by Jane Anna Gordon and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh,” Alex Zamalin
- “Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion: How Popular Culture Can Defuse Intractable Differences, by Jeffrey Israel,” Claudia Franziska Brühwiler
- “In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, by Wendy Brown,” William M. Curtis
- “On Freedom, by Cass R. Sunstein,” Michael Munger
- “Insurgent Truth: Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Outsider Truth-Telling, by Lida Maxwell,” Allison Stanger
- “Individuality and Beyond: Nietzsche Reads Emerson, by Benedetta Zavatta,” John Holzwarth
- “On Political Obligation, edited by Judith N. Shklar, Samatha Ashenden, and Andreas Hess,” George Klosko
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“Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos, by Juliet Hooker,” Wilson Jeremiah Moses
“Roger Scruton, 1944-2020: Conservatism Unmodified,” Daniel Cullen
In this memorial essay, Daniel Cullen examines the state of conservatism and the views and legacy of the late Sir Roger Scruton in conservative thought.
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Daniel Cullen is a Professor of Political Science at Rhodes College and directs the Project for the Study of Liberal Democracy, a program supporting teaching, scholarship and critical discussion of the principles of constitutional government and the philosophical sources of those principles in the Western intellectual tradition. He teaches a wide variety of courses in the history of political thought, contemporary political ideas. He serves on the board of the Association for Core Texts Studies and Courses, an international organization devoted to the advancement of liberal education. Professor Cullen is the author of Freedom in Rousseau′s Political Philosophy (1993), and has published various essays on Rousseau, Montaigne, democratic theory, liberal education and most recently, on the political philosophy of Roger Scruton. His most recent book is Liberal Democracy and Liberal Education (2016), which he edited and co-authored. He is currently writing a book on the philosophy of Roger Scruton.
Professor Cullen is a Senior Fellow for Constitutional Studies at the JMC and serves on the Center’s Academic Council.
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“William Lloyd Garrison’s Shattered Faith in Antislavery Constitutionalism: The Origins and Limits of the ‘Garrisonian Critique,’” Jason Ross
This article contributes to an emerging line of challenge against the Garrisonian critique of the Constitution. Jason Ross shows how Garrison, early in his career, endorsed and participated in the project of antislavery constitutionalism, before an emergent proslavery construction of the Constitution was validated by the Taney Court in the 1842 decision Prigg v. Pennsylvania. This decision shattered Garrison’s faith in antislavery constitutionalism, prompting him to concede that the Constitution was a proslavery compact and to call for disunion. Ross argues, contrary to a common assumption, that Garrison did not draw this conclusion based on a reading of James Madison’s recently published Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787; instead, he excerpted Madison’s Notes in an attempt to undermine continuing abolitionist defenses of the Constitution as antislavery. Ross closes by reflecting on the persistence of the Garrisonian critique as a reminder of the fragility of faith in democratic republican government.
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Jason Ross is Associate Professor and Department Chair for Doctoral Programs and Research at Liberty University’s Helm School of Government. His research interests include the American founding and Constitutional Convention, the political thought of James Madison, abolitionism and the development of anti-slavery constitutionalism, and the Bill of Rights and American political culture. He has previously served as the Senior Program Officer at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and the Bill of Rights Institute. He has published pieces in Review of Politics, Journal of Religion and Society, The University Bookman, Law and Liberty, American Greatness, and The Columbus Dispatch, in addition to chapters in Teaching America: The Case for Civic Education and Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court.
Professor Ross is a JMC fellow.
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“Aldo Leopold and the Stewardship Vocation: A Civic Education in Ecological Perception,” Gregory Koutnik
American environmental thought has long been driven by competing views that nature’s value is determined by human valuation and that nature is intrinsically valuable. Gregory Koutnik turns to the renowned conservationist and environmental writer Aldo Leopold for a way forward that, perhaps counterintuitively, roots nature’s intrinsic value in human exceptionalism. Leopold bases his claim of human exceptionalism on our species’ apparently unique capacity to recognize and value the broader ecological community as such. To effect the necessary shift in American perception and policy, Leopold offers a civic education in ecological perception centered on outdoor recreation that might inspire the adoption of what Koutnik calls the “stewardship vocation,” a conscious civic mission to protect the ecological community in which we are at once “plain members” and guests. Koutnik claims that Leopold’s vision of “harmony between men and land” represents not just an environmental ethic but also a call to a national mission of environmental stewardship.
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Gregory Koutnik is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in political theory and American politics and his research explores the intersection of environmental politics, theories of political economy, and American political thought. Koutnik is especially interested in the idea of home and its rich resonances in environmental issues. His undergraduate teaching earned him the Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student in 2019 as well as the Rubenstein Award in Political Science in 2016.
Koutnik is a JMC fellow.
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“Reason, Revelation, and the Law of Nature in James Wilson’s Lectures on Law,” Justin Dyer
One unresolved question in the scholarship on James Wilson concerns the relationship between his natural law jurisprudence and Christianity. Engaging that debate, this article marshals evidence for the continuity of Wilson’s lectures with the Christian natural law tradition. Indeed, Wilson’s lectures offer a vision of founding-era jurisprudence that is self-consciously rooted in a divinely created and rationally intelligible moral order that is both complemented and presupposed by Christian revelation. By highlighting the essential continuity between the Christian natural law tradition and the first and most prominent lectures on early American jurisprudence, this article challenges a common interpretive framework that sees the founding in general, and Wilson’s lectures in particular, as subtly subversive of Christianity.
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Justin Dyer is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri. His research spans the fields of American political development, political philosophy, and constitutional law. He is particularly interested in the interaction between the American political tradition and the perennial philosophy of natural law. Ongoing research projects examine the role of classical and modern natural-law philosophy in early American political thought and constitutional theory. He is the author or co-author of several books, including C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Professor Dyer is a JMC faculty partner.
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“Democracy versus Neoliberalism: The Second Dewey-Lippmann Debate,” William M. Curtis
The original 1920s debate between John Dewey and Walter Lippmann concerned whether the modern electorate can meaningfully engage in democratic self-rule rather than be ruled by technocratic experts. Less well known is the further disagreement between these two thinkers sparked by Lippmann’s 1937 book The Good Society. This work was seminal for the development of free market neoliberalism and is linked to both F. A. Hayek’s 1944 The Road to Serfdom and the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society. The core of Lippmann’s political theory is a liberal conception of the rule of law as the framework for the competitive market and a constraint on the democratic state. Dewey, fierce critic of capitalism, harshly reviewed Lippmann’s book, insisting on democratic control of the economy, though he failed to satisfactorily specify how that would work. This second Dewey-Lippmann debate is a forerunner of current theoretical disputes over the compatibility of neoliberalism and democracy.
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William Curtis is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Portland. He teaches courses on political theory/philosophy, the history of political thought, and Constitutional law. He is also the University of Portland’s Pre-Law Advisor and faculty advisor to the Mock Trial Team. His research interests include: theories of liberalism, classical liberalism and the free market, religion and politics, politics and literature, U.S. constitutional law, and American pragmatism (Dewey, James, Rorty). He has published articles in academic journals such as: Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, and Contemporary Pragmatism. His book, Defending Rorty: Pragmatism and Liberal Virtue, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015.
Professor Curtis is a JMC fellow.
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“The Intellectual Affinity of Flannery O’Connor and Alexis de Tocqueville,” Jerome C. Foss
Among her many books, Flannery O’Connor owned the Bradley edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and her marginalia suggest that she read at least parts of it. While tracing any specific influence Tocqueville may have had on O’Connor is difficult, the fact that she was familiar with him is a prompt to compare the two authors. This article argues that O’Connor shared Tocqueville’s concerns about the effects of democracy on manners, religion, and art. Jerome Foss argues that her use of the word “manners” in her prose closely resembles what Tocqueville means by the French moeurs. O’Connor also shared Tocqueville’s worries about Descartes’s influence on religious belief in America. Finally, O’Connor’s prose contains some striking similarities to Democracy in America regarding challenges facing artists in democratic times, particularly artists whose works are deeply informed by traditional theology.
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Jerome Foss is Associate Professor of Politics and Director of the Center for Catholic Thought and Culture at Saint Vincent College. His research interests include American political thought, Catholic political thought, literature and politics, and political philosophy. He has authored two books. Most recently his Flannery O’Connor and the Perils of Governing by Tenderness was published by Lexington Press as part of its Literature and Politics Series. His earlier book is Constitutional Democracy and Judicial Supremacy: John Rawls and the Transformation of American Politics.
Professor Foss is a JMC fellow.
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“In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, by Wendy Brown,” William M. Curtis
In this book review, William Curtis examines In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West by Wendy Brown. Curtis notes that “…fans of Sheldon Wolin’s radical democratic theory will greet it with much interest and enthusiasm… Brown adds her own provocative thesis that neoliberalism, especially in its influential Hayekian version, constitutes a marriage between two institutions often thought to be in tension: free markets and traditional morality.”
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William Curtis is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Portland. He teaches courses on political theory/philosophy, the history of political thought, and Constitutional law. He is also the University of Portland’s Pre-Law Advisor and faculty advisor to the Mock Trial Team. His research interests include: theories of liberalism, classical liberalism and the free market, religion and politics, politics and literature, U.S. constitutional law, and American pragmatism (Dewey, James, Rorty). He has published articles in academic journals such as: Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, and Contemporary Pragmatism. His book, Defending Rorty: Pragmatism and Liberal Virtue, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015.
Professor Curtis is a JMC fellow.
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“On Freedom, by Cass R. Sunstein,” Michael Munger
Michael Munger reviews Cass Sunstein’s On Freedom, evaluating Sunstein’s views on those suffering from poverty and how they can achieve a better life.
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Michael Munger is a Professor of Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy at Duke University. He is also the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Political Science and of Duke’s interdisciplinary Philosophy, Politics, & Economics Certificate Program. Professor Munger previously worked as a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission. He has won three University-wide teaching awards (the Howard Johnson Award, an NAACP “Image” Award for teaching about race, and admission to the Bass Society of Teaching Fellows). His research interests include the study of the morality of exchange and the working of the new “Middleman Economy.” Much of his recent work has been in philosophy, examining the concept of truly voluntary exchange, a concept for which he coined the term “euvoluntary.” He is also currently a co-editor of The Independent Review.
Professor Munger is a JMC faculty partner.
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American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture is a JMC supported journal that bridges the gap between historical, empirical, and theoretical research. It is the only journal dedicated exclusively to the study of American political thought. Interdisciplinary in scope, APT features research by political scientists, historians, literary scholars, economists, and philosophers who study the foundation of the American political tradition. Research explores key political concepts such as democracy, constitutionalism, equality, liberty, citizenship, political identity, and the role of the state.
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