Thomas Pangle

Professor Pangle is the Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies and Co-Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining the University of Texas in 2004, Professor Pangle held the University Professorship in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is a lifetime Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

In 1987 he delivered at the University of Chicago The Exxon Distinguished Lectures in Humane Approaches to the Social Sciences. In 2004 he was a featured speaker at the first Cultural Summit of the European Union, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In January 2007 he delivered the Werner Heisenberg Memorial Lecture, in Munich, Germany, at the invitation of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

He has lectured on the philosophic foundation of the Judiciary at the National Conference of State Court Chief Justices, the Conference of High Court Judges of the Northeastern States, the Council of Chief Judges of Courts of Appeal, and the Convention of Fifth Circuit Federal Judges. He has won Guggenheim, Killam-Canada Council, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, and four National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. He has been awarded The Benton Bowl (for contribution to education in politics) by Yale University, the Robert Foster Cherry Great Teacher of the World Prize, by Baylor University, and the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, University of Texas.

He is the author of articles in Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Polity, Political Theory, Review of Politics, and American Political Science Review; and of Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism (U. of Chicago Press, 1973); The LAWS of Plato (U. of Chicago Press, 1988); The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (U. of Chicago Press, 1988); The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1992); The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders, co-authored with Lorraine S. Pangle (Univ. Press of Kansas, 1993); Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace, co-authored with Peter J. Ahrensdorf (Univ. Press of Kansas, 1999); Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2003); Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2006); The Theological Basis of Liberal Modernity in Montesquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws” (U. of Chicago Press, 2010); Aristotle’s Teaching in the POLITICS (U. of Chicago Press, 2013); The Key Texts of Political Philosophy: An Introduction, co-authored with Timothy Burns (Cambridge U. Press, 2014); The Socratic Way of Life: Xenophon’s MEMORABILIA (U. of Chicago Press, 2018); Socrates Founding Political Philosophy in Xenophon’s Economist, Symposium, and Apology (U. of Chicago Press, 2020), and The Life of Wisdom in Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Cornell U. Press, 2023). He is the theory editor of the Encyclopedia of Democracy (4 vols., Congressional Quarterly Press, 1995).

Research interests:
Classical political philosophy
Eighteenth century theoretical foundations of modern and especially American constitutionalism and political culture
Nineteenth and twentieth century German political philosophy
Post-modern political theory
Moral-philosophic basis of international relations
Dialogue between political theology and political philosophy