Abstract

This is the most stimulating and therefore the most important book elicited by the bicentennial of the American Constitution. At first sight, it appears to be yet another contribution to the ongoing debate among intellectual historians and historians of political theory about the relative influence of Lockean liberalism and so-called "classical republicanism" on the thought and deeds of the American founding generation. Pangle does indeed maintain that Locke, not classical republicanism, was the most powerful influence on America's most thoughtful, articulate, and farsighted statesmen. But his more important claim is that Locke is still "America's philosopher," whose thought even today remains the introduction to philosophy for the Founders' authentic heirs--those public-spirited citizens who wish to take a reasonable pride in America but are perplexed about what, if anything, supports nobility and human dignity in their regime. That is, Pangle does not understand his book to be primarily an exercise in either intellectual history or history of political theory. He argues, rightly I believe, that the most influential present-day historians take for granted the truth of some version of historicism and are thereby prevented either from understanding Locke and the Framers as they understood themselves or from taking seriously the possibility that their understanding of the modern liberal republic may be superior to our own. Thus Pangle aims "to recover for modern liberals and citizens of liberal democracy something of [the] excitement and greatness and challenge" of "the theoretical choices" confronting Locke and the Founders. By suspending the prejudice in favor of historicism, Pangle seeks to show that we are not, simply by virtue of our particular vantage point, beyond the problems with which Locke and the Framers had to wrestle.