Commentary

• Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century

  - JGA Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
  This book collects essays by Professor Pocock concerned principally with the history of British political thought in the eighteenth century. Several of the essays have been previously published (though they have not all been widely available), and several… More

• The Spirit of Modern Republicanism

  - Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
  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… More

• America’s Constitutional Soul

  - Harvey Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
  Excerpt: The institutional political science of our day, with its studies of constituted groups and accidental eddies of interaction in politics, is part of, and heir to, a grand movement in modern political science dating from Hobbes and Locke of which it… More

• Locke’s Education for Liberty by Nathan Tarcov

  - Nathan Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
  Locke’s Education for Liberty presents an analysis of the crucial but often underestimated place of education and the family within Lockean liberalism. Nathan Tarcov shows that Locke’s neglected work Some Thoughts Concerning Education compares… More

• “Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke”

  - Steven Forde, "Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke," American Journal of Political Science, 45 (2001), 396-409.
  Liberal theorists have always been confronted with the criticism that liberalism lacks a moral foundation adequate to the needs of society. I undertake a reading of Locke that agrees with those scholars who have found greater moral resources in his philosophy… More

• “The Family in John Locke’s Political Thought”

  - Jacqueline Pfeffer, “The Family in John Locke’s Political Thought,” Polity 33 (2001), 593-618.
  What might attention to Locke’s political thought contribute to contemporary debates about the family? I consider the original Lockean understanding of the role of family in civil society as presented in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and… More

• The Machiavellian Moment

  - JGA Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).
  Excerpt: “At this point is it appropriate to bring in the name of Locke. In the Two Treatises of Government, published if not written nine or so years before this debate, he had argued that societies formed by the simple occupation and cultivation of… More

• Duty Bound

  - Mark Blitz, Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
  From the publisher: In this timely and enlightening new work, Mark Blitz explores the link between character and politics in liberal democracies, focusing on the importance of responsibility in American public and professional life. He begins by analyzing the… More

• “The Charitable John Locke”

  - Steven Forde, "The Charitable John Locke," Review of Politics, 71 (2009), 428-458.
  Locke’s political philosophy, like any that centers on individual rights such as property rights, raises the question whether human beings have any duty to charity, or economic assistance, to the needy. Locke’s works contain some strong statements… More

• “Mixed Modes in John Locke’s Moral and Political Philosophy”

  - Steven Forde, "'Mixed Modes' in John Locke's Moral and Political Philosophy," Review of Politics 4 (2011), 581-608.
  The moral theory of “mixed modes” John Locke presents in his Essay concerning Human Understanding is beset with paradoxes. On the one hand, he tells us that all mixed modes, including moral concepts, are “arbitrary” mental constructs.… More

• Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought

  - Scott Yenor, Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought, Baylor University Press, 2012.
  From the publisher: With crisp prose and intellectual fairness, Family Politics traces the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world. What is family? What is marriage? In an effort to address contemporary… More