The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin

The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin PDF Author: Lorraine Smith Pangle
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801886669
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Franklin's political writings are full of fascinating reflections on human nature, on the character of good leadership, and on why government is such a messy and problematic business. Drawing together threads in Franklin's writings, Lorraine Smith Pangle illuminates his thoughts on citizenship, federalism, constitutional government, the role of civil associations, and religious freedom.

The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin

The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin PDF Author: Lorraine Smith Pangle
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801886669
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book

Book Description
Franklin's political writings are full of fascinating reflections on human nature, on the character of good leadership, and on why government is such a messy and problematic business. Drawing together threads in Franklin's writings, Lorraine Smith Pangle illuminates his thoughts on citizenship, federalism, constitutional government, the role of civil associations, and religious freedom.

The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin

The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin PDF Author: Lorraine Smith Pangle
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801879319
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Franklin's political writings are full of fascinating reflections on human nature, on the character of good leadership, and on why government is such a messy and problematic business. Drawing together threads in Franklin's writings, Lorraine Smith Pangle illuminates his thoughts on citizenship, federalism, constitutional government, the role of civil associations, and religious freedom.

Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement

Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement PDF Author: Alan Craig Houston
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300152396
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This fascinating book explores Benjamin Franklin’s social and political thought. Although Franklin is often considered “the first American,” his intellectual world was cosmopolitan. An active participant in eighteenth-century Atlantic debates over the modern commercial republic, Franklin combined abstract analyses with practical proposals. Houston treats Franklin as shrewd, creative, and engaged—a lively thinker who joined both learned controversies and political conflicts at home and abroad. Drawing on meticulous archival research, Houston examines such tantalizing themes as trade and commerce, voluntary associations and civic militias, population growth and immigration policy, political union and electoral institutions, freedom and slavery. In each case, he shows how Franklin urged the improvement of self and society. Engagingly written and richly illustrated, this book provides a compelling portrait of Franklin, a fresh perspective on American identity, and a vital account of what it means to be practical.

Benjamin Franklin Unmasked

Benjamin Franklin Unmasked PDF Author: Jerry Weinberger
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700615849
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Moral paragon, public servant, founding father; scoundrel, opportunist, womanizing phony: There are many Benjamin Franklins. Now, as we celebrate the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, Jerry Weinberger reveals the Franklin behind the many masks and shows that the real Franklin was far more remarkable than anyone has yet discovered. Taking the Autobiography as the key to Franklin's thought, Weinberger argues that previous assessments have not yet probed to the bottom of Ben's famous irony and elusiveness. While others take the self-portrait as an elder statesman's relaxed and playful retrospection, Weinberger unveils it as the window to Franklin's deepest reflections on God, virtue, justice, equality, natural rights, love, the good life, the modern technological project, and the place and limits of reason in politics and human experience. Along the way, Weinberger explores Franklin's ribald humor, usually ignored or toned down by historians and critics, and shows it to be charming-and philosophic. Following Franklin's rhetorical twists and turns, Weinberger discovers a serious thinker who was profoundly critical of religion, moral virtue, and political ideals and whose grasp of human folly constrained his hopes for enlightenment and political reform. This close and amusing reading of Franklin portrays a scrupulous dialectical philosopher, humane and wise, but more provocative and disturbing than even the most hardboiled interpreters have taken Franklin to be-a freethinking critic of Enlightenment freethinking, who played his moral and theological cards very close to the vest. Written for general readers who want to delve more deeply into the mind of a great man and great American, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked shows us a massively powerful intellect lurking behind the leather-apron countenance. This lively, witty, and revelatory book is indispensable for those who want to meet the real Franklin.

The Political Philosophy of George Washington

The Political Philosophy of George Washington PDF Author: Jeffry H. Morrison
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801891094
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
A political life of Washington -- Classical republican political culture and philosophy -- British liberalism, revolution, union, and foreign affairs -- Protestant Christianity, providence, and the republic.

The Political Thought of Benjamin Franklin

The Political Thought of Benjamin Franklin PDF Author: Benjamin Franklin
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 9780872206830
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
Too often dismissed as the least philosophic of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin had a deep and lasting impact on the shape of American political thought. In this substantial collection of Franklin's letters, essays, and lesser-known papers, Ralph Ketcham traces the development of Franklin's practical-and distinctly American-political thought from his earliest Silence Dogood essays to his final writings on the Constitution and The Evils of the Slave Trade.

Benjamin Franklin, Natural Right, and the Art of Virtue

Benjamin Franklin, Natural Right, and the Art of Virtue PDF Author: Kevin Slack
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1580465633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
A thorough examination of Benjamin Franklin's works on philosophy and politics, arguing that Franklin was a philosopher of natural right

Science and the Founding Fathers

Science and the Founding Fathers PDF Author: I. Bernard Cohen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393315103
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Thomas Jefferson was the only president who could read and understand Newton's Principia. Benjamin Franklin is credited with establishing the science of electricity. John Adams had the finest education in science that the new country could provide, including "Pnewmaticks, Hydrostaticks, Mechanicks, Staticks, Opticks." James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution, peppered his Federalist Papers with references to physics, chemistry, and the life sciences. For these men science was an integral part of life--including political life. This is the story of their scientific education and of how they employed that knowledge in shaping the political issues of the day, incorporating scientific reasoning into the Constitution.

The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin

The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin PDF Author: Richard Donald Miles
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 618

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Book Description


The Political Philosophy of Alexander Hamilton

The Political Philosophy of Alexander Hamilton PDF Author: Michael P. Federici
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421406608
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
America’s first treasury secretary and one of the three authors of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton stands as one of the nation’s important early statesmen. Michael P. Federici places this Founding Father among the country’s original political philosophers as well. Hamilton remains something of an enigma. Conservatives and liberals both claim him, and in his writings one can find material to support the positions of either camp. Taking a balanced and objective approach, Federici sorts through the written and historical record to reveal Hamilton’s philosophy as the synthetic product of a well-read and pragmatic figure whose intellectual genealogy drew on Classical thinkers such as Cicero and Plutarch, Christian theologians, and Enlightenment philosophers, including Hume and Montesquieu. In evaluating the thought of this republican and would-be empire builder, Federici explains that the apparent contradictions found in the Federalist Papers and other examples of Hamilton’s writings reflect both his practical engagement with debates over the French Revolution, capital expansion, commercialism, and other large issues of his time, and his search for a balance between central authority and federalism in the embryonic American government. This book challenges the view of Hamilton as a monarchist and shows him instead to be a strong advocate of American constitutionalism. Devoted to the whole of Hamilton’s political writing, this accessible and teachable analysis makes clear the enormous influence Hamilton had on the development of American political and economic institutions and policies.