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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.
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.
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.
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.
Author: Paul E. Kerry
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson
ISBN: 1611470293
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
This volume attempts to throw fresh light on two areas of Benjamin Franklin’s intellectual world, namely: his self-fashioning and his political thought. It is an odd thing that for all of Franklin’s voluminous writings—a fantastically well-documented correspondence over many years, scientific treatises that made his name amongst the brightest minds of Europe, newspaper articles, satires, and of course his signature on the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution—and yet scholars debate how to get at his political thought, indeed, if he had any political philosophy at all. It could be argued, that he is perhaps the American Founder most closely associated with the Enlightenment. Similarly, for a man who left so much evidence about his life as a printer, bookseller, postmaster, inventor, diplomat, politician, scientist, among other professions, one who wrote an autobiography that has become a piece of American national literature and, indeed, a contribution to world culture, the question of who Ben Franklin continues to engage scholars and those who read about his life. His identity seems so stable that we associate it with certain virtues that apply to the way we live our lives, time management, for example. The image of the stable figure of Franklin is applied to create a sense of trust in everything from financial institutions to plumbers. His constant drive to improve and fashion himself reveal, however, a man whose identity was not static and fixed, but was focused on growth, on bettering his understanding of himself and the world he lived in and attempted to influence and improve.
Author: Michael P. Federici
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421406608
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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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.
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
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.
Author: Jack Fruchtman Jr.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801892848
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
This concise, insightful study explores the sources and impact of one of the early republic's most influential minds. An Englishman by birth, an American by choice and necessity, Thomas Paine advocated ideas about rights, equality, democracy, and liberty that were far advanced beyond those of his American compatriots. His seminal works, Common Sense and the Rights of Man, were rallying cries for the American and French Revolutions. More than any other eighteenth-century political writer and activist, Paine defies easy categorization. A man of contrasts and contradictions, Paine was as much a believer in the power of reason as he was in a benevolent deity. He was at once liberal and conservative, a Quaker who was not a pacifist, and an inherently gifted writer who was convinced he was always right. Jack Fruchtman Jr. analyzes Paine's radical thought both in the context of his time and as a blueprint for the future development of republican government. His systematic approach identifies the themes of signal importance to Paine's political thought, demonstrating especially how crucial religion and God were to the development and expression of his political ideals.
Author: Carla Mulford
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139828126
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Comprehensive and accessible, this Companion addresses several well-known themes in the study of Franklin and his writings, while also showing Franklin in conversation with his British and European counterparts in science, philosophy, and social theory. Specially commissioned chapters, written by scholars well-known in their respective fields, examine Franklin's writings and his life with a new sophistication, placing Franklin in his cultural milieu while revealing the complexities of his intellectual, literary, social, and political views. Individual chapters take up several traditional topics, such as Franklin and the American dream, Franklin and capitalism, and Franklin's views of American national character. Other chapters delve into Franklin's library and his philosophical views on morality, religion, science, and the Enlightenment and explore his continuing influence in American culture. This Companion will be essential reading for students and scholars of American literature, history and culture.
Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307754944
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 785
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Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the pivotal figure in colonial and revolutionary America, comes vividly to life in this “thorough biography of ... America’s first Renaissance man” (The Washington Post) by the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War. "The authoritative Franklin biography for our time.” —Joseph J. Ellis, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers Wit, diplomat, scientist, philosopher, businessman, inventor, and bon vivant, Benjamin Franklin's "life is one every American should know well, and it has not been told better than by Mr. Brands" (The Dallas Morning News). From penniless runaway to highly successful printer, from ardently loyal subject of Britain to architect of an alliance with France that ensured America’s independence, Franklin went from obscurity to become one of the world’s most admired figures, whose circle included the likes of Voltaire, Hume, Burke, and Kant. Drawing on previously unpublished letters and a host of other sources, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands has written a thoroughly engaging biography of the eighteenth-century genius. A much needed reminder of Franklin’s greatness and humanity, The First American is a work of meticulous scholarship that provides a magnificent tour of a legendary historical figure, a vital era in American life, and the countless arenas in which the protean Franklin left his legacy. Look for H.W. Brands's other biographies: ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN WHO SAVED THE UNION (Ulysses S. Grant), TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS (Franklin Roosevelt) and REAGAN.
