12 - American political thought from Jeffersonian republicanism to progressivism

Summary

Introduction

One of the peculiarities of nineteenth-century American political thought is that it exists on a relatively low level of abstraction. There is no American equivalent to Rousseau or Hegel or even John Stuart Mill. Of course all important political theory has historically been related to the great events of the time when it was produced. But though thinkers like Plato and Thomas Hobbes were responding to contemporary politics, they still often relied extensively on ontological, metaphysical or epistemological arguments in trying to deal with them. But in nineteenth-century America the debates over political ideas were as a rule conducted on a level much closer to day-to-day political action, due perhaps to the fact that the polity was closer to democracy than any other at the time. In any case, until after the Civil War much of the most important work was produced by major political actors. Even then, the thought of academics like William Graham Sumner remained fairly close to the ground. For much of the century, if one wants to explore the nature of American political thought one turns to the same thinkers who created the politics they theorised. Therefore, methodologically one must pay unusually close attention to ongoing political events if one is going to understand the ideas surrounding them.