Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:26:51.447Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Serving God and Mammon: The Lockean Sympathy in Early American Political Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Joshua Foa Dienstag
Joshua Foa Dienstag*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper seeks to revive the old theory of a “Lockean consensus” in early American political thought against the prevailing “republican” view. The language of “virtue” and “slavery,” which was pervasive at the time of the founding, and which many have been eager to take as evidence for the influence of civic humanism, in fact has a perfectly plain Lockean provenance. This is established first through a reexamination of Locke that links his account of virtue to a Christian asceticism (i.e., the Protestant Ethic) rather than republican philosophy. That the founders understood virtue in this way is then established through an exploration of Adams and Jefferson. In both cases, it was a Lockean slavery which they feared and a Lockean virtue which they sought. A Lockean sympathy did exist among the founders; in order to understand it, however, it must be distinguished from modern liberalism, with which it has only tenuous connections.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 497 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adams, John. 1851. The Works of John Adams. 10 vols. Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown.Google Scholar
Adams, John. [1946] 1981. The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Appleby, Joyce. 1978. “The Social Origins of American Revolutionary Ideology.” Journal of American History 64 (03):935–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appleby, Joyce. 1986. “Republicanism in Old and New Contexts.” William and Mary Quarterly 43 (01):20–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appleby, Joyce. 1992. Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1941. “The Nichomachean Ethics.” The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. McKeon, Richard. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Ashcraft, Richard. 1968. “Locke's State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction?” American Political Science Review 62 (09):898–915.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashcraft, Richard. 1986. Revolutionary Politics and Locke's “Two Treatises of Government.” Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashcraft, Richard. 1987. Locke's Two Treatises of Government. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Ashcraft, Richard. 1992. “The Politics of Locke's ‘Two Treatises.’” In John Locke's ‘Two Treatises of Government’: New Interpretations, ed. Harphorn, Edward J.. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Bailyn, Bernard. 1967. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Baldwin, Alice. 1928. The New England Clergy and the American Revolution. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Banning, Lance. 1992. “The Republican Interpretation: Retrospect and Prospect.” In The Republican Synthesis Revisited: Essays in Honor of George Athan Billias, ed. Klein, Milton M., Brown, Richard D., and Hench, John B.. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Google Scholar
Barker, Ernest. 1948. “Natural Law and the American Revolution.” In Traditions of Civility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beard, Charles. 1935. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Becker, Carl. 1922. The Declaration of Independence. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Berlin, Isaiah. 1964. “Hobbes, Locke and Professor Macpherson.” Political Quarterly 35 (10):444–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curti, M. 1939. “The Great Mr. Locke, America's Philosopher.” Huntington Library Bulletin 11 (04):107–51.Google Scholar
Dienstag, Joshua Foa. N.d. “Between History and Nature: Social Contract Theory in Locke and the Founders.” Journal of Politics. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Diggins, John. 1984. The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Diggins, John. 1988. “Knowledge and Sorrow: Louis Hartz's Quarrel with American History.” Political Theory 16 (08):355–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, John. 1968. “Justice and the Interpretation of Locke's Political Theory.” Political Studies 16 (Febuary):68–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, John. 1969a. The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the ‘Two Treatises of Government’ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, John. 1969b. “The Politics of Locke in England and American in the Eighteenth Century.” In John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, John. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dworetz, Steven M. 1990. The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism and the American Revolution. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Elkins, Stanley, and McKitrick, Eric. 1993. The Age of Federalism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grant, Ruth. 1987. John Locke's Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Handlin, Oscar, and Handlin, Lilian. 1989. “Who Read John Locke?” American Scholar 58 (Autumn):545–56.Google Scholar
Hartz, Louis. 1955. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Hartz, Louis. 1964. The Founding of New Societies. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Hellenbrand, Harold. 1990. The Unfinished Revolution: Education and Politics in the Thought of Thomas Jefferson. Newark: University of Delaware Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Gad. 1978. “Notes on Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 11 (06):383–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houston, Alan. 1991. Algernon Sydney and the Republican Heritage in England and America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Howe, John. 1966. The Changing Political Thought of John Adams. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hundert, E.J. 1972. “The Making of Homo Faber: John Locke Between Ideology and History.” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (01):3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hundert, E.J. 1977. “Market Society and Meaning in Locke's Political Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 15 (01):33–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huyler, Jerome. 1995. Locke in America: The Moral Philosophy of the Founding Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. 1903. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial ed., ed. Bergh, A.E.. 20 vols. Washington, DC: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. 1904. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Ford, ed. 13 vols. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. 1984. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Peterson, Merrill. New York: The Library of America.Google Scholar
Kloppenberg, James T. 1987. “The Virtues of Liberalism: Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethics in Early American Political Discourse.” Journal of American History 74 (06):9–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koch, Adrienne. 1943. The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramnick, Isaac. 1990. Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, John. [1823] 1963. The Works of John Locke. 10 vols. London: Thomas Tegg; reprinted Germany: Scientia Verlag Aalen.Google Scholar
Locke, John. [1823] 1963. “Some Considerations on Money.” vol. 5.Google Scholar
Locke, John. [1823] 1963. “Some Thoughts Concerning Education.” vol. 8.Google Scholar
Locke, John. [1823] 1963. “The Letters Concerning Toleration.” vol. 6.Google Scholar
Locke, John. [1823] 1963. “The Reasonableness of Christianity.” vol. 7.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1960. Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Peter. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Macpherson, C.B. 1951. “Locke on Capitalist Appropriation.” Western Political Quarterly 4 (12):550–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macpherson, C.B. 1954. “The Social Bearing of Locke's Political Theory.” Western Political Quarterly 1 (03):1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macpherson, C.B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Malone, Dumas. 1948. Jefferson the Virginian. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Matthews, Richard. 1984. The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Matthews, Richard. 1987. “Liberalism, Civic Humanism, and the American Political Tradition: Understanding Genesis.” Journal of Politics 49 (November): 1127–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, Richard. 1995. If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Mehta, Uday Singh. 1992. The Anxiety of Freedom: Imagination and Individuality in Locke's Political Thought. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Charles. 1988. Jefferson and Nature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, J.C. 1943. Origins of the American Revolution. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Morgan, Edmund S. 1988. Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Pangle, Thomas. 1988. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Parrington, Vernon L. 1927. Main Currents in American Thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Peterson, Merrill. 1970. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pocock, J.G.A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pocock, J.G.A. 1980. “The Myth of John Locke and the Obsession with Liberalism.” In John Locke: Papers Read at the Clark Library Seminar. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Riley, Patrick. 1988. “Louis Hartz: The Final Years, the Unknown Work.” Political Theory 16 (08):377–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rossiter, Clinton. 1953. Seedtime of the Republic. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Ryan, Alan. 1965. “Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.” Political Studies 13 (06):219–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanford, Charles. 1984. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Schouls, Peter. 1992. Reasoned Freedom: John Locke and Enlightenment. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seliger, Martin. 1963. “Locke's Natural Law and the Foundations of Politics.” Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (07):337–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seliger, Martin. 1968. The Liberal Politics of John Locke. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Shain, Barry Alan. 1994. The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheldon, Garrett Ward. 1991. The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Strauss, Leo. 1953. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Vaughn, Karen I. 1992. “The Economic Background of Locke's ‘Two Treatises.’” In John Locke's ‘Two Treatises of Government’: New Interpretations, ed. Harphorn, Edward J.. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. [1920] 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner's.Google Scholar
White, Morton. 1978. The Philosophy of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Gordon S. [1969] 1972. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Wood, Gordon S. 1987. “Ideology and the Origins of Liberal America.” William and Mary Quarterly 44 (07):630–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuckert, Michael P. 1994. Natural Rights and the New Republicanism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.