Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism: A Commentary on The Spirit of the Laws [Paperback]

Thomas L. Pangle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 1989 | ISBN-10: 0226645452 | ISBN-13: 978-0226645452

This first comprehensive commentary on The Spirit of the Laws uncovers and explicates the plan of Montesquieu's famous but baffling treatise. Pangle brings to light Montesquieu's rethinking of the philosophical groundwork of liberalism, showing how The Spirit of the Laws enlarges and enriches the liberal conception of natural right by means of a new appeal to History as the source of basic norms.

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About the Author

Thomas L. Pangle is professor of political science and chairman of the American Studies Committee at the University of Toronto. Among his many works is The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (July 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226645452
• ISBN-13: 978-0226645452
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,459,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas L. Pangle is the Co-Director of The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas. He holds the Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He held previously the University Professorship in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and is a lifetime Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has taught at Yale, Dartmouth, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the University of Oklahoma--where he was Feaver MacMinn Visiting Scholar, and the University of Chicago--where he also delivered the Exxon Distinguished Lectures in Humane Approaches to the Social Sciences.

Educated at Cornell University (BA) and the University of Chicago (PhD), he has won Guggenheim, Isaac Waltam Killam, Canada Council, Connaught, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, and four National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships.

He has been awarded The Benton Bowl, Yale University (for contribution to education in politics) and the Robert Foster Cherry Great Teacher of the World Prize, Baylor University. At the invitation of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences he delivered the Werner Heisenberg Memorial Prize Lecture.

He is General Editor of The Agora Editions (Cornell U. Press), and is a member of the editorial boards of Political Research Quarterly, and Polis, Journal of the Society for the Study of Greek Political Thought; of the Advisory Board, Centre for Liberal Education, Carleton University, Ottawa; of the Research Council, International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy; and of the Council, North American Chapter, Society for the Study of Greek Political Thought. He served as Senior Advisory Editor, Books in Canada: The Canadian Review of Books 1995-98; and as a member of the Executive Council of the American Political Science Association.

He is the author of Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism (U. of Chicago Press, 1973); The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (U. of Chicago Press, 1988); The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1992); The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders, co-authored with wife Lorraine (Univ. Press of Kansas, 1993); Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace, co-authored with Peter J. Ahrensdorf (University Press of Kansas, 1999); Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2003); Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); and The Theological Basic of Liberal Modernity in Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2010). He has a DVD and audiotape lecture course entitled "The Great Debate: Advocates and Opponents of the American Constitution," marketed by The Teaching Company.