In this book noted scholar Thomas L. Pangle brings back a lost and crucial dimension of political theory: the mutually illuminating encounter between skeptically rationalist political philosophy and faith-based political theology guided ultimately by the authority of the Bible. Focusing on the chapters of Genesis in which the foundation of the Bible is laid, Pangle provides an interpretive reading illuminated by the questions and concerns of the Socratic tradition and its medieval heirs in the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic worlds. He brings into contrast the rival interpretive framework set by the biblical criticism of the modern rationalists Hobbes and Spinoza, along with their heirs from Locke to Hegel. The full meaning of these diverse philosophic responses to the Bible is clarified through a dialogue with hermeneutic discussions by leading political theologians in the Judaic, Muslim, and Christian traditions, from Josephus and Augustine to our day. Profound and subtle in its argument, this book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of politics, philosophy, and religion but also to thoughtful readers in every walk of life who seek to deepen their understanding of the perplexing relationship between religious faith and philosophic reason.
(2004)
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.
