Natural Rights and the New Republicanism

Here Michael Zuckert proposes a new view of the political philosophy that lay behind the founding of the United States. In a book that will interest political scientists, historians, and philosophers, Zuckert looks at the Whig or opposition tradition as it developed in England. He argues that there were, in fact, three opposition traditions: Protestant, Grotian, and Lockean. Before the English Civil War the opposition was inspired by the effort to find the one true Protestant politicsDLan effort that was seen to be a failure by the end of the Interregnum period. The Restoration saw the emergence of the Whigs, who sought a way to ground politics free from the sectarian theological-scriptural conflicts of the previous period. This exemplary work of historical reconstruction dramatically transforms our understanding of the genealogy of early American political thought. No one who deals with the eighteenth-century Anglo-American political tradition will be able to avoid the unsettling challenge of Zuckert's original and painstakingly documented reinterpretation, for this is one of those rare scholarly achievements, at once capacious and meticulous, that forces all of us back to the drawing boards. DLThomas L. Pangle, William and Mary Quarterly This is a work of careful scholarship and vast erudition.... By illustrating how Lockean and republican ideas came to be blended, Zuckert forcefully recounts the origins of the American republic. DLRichard Vernier, The Journal of American HistoryZuckert, Michael P. is the author of 'Natural Rights and the New Republicanism' with ISBN 9780691034638 and ISBN 069103463X.