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Lädt ... John Adams and the Spirit of Libertyvon C. Bradley Thompson
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Gehört zur ReiheAmerican Political Thought (1998) Auszeichnungen
America's finest eighteenth-century student of political science, John Adams is also the least studied of the Revolution's key figures. By the time he became our second president, no American had written more about our government and not even Jefferson or Madison had read as widely about questions of human nature, natural right, political organization, and constitutional construction. Yet this staunch constitutionalist is perceived by many as having become reactionary in his later years and his ideas have been largely disregarded. In the first major work on Adams's political thought in over thirty years, C. Bradley Thompson takes issue with the notion that Adams's thought is irrelevant to the development of American ideas. Focusing on Adams's major writings, Thompson elucidates and reevaluates his political and constitutional thought by interpreting it within the tradition of political philosophy stretching from Plato to Montesquieu. This major revisionist study shows that the distinction Adams drew between "principles of liberty" and "principles of political architecture" is central to his entire political philosophy. Thompson first chronicles Adams's conceptualization of moral and political liberty during his confrontation with American Loyalists and British imperial officers over the true nature of justice and the British Constitution, illuminating Adams's two most important pre-Revolutionary essays, "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law" and "The Letters of Novanglus." He then presents Adams's debate with French philosophers over the best form of government and provides an extended analysis of his Defence of the Constitutions of Government and Discourses on Davila to demonstrate his theory of political architecture. From these pages emerges a new John Adams. In reexamining his political thought, Thompson reconstructs the contours and influences of Adams's mental universe, the ideas he challenged, the problems he considered central to constitution-making, and the methods of his reasoning. Skillfully blending history and political science, Thompson's work shows how the spirit of liberty animated Adams's life and reestablishes this forgotten Revolutionary as an independent and important thinker. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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 Google Books — Lädt ...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)323.44Social sciences Political Science Civil and political rights The state and the individual LibertyKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt: (4.88)
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In this thorough examination of Adams's political thought, C. Bradley Thompson—an Objectivist professor of history at Ashland University in Ohio—reveals a very different John Adams: a profound thinker, a brilliant constitutional architect and a principled, lifelong defender of liberty, whose ideas helped shape the U.S. Constitution.
The brilliance of Adams, according to Thompson, lay in his scientific approach to political science and constitutional design. While his contemporaries in France attempted to deduce proper constitutions from rationalistic "first principles," Adams undertook a systematic study of history to discover the basic causes behind successful and unsuccessful political systems. It was these inductive observations that led him to advocate such vital constitutional measures as separation of powers and checks and balances; history had shown him they would work, and logic had shown him why. Many of his proposals would later become hallmarks of the U.S. Constitution.
The extent of Adams's study and thought was staggering. Fortunately, Thompson presents his intellectual development in terms of essentials, making it readily digestible to the reader. (Still, this is an academic work, and includes a depth of analysis of this Founding Father's writings that may be too detailed for some readers.)
The author shows that most of the critics who question Adams's commitment to liberty have taken various statements out of context. By specifying the proper context, Thompson portrays Adams as an individual who devoted his entire life to discovering how to best preserve freedom in America for many generations. The author says: "I have tried to establish the status and integrity of Adams as an independent thinker, one who would not concede the truth to popular opinion as he attempted to secure the American Revolution with a just and lasting constitutional order."
However, Thompson does not address one of Adams's most notorious actions while President: the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which curtailed certain criticism of government officials. These were major assaults on liberty, and a defense of John Adams as a consistent advocate of freedom is incomplete without addressing them.
Despite this omission, John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty is an outstanding presentation of Adams's under-appreciated political thought, and a much-needed act of justice toward an American hero.