Bøker av Michael P. Zuckert

Leo Strauss and his alleged political influence regarding the Iraq War have in recent years been the subject of significant media attention. In this title, the authors turn their attention to a more comprehensive interpretation of Strauss' thought as a whole.

A reflection on the work of John Locke. The text explores the complexity of the Locke's engagement with his philosophical and theological predecessors, his effect on later liberal thinkers, and his success in transforming the political understanding of the Anglo-American world.

This work examines the natural rights philosophy as expressed in sources like the Declaration of Independence. It aims to counter contemporary confusion by offering an insightful study of the concept that dominated the mindset of the founding fathers of the United States.

In Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, 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 "e;one true Protestant politics--an 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. The Whigs were particularly influenced by the Dutch natural law philosopher Hugo Grotius. However, as Zuckert shows, by the mid-eighteenth century John Locke had replaced Grotius as the philosopher of the Whigs. Zuckert's analysis concludes with a penetrating examination of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, the English "e;Cato,"e; who, he argues, brought together Lockean political philosophy and pre-existing Whig political science into a new and powerful synthesis. Although it has been misleadingly presented as a separate "e;classical republican"e; tradition in recent scholarly discussions, it is this "e;new republicanism"e; that served as the philosophical point of departure for the founders of the American republic.