AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

Catalog description

The Federalist Papers are widely considered to be the best defense and explanation of the American Constitution and Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America the best book about democracy and America ever written. By way of a close reading of both texts we seek an understanding of the American regime. In the second half of the course, we will turn to Benjamin Franklin, Allan Bloom, and Mark Twain to discern the distinctly American character that emerges within the constitutional republican state and democratic society.