Our Constitutional Founding: From Ideas to Institutions
Gain a deeper understanding of our Constitution by studying the political debates surrounding its founding.
In the fourth week of Political Studies, fellows will consider the liberal tradition and its expression in America.
The first section will consider the question of American national character through a close reading of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. The second section will introduce students to the thought of the two major figures in American Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Particular attention will be given to their ideas on individualism, political reform, slavery, and human greatness.
Image: Thomas Cole (1801–1848), The Oxbow, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (1836), Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ryan Hanley on liberal education
This course is part of our residential Political Studies Program. Fellows participate in morning seminars and meet prominent men and women in public life over afternoon and evening sessions. Up to 32 fellows will be selected.
Faculty
Ryan P. Hanley
Ryan Patrick Hanley is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His research in the history of political philosophy focuses on the Enlightenment. He is the author of Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life and Love’s Enlightenment: Rethinking Charity in Modernity.
Ryan P. Hanley
Ryan Patrick Hanley is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. Previously, he was the Mellon Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. His research in the history of political philosophy focuses on the Enlightenment.
He is the author of Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life (Princeton University Press, 2019), Love’s Enlightenment: Rethinking Charity in Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2009). His edited volumes include Adam Smith: His Life, Thought, and Legacy (Princeton University Press, 2016), the Penguin Classics edition of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (Penguin, 2010), and with Darrin M. McMahon, The Enlightenment: Critical Concepts in History, 5 vols. (Routledge, 2010).
His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, European Journal of Political Theory, Review of Politics, Social Philosophy & Policy, History of Political Thought, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Revue internationale de philosophie, and Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie.
Professor Hanley received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.Phil. from Cambridge University, and his Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Prior to Marquette, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center.
Daniel Burns
Daniel Burns is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas. His research in political philosophy focuses on the relation between religion and citizenship. He has recently served as a staffer for the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee and as a full-time contractor for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Daniel Burns
Daniel Burns is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas. He has held fellowships at the Catholic University of America and the University of Texas at Austin. He was on academic leave for government service between January and June of 2020, where he advised the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
His research in political philosophy focuses on the relation between religion and citizenship. He is currently working on a book called Against Secularism: Religious Identity and Liberal Democracy. He has also written on Al-Farabi, Thomas More, John Locke, Sayyid Qutb, the Strauss-Kojève debate, Joseph Ratzinger, Samuel Huntington, American foreign policy, and the modern Catholic church. He is a member of the Neuer Schülerkreis Joseph Ratzinger/Benedikt XVI., a Germany-based group of scholars dedicated to advancing Ratzinger’s intellectual legacy.
He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Williams College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston College.
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
Emerson & Thoreau on Individualism & the State
What Is Transcendentalism?
Texts:
- Henry David Thoreau: Walden, The Maine Woods, Collected Essays and Poems, ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell and Robert F. Sayre (Library of America, 2007)
- The Portable Emerson, ed. Jeffrey S. Cramer (Penguin, 2014)
Readings:
- Emerson, “Divinity School Address” (PE, 74–90)
- Emerson, “The Transcendentalist” (PE, 112–27)
- Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 1: “Economy”
Individualism
Readings:
- Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (PE, 150–72)
- Emerson, “The American Scholar” (PE, 56–73)
- Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 2: “Where I Lived and What I Lived For”
Political Laws & Higher Laws
Readings:
- Emerson, “Politics” (PE, 279–90)
- Emerson, “Spiritual Laws” (PE, 191–209)
- Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
- Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 11: “Higher Laws”
Greatness
Readings:
- Emerson, “The Over-Soul” (PE, 210–25)
- Emerson, “Uses of Great Men” (PE, 318–34)
- Thoreau, “Life without Principle”
- Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 12: “Brute Neighbors”
The Political Problem: Slavery
Readings:
- Emerson, “The Fugitive Slave Law: Speech at Concord” (PE, 747–91)
- Emerson, “John Brown: Speech at Salem” (PE 401–403)
- Thoreau, “Slavery in Massachusetts”
- Thoreau, “A Plea for Captain John Brown”
- Thoreau, “The Last Days of John Brown”
Tocqueville's Democracy in America
Syllabus to Come
Check back for the syllabus.
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