Christopher C. Burkett

POLSC 321: AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT II

The purpose of this course is to better understand the ideas that have animated American

political thought from the late nineteenth century to today. The twentieth century has been

described by one scholar as a “great contest for the American soul between two strongly opposed

conceptions of justice…The American people remain deeply divided, not just among themselves

but also within themselves, over which of the two fundamentally opposed conceptions of justice

is right.” The political principles of the American Founding, influenced by Lockean social

compact theory and British constitutionalism, had shaped and guided American political

institutions until well into the nineteenth century. Those principles were challenged and rejected

by American Progressivism, which derived its fundamental tenets from post-Lockean European

sources. As another scholar has recently written:

Anyone seeking to understand American politics today must realize that our

politics is made up of an uneasy mixture of ideas, institutions and policies that

were spawned by two fundamentally different philosophical schools of thought.

While virtually all scholars acknowledge the significant role the Founders’

understanding of Lockean social compact theory played in the formation of

American politics…relatively few scholars are sensitive to the equally significant

role nineteenth century German idealism played in the reformation of American

politics in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Our goal in this course, then, is to engage in serious thought, inquiry and discussion on American

politics from the late nineteenth century to today, in order to see how contemporary American

political thought is dually influenced by the American Founding and by Progressivism.

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