The politics of liberty in England and revolutionary America
By: Lee Ward.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 459
Subjects: Political science -- Great Britain -- Philosophy -- History -- 17th century.; Political science -- Great Britain -- Philosophy -- History -- 18th century.; Political science -- United States -- Philosophy -- History -- 17th century.; Political science -- United States -- Philosophy -- History -- 18th century.; Liberty.; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Causes.
Description: "This study locates the philosophical origins of the Anglo-American political and constitutional tradition in the philosophical, theological, and political controversies in seventeenth-century England. By examining the quarrel between the proponents of the doctrine of natural liberty and the champions of divine right theory, this study identifies the source of modern liberal, republican, and conservative ideas about natural rights and government in the seminal works of the Exclusion Whigs Locke, Sidney, and Tyrrell and their philosophical forebears Hobbes, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pufendorf. This study illuminates how these first Whigs and their diverse eighteenth-century intellectual heirs such as Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Otis Jefferson, Burke, and Paine contributed to the formation of Anglo-American political and constitutional theory in the crucial period from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution and the creation of a distinctly American understanding of rights and government in the first estate constitutions."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 433-450) and index.