Interpreting the Founding: Guide to the Enduring Debates Over the Origins and Foundations of the American Republic (American Political Thought) - Softcover

Gibson, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0700614540 ISBN 13: 9780700614547

Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 2006

Synopsis

As politicians and judges argue over the original intent of our country's founding fathers, the American Founding itself continues to inspire a prodigious amount of research and commentary, reflecting a bewildering array of methods and interpretations. Alan Gibson now offers readers an insightful and convenient guide through this daunting and sprawling body of scholarship. Comprehensive and judicious, "Interpreting the Founding" provides summaries and analyses of the leading interpretive frameworks that have guided the study of the Founding since the publication of Charles Beard's "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution" in 1913. Gibson argues that scholarship on the Founding is no longer steered by a single dominant approach or even by a set of questions that control its direction. He also examines the challenges posed to Founding scholarship by this diversity and complexity and the possibilities opened by new avenues of inquiry that have recently emerged. The book features extended discussions of pioneering works by leading scholars of the Founding - including Louis Hartz, Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and Garry Wills - that best exemplify different schools of interpretation. Gibson focuses on six approaches that have dominated the modern study of the Founding: Progressive, Lockean/liberal, Republican, Scottish Enlightenment, multicultural, and multiple traditions approaches. For each approach, he traces its fundamental assumptions, revealing deeper ideological and methodological differences between schools of thought that, on the surface, seem to differ only about the interpretation of historical facts. While previous accounts have treated the study of the Founding as the sequential replacement of one paradigm by another, Gibson argues that all of these interpretations survive as alternative and still viable approaches. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and showing how each has simultaneously illuminated and masked core truths about the American Founding, he renders a balanced account of the current debate over the origins and foundations of the American republic and offers solid footing on the path to understanding the vast literature devoted to this important subject.

About this title

Review

"Gibson's grandly comprehensive and comprehensible study will be essential reading for all those who want to know how American scholars have interpreted the ideas of the founding era. Lucid in its analyses and imaginative in its coverage, it will satisfy the most exacting critic."

About the Author

Alan Gibson is associate professor of political science at California State University - Chico and currently a Fellow in the James Madison Program of Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0700614540
• ISBN 13: 9780700614547
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208