A Night With the Philosophy Club

Tonight I gave a lecture to the Messiah College Philosophy Club. My subject was “The Political Philosophy of the American Founding.” I am neither a philosopher nor a political scientist, so my presentation was probably more grounded than most of their past speakers.

My lecture started with a discussion of the debate over whether the American Revolution was influenced by republicanism or liberalism. Then I moved into a discussion of the ways in which civic humanism, moral sense philosophy, and Reformed Christianity–moral languages that were for the most part incompatible prior to 1776–converged in the thought of the American founders. I stopped short of connecting this confluence of moral languages to a particular time and place, but called attention to The Way of Improvement Leads Home as a model for understanding how these ideas informed everyday life in the eighteenth century.

The students and other attendees were very engaged. The Q&A lasted a good hour, with much of the discussion focused on the ways in which the discipline of history differed from political science and philosophy and how my view of the founders differed from Christian Right views of history promoted by the likes of David Barton and the late Jerry Falwell.