Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America

With this book Isaac Kramnick adds a strong voice to the lively debate about the nature of political ideology in eighteenth-century England and America. Whereas the now-dominant "republican thesis" sees liberal ideology as virtually irrelevant in an age of civic commitment to a moral public order, Kramnick makes a strong case for a thriving liberalism in the Anglo-American world at the time of the American and French revolutions. In his view, both ideologies flourished during this period, and it is unwise to see one as the exclusive paradigm in which eighteenth-century political discourse took place. In short, he proposes to the republican school a scholarly truce.

About the Author

Isaac Kramnick is Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Cornell University. He is the author or editor of many books, including studies of the American founding fathers, Tom Paine, Edmund Burke, and the twentieth-century Englishman Harold Laski.