October 22, 2007
In The Republic of the Moderns: Paine’s and Madison’s Novel Liberalism Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelsons argue that the relationship between republicanism and liberalism has emerged as a central issue for students of political thought.
Neo-republican scholars in particular have advanced a stark conceptual opposition between two competing intellectual and political projects, and have claimed that liberalism decisively defeated and replaced republicanism. By contrast, in exploring the writings of Thomas Paine and James Madison, this article shows how they initiated a radical and unexpected reconfiguration within the republican tradition that fashioned a surprisingly liberal doctrine for a modern republic. Their ‘‘republic of the moderns,’’ we argue, altered he contours and content of classical republicanism, transmuting it into an important strand of liberal political thought and institutions.
They say that the growing interest in republicanism, further, has produced an influential critique of the limits of liberalism that has substantially displaced both the Marxist and communitarian bases of a progressive anti-liberal stance. As a result, the focus of liberalism’s critics has shifted from the economic and ethical domains to more political, legal, and institutional subjects.
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