The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism

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University of Chicago Press, 1986 M08 15 - 409 pages
The Lost Soul of American Politics is a provocative new interpretation of American political thought from the Founding Fathers to the Neo-Conservatives. Reassessing the motives and intentions of such great political thinkers as Madison, Thoreau, Lincoln, and Emerson, John P. Diggins shows how these men struggled to create an alliance between the politics of self-interest and a religious sense of moral responsibility—a tension that still troubles us today.

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Contents

Whos Afraid of John Locke?
18
From the Revolution to the Constitution
48
John Adams the Federalist and the Refutation
69
Not That Virtue Is Great But That Temptation
100
THE FRONTIER POPULISM PROGRESSIVISM
118
Ten Issues in Search of Authority
131
An Idea in Search of an Institution
163
Locke Calvinism and the Transcendentalist
192
THE TERROR AND THE PITY
321
Epilogue Liberalism and Calvinism in Contemporary
334
The Problem of Ideology
347
The Problem of Motivation and Causation
353
The Problem of Language
359
NOTES
366
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About the author (1986)

John Patrick Diggins (1935-2009) was distinguished professor at the City University of New York and the author of many books, including Eugene O'Neill's America and The Promise of Pragmatism, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

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