Thomas L Pangle
Biographic Data
| ID | 974665 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas L Pangle |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas L |
| FAMILY NAME | Pangle |
| SIGNATURE | PANGLE T L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 73 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
What Might Hegel Think Is Crucially Missing From Our Conception of the Goals of Liberalism
On all sides we hear and feel that our liberal constitutional democracies confront an ideological or educational challenge: a need to elaborate better the normative grounds and arguments for the superior choice-worthiness of liberal democratic constitutionalism. I suggest how Hegel can provoke us to begin some otherwise missing, imaginative rethinking—helping us to get out of the grooves into which our normative thinking tends to run, and to stul…
The Philosophical Foundation of Human Rights
The Soviet Union affirms human rights to those things that the Soviet Union already provides— like nominally universal access to free bad dental care. A great many Muhammads have taken this tempting shortcut to the mountain, and the clarity, as well as the reputation, of human rights has suffered as a result. But political inconsistency and hypocrisy account for only a part of the confusion over human rights. The commitment to human rights, howev…
The Socratic Way of Life: Xenophon’s “Memorabilia”
The Socratic Way of Life: "Xenophon's "Memorabilia
A Discussion of Daniel A. Bell’s The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy
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The Key Texts of Political Philosophy: An Introduction
This book introduces readers to analytical interpretation of seminal writings and thinkers in the history of political thought, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Marx, and Nietzsche. Chronologically arranged, each chapter in the book is devoted to the work of a single thinker. The selected texts together engage with 2000 years of debate on fundam…
Key Texts of Political Philosophy: An Introduction
Political Philosophy Cross-Examined: Perennial Challenges to the Philosophic Life
Aristotle's Teaching in the "Politics"
Aristotle's teaching in the Politics
With the Politics, Pangle argues, Aristotle seeks to lead his students down a deliberately difficult path of critical thinking about civic republican life. He adopts a Socratic approach, encouraging his students - and readers - to become active participants in a dialogue. Seen from this perspective, features of the work that have perplexed previous commentators become perfectly comprehensible as artful devices of a didactic approach. Ultimately, …
Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West
“Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the greatest mind in political philosophy in the twentieth century, and possibly in other centuries as well. That, I am well aware, is a judgment I share with very few, if any.” So writes Harry V. Jaffa in his epilogue to this volume. Including an extensive unpublished essay entitled “Straussian Geography: A Memoir and Commentary,” Crisis of the Strauss Divided brings together a collection of Jaffa’s published argumen…
The Rhetorical Strategy Governing Aristotle’s Political Teaching
Recent scholars (e.g., Bodéüs 1993; Mara 2000; Smith 2001; Tessitore 1996) have fruitfully proposed that we must strive to understand Aristotle’s distinctive didactic strategy as a writer. By attending more to the interrelationship between the Ethics and the Politics, and to the contrast with modern liberal theorizing on the issue of educative strategy, I show how Aristotle’s rhetorical strategy is at once a reaction to, and thereby a revelation …
Socratic Political Philosophy in Xenophon's Symposium
This interpretative commentary recovers the largely overlooked significance of a work that illuminates, by portraying in a subtle comic drama, the new perspective on existence, the new way of life, that Socrates introduced in and through his founding of political philosophy. The famous “problem of Socrates” as a turning point of world history (Nietzsche) remains a cynosure of controversy and puzzlement. How did Socrates understand the character o…
The Theban Plays: "Oedipus the Tyrant"; "Oedipus at Colonus"; "Antigone"
The timeless Theban tragedies of Sophocles— Oedipus the Tyrant , Oedipus at Colonus , and Antigone —have fascinated and moved audiences and readers across the ages with their haunting plots and their unforgettable heroes and heroines. Now, following the best texts faithfully, and translating the key moral, religious, and political terminology of the plays accurately and consistently, Peter J. Ahrensdorf and Thomas L. Pangle allow contemporary rea…
Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham
Political philosophy and the God of Abraham
The Puzzle Ofthe Rhetorical Presidency
Jeffrey Tulis’s classic study traces the central dilemmas of today’s presidency to Woodrow Wilson’s invention of the full‐blown “rhetorical presidency”: a radicalized version of Theodore Roosevelt’s essential rhetorical supplement to the Founders’ inadequate conception of the office. But what is Tulis’s teaching as to how we ought to evaluate this transformation? Tulis shows that our system suffers from a profound constitutional contradiction, wi…
Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought)
Response to Professor Peter Lawler
Research Article| January 01 2006 Response to Professor Peter Lawler Thomas L. Pangle Thomas L. Pangle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Good Society (2006) 15 (3): 9–10. https://doi.org/10.2307/25702826 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Thomas L. Pangle; Response to Professor Peter Lawler. The Good Society 1 January 2006; 15 (3): 9–10. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25702826 Downl…
Socratic Cosmopolitanism: Cicero's Critique and Transformation of the Stoic Ideal
The post-Cold War era has provoked a revival of various implicit as well as explicit returns to Stoic cosmopolitan theory as a possible source of a normative conceptual framework for international relations and global community. This article confronts this revival of interest in Stoicism with an analysis of Cicero's constructive critique of original Stoic conceptions of the world community. Particular attention is paid to the arguments by which C…
Justice Among Nations in Platonic and Aristotelian Political Philosophy
A crucial but largely neglected dimension of the political thought of Plato and Aristotle is examined here. The aim is, first, to clarify their theories of justice by considering how those theories deal with the moral challenges posed in the international arena; and, second, to indicate the outlines of a Platonic-Aristotelian normative framework for international politics, that might offer a crucial supplement to more familiar contemporary libera…
Natural Rights and the New Republicanism
1Protestants27Ch. 1Aristotelian Royalism and Reformation Absolutism: Divine Right Theory29Ch. 2Aristotelian Constitutionalism and Reformation Contractarianism: From Ancient Constitution to Original Contract49Ch. 3Contract and Christian Liberty: John Milton77Pt. 2Whigs95Ch. 4Whig Contractarianisms and Rights97Ch. 5The Master of Whig Political Philosophy119Ch. 6A Neo-Harringtonian Moment? Whig Political Science and the Old Republicanism150Pt. 3Natu…
The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders
American schools are in a state of crisis. At the root of our current perplexity, beneath the difficulties with funding, social problems, and low test scores, festers a serious uncertainty as to what the focus and goals of education should be. We are increasingly haunted by the suspicion that our educational theories and institutions have lost sight of the need to perpetuate a core of moral and civic knowledge that is essential for any citizen's …
Books in Review
Canon Wars II the Return of the Founders
Higher education in contemporary America has been embroiled in a number of bitter controversies in the recent past. One of the most acrimonious debates concerns the status of the traditional canon of Western thought and its privileged place in the curriculum. Critics of the canon, most notably supporters of multiculturalism, charge that the traditional approach favors the perspective of DWEMS, dead white European males. Lorraine Smith Pangle and …
The Political Defense of Socratic Philosophy: "A Study of Xenophon's "Apology of Socrates to the Jury
In this interpretation of Xenophon's Apology of Socrates to the Jury, Professor Pangle sees the Socratic philosopher's situation and responsibility in a democratic polity as the work's central theme. He goes on to argue that Hermogenes-through whose eyes Xenophon would have us look at Socrates' defense-has a perspective on Socrates that highlights important, but otherwise obscure, aspects of Socratic Justice
The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke
The Political Psychology of Religion in Plato's Laws
This paper explains Plato's conception of the relation between politics and "political religion" (ideology) in a nonliberal participatory republican system. The discussion is in the form of a commentary on the drama of a part of Plato's Laws. The underlying methodological assumption is that Plato presented his political teaching not so much through the speeches as through the drama of the dialogue, and that he held this to be the most appropriate…
Socratic Cosmopolitanism: Cicero's Critique and Transformation of the Stoic Ideal
The post-Cold War era has provoked a revival of various implicit as well as explicit returns to Stoic cosmopolitan theory as a possible source of a normative conceptual framework for international relations and global community. This article confronts this revival of interest in Stoicism with an analysis of Cicero's constructive critique of original Stoic conceptions of the world community. Particular attention is paid to the arguments by which C…
The Roots of Contemporary Nihilism and Its Political Consequences According to Nietzsche
This essay is meant to help prepare a confrontation with the philosopher who is the most penetrating and thoroughgoing opponent of liberal democratic civilization. Nietzsche characterizes the modern democratic spirit, in all its forms, as “decadence.” This decadence he understands, however, as the final, catastrophic emergence into broad daylight of a previously hidden historical process which has been unfolding in all Western history: the “nihil…
The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders
American schools are in a state of crisis. At the root of our current perplexity, beneath the difficulties with funding, social problems, and low test scores, festers a serious uncertainty as to what the focus and goals of education should be. We are increasingly haunted by the suspicion that our educational theories and institutions have lost sight of the need to perpetuate a core of moral and civic knowledge that is essential for any citizen's …
The Theban Plays: "Oedipus the Tyrant"; "Oedipus at Colonus"; "Antigone"
The timeless Theban tragedies of Sophocles— Oedipus the Tyrant , Oedipus at Colonus , and Antigone —have fascinated and moved audiences and readers across the ages with their haunting plots and their unforgettable heroes and heroines. Now, following the best texts faithfully, and translating the key moral, religious, and political terminology of the plays accurately and consistently, Peter J. Ahrensdorf and Thomas L. Pangle allow contemporary rea…
Justice Among Nations in Platonic and Aristotelian Political Philosophy
A crucial but largely neglected dimension of the political thought of Plato and Aristotle is examined here. The aim is, first, to clarify their theories of justice by considering how those theories deal with the moral challenges posed in the international arena; and, second, to indicate the outlines of a Platonic-Aristotelian normative framework for international politics, that might offer a crucial supplement to more familiar contemporary libera…
The Rhetorical Strategy Governing Aristotle’s Political Teaching
Recent scholars (e.g., Bodéüs 1993; Mara 2000; Smith 2001; Tessitore 1996) have fruitfully proposed that we must strive to understand Aristotle’s distinctive didactic strategy as a writer. By attending more to the interrelationship between the Ethics and the Politics, and to the contrast with modern liberal theorizing on the issue of educative strategy, I show how Aristotle’s rhetorical strategy is at once a reaction to, and thereby a revelation …
The Puzzle Ofthe Rhetorical Presidency
Jeffrey Tulis’s classic study traces the central dilemmas of today’s presidency to Woodrow Wilson’s invention of the full‐blown “rhetorical presidency”: a radicalized version of Theodore Roosevelt’s essential rhetorical supplement to the Founders’ inadequate conception of the office. But what is Tulis’s teaching as to how we ought to evaluate this transformation? Tulis shows that our system suffers from a profound constitutional contradiction, wi…
The Federalist Papers' Vision of Civic Health and the Tradition out of which That Vision Emerges
rT nHE BICENTENNIAL of the American Constitution invites us to reconsider not only the legal and constitutional theory that informed the framing, but also the more fundamental and difficult question of the kind of human being and the way of life the Founders saw the new regime as fostering. The inhabitants of the United States (and, increasingly, of the West in general) are willy-nilly molded, in decisive ways, by a specific political culture. To…
The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders
Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism: A Commentary on The Spirit of the Laws
Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism
The Political Psychology of Religion in Plato's Laws
This paper explains Plato's conception of the relation between politics and "political religion" (ideology) in a nonliberal participatory republican system. The discussion is in the form of a commentary on the drama of a part of Plato's Laws. The underlying methodological assumption is that Plato presented his political teaching not so much through the speeches as through the drama of the dialogue, and that he held this to be the most appropriate…
The Political Theory of Montesquieu and The Spirit of the Laws: A Compendium of the First English Edition
The Laws of Plato
The Roots of Contemporary Nihilism and Its Political Consequences According to Nietzsche
This essay is meant to help prepare a confrontation with the philosopher who is the most penetrating and thoroughgoing opponent of liberal democratic civilization. Nietzsche characterizes the modern democratic spirit, in all its forms, as “decadence.” This decadence he understands, however, as the final, catastrophic emergence into broad daylight of a previously hidden historical process which has been unfolding in all Western history: the “nihil…
The Political Defense of Socratic Philosophy: "A Study of Xenophon's "Apology of Socrates to the Jury
In this interpretation of Xenophon's Apology of Socrates to the Jury, Professor Pangle sees the Socratic philosopher's situation and responsibility in a democratic polity as the work's central theme. He goes on to argue that Hermogenes-through whose eyes Xenophon would have us look at Socrates' defense-has a perspective on Socrates that highlights important, but otherwise obscure, aspects of Socratic Justice
Socrates on the Problem of Political Science Education
ONTEMPORARY POLITICAL SCIENCE finds itself unable to shake off a sense of malaise concerning its educational goals. At the heart of this uneasiness, it seems to me, is perplexity about both the character of moral principles and their proper place in social science education. The upheavals of the sixties left behind a heightened awareness-or better, a bad conscience-as regards teaching; we hear continually the cry for greater attention to values i…
The “Warrior Spirit” as an Inlet to the Political Philosophy of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
The Federalist Papers' Vision of Civic Health and the Tradition out of which That Vision Emerges
rT nHE BICENTENNIAL of the American Constitution invites us to reconsider not only the legal and constitutional theory that informed the framing, but also the more fundamental and difficult question of the kind of human being and the way of life the Founders saw the new regime as fostering. The inhabitants of the United States (and, increasingly, of the West in general) are willy-nilly molded, in decisive ways, by a specific political culture. To…
Political Theory in Contemporary France: Towards a Renaissance of Liberal Political Philosophy
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La philosophie de la Constitution américaine
Entering the great debate
hY do we study and teach the Great Books? Why should we? The forms ese basic questions t ake -and the doubts or controversy implied in the questions-vary from one discipline to another. My discussion here of the reasons for, and the obstacles to, teaching the Great Books will be the product of my own, necessarily limited, experience of teaching those books within a political science department. Yet what I say will have substantial implications fo…
The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke
Sister Republics: The Origins of French and American Republicanism
Sister Republics: The Origins of French and American Republicanism. By Patrice Higonnet. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press and The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke. By Thomas L. Pangle. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press pp. $22.50.) Michael Lienesch Michael Lienesch University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google S…
The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution
On the Epistolary Dialogue Between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin
The philosophic correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, stretching over thirty years, sheds some helpful light on each of the thinkers’ philosophic positions. To be sure, only a few of the letters seem truly significant, and it would of course be a mistake to allow the rather informal and ad hoc remarks in any of the letters to eclipse either theorist's considered and matured published reflections. Moreover, the correspondence peter…
Plato's Gorgias as a Vindication of Socratic Education
The Liberal Critique of Rights in Montesquieu and Hume
The notion of Natural Rights or Human Rights has constituted the moral center of liberalism since its inception in the seventeenth century. Yet not long after the great founders, Spinoza and Locke, had laid the foundations, there emerged within the liberal tradition certain penetrating notes of skepticism as regards the political wisdom--and even, to some extent, the moral soundness--of an unmitigated stress on the rights of the individual. The m…
Feature Review
Aristotle's Theory of the State
Perhaps the fundamental question to ask about any treatise of political theory is, why is it important? About the Politics it is hard to know where an answer to this question would begin. Aristotle’s work intersects with contemporary problems of both politics and philosophy in such a large number and variety of places that the question itself seems redundant. One need only mention Aristotle’s concerns with the sovereignty of law, the fundamental …
The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders
American schools are in a state of crisis. At the root of our current perplexity, beneath the difficulties with funding, social problems, and low test scores, festers a serious uncertainty as to what the focus and goals of education should be. We are increasingly haunted by the suspicion that our educational theories and institutions have lost sight of the need to perpetuate a core of moral and civic knowledge that is essential for any citizen's …
Books in Review
Canon Wars II the Return of the Founders
Higher education in contemporary America has been embroiled in a number of bitter controversies in the recent past. One of the most acrimonious debates concerns the status of the traditional canon of Western thought and its privileged place in the curriculum. Critics of the canon, most notably supporters of multiculturalism, charge that the traditional approach favors the perspective of DWEMS, dead white European males. Lorraine Smith Pangle and …
The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders
Journal Article The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders. By Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Panglc. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. x, 350 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-7006-0581-9.) Get access Peter S. Onuf Peter S. Onuf University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 81, Issue 2, September 1994, Pa…
Political science (34 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (23 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (16 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (13 works) · Literature (11 works)