Using the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne as a case study, John E. Alvis shows that a novelist can be a political philosopher. He demonstrates that much of Hawthorne's works are rooted in the American political tradition. Once we view his writings in connection with the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, we grasp that what Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had stated explicitly, Hawthorne's fiction conveys dramatically. With examples drawn from Hawthorne's shorter works, as well as acknowledged classics, such as The Scarlet Letter, John E. Alvis shows that Hawthorne's characters bear something sacred in their generic humanity, yet are subject to moral judgment. He conveys reciprocity between obligations regulating individual relations and the responsibilities of individuals to their community.From America's founding proclamations in the Declaration of Independence we take a sense of national aspirations for a political order that conforms to laws of nature and nature's God. From this higher law emerge the principles enumerated in that revolutionary document. Are these principles confined to the political, or do they reach into the experience of citizens to inform conduct? Do they include family, local community, and individual face-to-face relations with neighbors and strangers? Can one make a distinct way of life by fidelity to such standards as higher law, equality, liberty, natural rights, and consent?This study is distinguished from other writings on Hawthorne in its largely positive focus on America. Alvis characterizes Hawthorne as a rational patriot who endorses America's new terms for human association. This fascinating study provides new insights into the mind of one of the greatest American writers.

This collection establishes Nietzsche's importance as a political philosopher. It includes a substantial introduction and eighteen chapters by some of the most renowned Nietzsche scholars. The book examines Nietzsche's connections with political thought since Plato, major influences on him, his methodology, and his influence on subsequent thought. The book includes extensive coverage of the debate between radical aristocratic readings of Nietzsche, and more liberal or democratic readings. Close readings of Nietzsche's texts are combined with a contextualising approach to build up a complete picture of his place in political philosophy. Topics include the relevance of Bonapartism and classical liberalism, Nietzsche on Christianity, the cultural history of Germany, the Übermensch, ethics and politics in Nietzsche, and the controversial question of his political preferences and affinities. Nietzsche's political thought is compared with that of Humboldt, Weber and Foucault. The book is essential reading for anyone concerned with Nietzsche's thought, political philosophy, and the history of political ideas.

Volume IV of America's Indomitable Character contains information on: A synopsis of Volume III. Philosophical and intellectual streams of thought as they came from Old Europe and connected with the intellectual developments of the New America. Transcendentalism and Dark Romanticism. A presentation regarding Nature, human nature, society, the social contract in the following authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, (Sarah) Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Theodore Parker, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson. How the development of a national literature contributed to the development of an American character identity. Identities and affinities between the American authors and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Reiseweg of Rousseau's spirit to America. A conclusive summary of all four volumes. How the Democrat Party after the Civil War and up to Barack Hussein Obama has been exceedingly active in making sure that the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for the United States of America were not applied to all Americans - from the Democrat Party affiliated Ku Klux Klan, through the communist takeover of the Democrat Party, to the defeat of racism in the second half of the twentieth century and the re-emergence of racism with the racist class division polemics of Barack Hussein Obama in the twenty-first century. How the Democrat Party has dumbed-down American citizens. How Barack Hussein Obama, the putative president of the United States of America, has hollowed out the substance and laws that were once the backbone of America's character identity; from symbolical insults, through the expansion of social programs and the weakening of national defense, to the destruction of America's religious identity and the erosion of the middle class. This is Barack Hussein Obama's active destruction of American character identity.

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of Nathaniel Hawthorne and demonstrates why he continues to be a critically significant figure in American literature. The first section focuses on Hawthorne's interest in and knowledge of past (Puritan and colonial) and contemporary nineteenth-century history (women's, African American, Native American) as the inspiration for his writings and the source of his literary success. The second section explores his fascination with social history and popular culture by examining topics as mesmerism, utopian life styles, theatrical performances, and artistic innovations. The third section looks at how Hawthorne succeeded and excelled in the literary marketplace, as an author of children's literature, literary sketches, and historical romances. In the fourth section, Hawthorne's literary precursors, peers, colleagues, and successors are analyzed. In the final section, Hawthorne's attachment to family, nature, and home is examined as the source of creative inspiration and philosophical questing.

America’s first treasury secretary and one of the three authors of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton stands as one of the nation’s important early statesmen. Michael P. Federici places this Founding Father among the country’s original political philosophers as well. Hamilton remains something of an enigma. Conservatives and liberals both claim him, and in his writings one can find material to support the positions of either camp. Taking a balanced and objective approach, Federici sorts through the written and historical record to reveal Hamilton’s philosophy as the synthetic product of a well-read and pragmatic figure whose intellectual genealogy drew on Classical thinkers such as Cicero and Plutarch, Christian theologians, and Enlightenment philosophers, including Hume and Montesquieu. In evaluating the thought of this republican and would-be empire builder, Federici explains that the apparent contradictions found in the Federalist Papers and other examples of Hamilton’s writings reflect both his practical engagement with debates over the French Revolution, capital expansion, commercialism, and other large issues of his time, and his search for a balance between central authority and federalism in the embryonic American government. This book challenges the view of Hamilton as a monarchist and shows him instead to be a strong advocate of American constitutionalism. Devoted to the whole of Hamilton’s political writing, this accessible and teachable analysis makes clear the enormous influence Hamilton had on the development of American political and economic institutions and policies.

Discusses ways in which works by James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner explore the central issue of political philosophy.