Newtonianism: How Thomas Paine Devalued the British Monarchy by Transforming John Locke’s Empiricism and Social Contract Theory
Keywords:
Thomas Paine, republic, society, government, Newtonianism, John LockeAbstract
The following student contribution concerns Thomas Paine’s Newtonian concepts of society and government in the context of the Age of Enlightenment. Its aim is to demonstrate how Thomas Paine reinterpreted Enlightenment political thought as proposed by the empiricist theorist, John Locke, by using the principles of Newtonianism. Paine’s Newtonian politics is closely connected with his deistic faith. His political theory is devoted to the vision of a free society as a manifestation of the benevolent The Watchmaker. With this mission in mind, Paine attempted to devalue the contemporary models of the state of nature and social contract theory as interpreted by John Locke and to offer a more democratic version of these concepts. Paine’s key ideas in this respect are expressed in his most famous works Common Sense, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason.
References
Aldridge, Alfred O. Thomas Paine’s American Ideology. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984.
Belger, Elsie. Thomas Paine: Common Sense for Modern Era. San Diego: SDSU Press, 2007.
Christian, William. “The Moral Economics of Tom Paine.” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 34, No. 3 (1973): 367–380. Accessed 05–03–2016, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708958
Conrad, Stephen A. “The Rhetorical Constitution of Civil Society at the Founding: One Lawyer’s Anxious Vision.” Indiana Law Journal, Vo. 72, Issue 2 (1997): 335–373.
Ferris, Timothy. The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
Foley, Michael. Laws, Men and Machines: Modern American Government and the Appeal of Newtonian Mechanics. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Hakim, Joy. A History of US: From Colonies to County: 1735–1791. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Koven, Steven, G. Public Budgeting in the United States: The Cultural and Ideological Setting. Washington, D.C., Georgetown University Press, 1999.
Larkin, Edward. Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Locke, John. Locke: Political Writings. Edited by David Wootton. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company, 2003.
Paine, Thomas. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine. Edited by Philip S. Foner. New York, The Citadel Press: 1945.
Penniman, Howard. “Thomas Paine – Democrat.” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 37, No. 2 (1943): 244–262. Accessed 19–05–2016, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1949385
Robinson, James, A. “Newtonianism and the Constitution.” Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 1, No 3/4 (1957): 252–266. Accessed 29–04–2016, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2109303
Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd, 1946.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Locke’s Political Philosophy,” Accessed 09–05–2016, 2016. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/
Striner, Richard. “Political Newtonianism: The Cosmic Model of Politics in Europe and America.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 4 (1995): 583–608. Accessed 29–04–2016, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2947039
Wilson, Woodrow. Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings. edited by Ronald J. Pestritto. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005.
