Overview

What made the founding generation of American statesmen so outstanding? To answer this question, this volume brings together a group of historians and political scientists to evaluate a neglected but compelling theory advanced nearly four decades ago by Douglass Adair. Adair argued that it was the love of fame that moved many of the leading lights of the founding generation. Adair's thesis is the starting point for a series of searching essays on the role of fame in the lives of Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall and Washington. These profiles also provide historical and philosophical reflections on the question of fame. What emerges from these essays is a more complex picture of the founding generation than that presented by Adair. While acknowledging the role of the love of fame, the work argues for the influence of other concerns such as honour, virtue and the cause of liberty. This more complex picture of the founding generation provides a rewarding vantage point from which to consider the question of character in politics, which looms so large in contemporary political debate. It illuminates the differences between true fame and mere celebrity in such a way as to point to considerations that transcend both.

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9780847686810

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This work is an important contribution to its field. . . . Contributes mightily to a rethinking of the foundations of politics. Students of politics have fully attended to fear and greed as low motives in human life; this work points the way toward a more adequate treatment of the specifically political motive of lofty ambition.--Flaumenhaft, Harvey

This collection would serve as excellent outside reading for courses in American political theory or for those that focus on the founding period. American Political Science Review This work is an important contribution to its field... Contributes mightily to a rethinking of the foundations of politics. Students of politics have fully attended to fear and greed as low motives in human life; this work points the way toward a more adequate treatment of the specifically political motive of lofty ambition. -- Harvey Flaumenhaft, St. John's College

Author Information

Peter McNamara is associate professor of political science at Utah State University, is the author of Political Economy and Statesmanship: Adam Smith and Alexander Hamilton on the Foundation of the Commercial Republic, as well as numerous articles.

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