Commerce and Character - (American Political Thought) by Steven Frankel & John Ray

Book Synopsis

Nine leading scholars explore some of the most important minds behind the new political economy of the American Founding and engage with the foundational work of Ralph Lerner.

In his 1979 article, "Commerce and Character: The Anglo-American as New-Model Man," Ralph Lerner argued that the American Founders and the political theorists of the commercial republic were charting a new basis for society that broke with the "old order," which was "preoccupied with intangible goods to an extent we now hardly ever see. The king had his glory, the nobles their honor, the Christians their salvation, the citizens of pagan antiquity their ambition to outdo others in serving the public good." By contrast, the commercial republic was a regime based on the belief that human behavior is best understood as driven by physical wants and tangible goods. A government grounded on this understanding of humanity would be a more stable system and thus more conducive to human flourishing. Lerner's article thus interpreted the Founding as a revolution in political philosophy that must be understood against the backdrop of the Enlightenment.

Commerce and Character brings together nine distinguished scholars who explore individual Enlightenment or American thinkers who made important philosophical or political contributions to the new political economy of modern republicanism. The contributing authors include Ann Charney Colmo, Ryan Hanley, John C. Koritansky, Peter McNamara, Peter Onuf, Clifford Orwin, Paul Rahe, Colleen Sheehan, and Michael Zuckert. Each contributor uses Lerner's essay as the jumping-off point, and at the end, Lerner provides a detailed response to each of his interlocutors where he carefully examines each chapter and reconsiders his arguments a half century later.

Review Quotes

"What theories of government are suited to human commercial pursuits? Does economic activity calm human passions, or do those who claim so disregard the all-too-human passions of ambition, vindictiveness, and greed? Will commercial society foster virtue, despite the frequent claims to the contrary from both sides of the political spectrum? Above all, can good character and political stability survive in a commercial society? These foundational questions of the American republic are addressed by this group of philosophers and political theorists of the political economy of modern republicanism."--Ross Emmett, author of Frank Knight and the Chicago School in American Economics

"This splendid collection of essays explicates the thought of 'the thinking revolutionaries' who founded the modern commercial republic. Penetrating, thoughtful, and elegant rather than ideological, the essays allow us to assess afresh the arguments by which the American founders and the European thinkers who inspired them set the course for the first 'man of the future, ' for whom material interests would displace allegedly nobler concerns. The thinking revolutionaries sought to 'liberate' humanity from the misconceived devotions, or 'fanaticism, ' that had groundlessly favored national or civic heroism, glory, honor, hierarchical rank, pride, generosity, magnanimity, refinement, taste, elegance, wit, brilliance, rigor, liveliness, piety, heredity, tradition, poetry, and eloquence. The thinking revolutionaries directed humanity instead to attend to the private, practical, materially gainful, useful, rationally self-interested, prosaic, industrious, efficient, technical, engineered, manufactured, wealth-producing, mundane, secure, comfortable, pleasant, civil, humane, tolerant, thrifty, religiously indifferent, mobile, autonomous, politically equal, and free. The revolutionaries articulated at the same time a new, sober, commercial conception of moral and social bonds and attachments. They sought to produce a 'brotherhood of demanders and suppliers' in a 'confederation of convenience.' The revolutionaries' cosmopolitan regime has now conquered the globe. Yet it continues--as it has since Rousseau--to spawn powerful, thoughtful opponents. These sparkling essays attempt to show that the new regime's virtues and defects--what would be gained and what would be lost in adopting it--were grasped by its founders and need to be grasped anew by us."--Timothy W. Burns, author of Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education

"Perhaps the best measure of a society is the kind of human beings it tends to produce. In 1979, Ralph Lerner argued that the architects of the modern commercial society conceived of a new model man. This re-examination of Lerner's thesis by eight learned scholars and Lerner himself is a must-read not only for students of the history of political thought but also for anyone who seeks a proper assessment of our modern society."--Nasser Behnegar, author of Leo Strauss, Max Weber, and the Scientific Study of Politics

"The perspicacious editors of Commerce and Character have curated a collection of essays on the philosophic progenitors of the commercial republic and the founders of the American republic and its great French interpreter do justice to the influential essay of the same title that serves as their prologue by Ralph Lerner, from whose writing and teaching so many have learned so much." --Nathan Tarcov, coeditor of The Legacy of Rousseau

"This volume provides a rich conversation on the relationship between commerce and virtue in the age of the modern commercial republic through the lens of Ralph Lerner's seminal essay 'Commerce and Character: The Anglo-American as New-Model Man.' The reader is treated to an illuminating discussion of sometimes competing and sometimes complementary views regarding how Enlightenment philosophers shaped and understood the limitations of modern commercial regimes led by Lerner and nine other renowned scholars of political philosophy."--Andrea Radasanu, coeditor of In Search of Humanity: Essays in Honor of Clifford Orwin