Identify and distinguish various philosophies that contributed to the American founding.

Philosophical Roots of the Founding

The Framers of the Constitution were entering uncharted territory. Despite the early objections of some Convention delegates, they were not gathering to make minor adjustments to a flawed confederal government, but to create an entirely new form of government. As they did so, they expanded a growing body of knowledge collectively known as American Political Thought. With roots in the writings of numerous “Old World” authors and in the experiences of the colonies before and after the war, the concepts and precepts the Framers brought to Philadelphia with them were deeply philosophical, yet utterly practical — thousands of years old but still applicable to their situation, but as new as the sunrise that dawned on the delegates as they arrived to participate in the Convention.

The American Founders were well-versed in the political writings of their day and most had at least a passing acquaintance with the arguments presented by a wide range of political philosophers. But they were not simply thinkers. They were, as one historian has described them, “statesmen — men of action and practical wisdom.”⁵ Moreover, the American Revolutionaries were not simply “unconscious puppets of the presuppositions of their age.” Rather, they were “thinking revolutionaries” who were determined to reshape existing concepts of government and sovereignty by “replacing old intellectual precepts and societal purposes with new precepts and purposes of their design.”⁶

Their legacy would be the creation of the most enduring constitution in modern history. Blending philosophy, religion, and practical experience, they created a government which derived its authority from the people and which was kept in check by the separation of powers (executive, legislative, and judicial), auxiliary precautions, and federalism.

^5.Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 1. ^6.Ralph Lerner, The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979), 18.