The Jack Miller Center is proud to announce a new partnership at the University of California at Davis with the “Davis Political Theory Forum.”
The Davis Political Theory Forum will promote the study of political thought at the University of
California, Davis, with a focus on the principles of classical liberal thought and the American founding and their continuing relevance for American politics. The central principles of both classical liberal thought in general and the American founding in particular are individual rights, individual freedom, representative institutions, and limited government. These principles were not uncontested in the period when they were developed by thinkers such as John Locke, the Baron Montesquieu, David Hume, and Adam Smith during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nor were they uncontested during the period of the American founding, nor, finally, are they uncontested today. Far from it. When Locke spoke of the natural freedom and equality of humans, for example, he was doing so during a period when the idea of natural rights was not common currency. When Montesquieu described a system of separation of powers that would promote political liberty, his concept of designing institutions to limit government and protect individuals from arbitrary government was part of an emerging “science of politics,” as Hamilton termed the movement in the Federalist Papers.
One of the principal reasons for studying the principles of classical liberalism and the American founding in the context in which they were introduced is to enter into the debates in which these principles were forged as new ideas in need of clarification and defense in order better to understand and appreciate these principles. The aim of the Davis Political Theory Forum will promote the study of classical liberal thought and the principles of the American founding in order to engage in these living debates.
