Political Thought of Frederick Douglass

2013 Finalist, 26th Annual Oregon Best Book AwardNormal0MicrosoftInternetExplorer4st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }/* Style Definitions */table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;mso-para-margin:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";}Frederick Douglass, one of the most prominent figures inAfrican-American and United Stateshistory, was born a slave, but escaped to the North and became a well-knownanti-slavery activist, orator, and author. In The Political Thought ofFrederick Douglass, Nicholas Buccola provides an important and originalargument about the ideas that animated this reformer-statesman. Beyond his roleas an abolitionist, Buccola argues for the importance of understanding Douglassas a political thinker who provides deep insights into the immense challenge ofachieving and maintaining the liberal promise of freedom. Douglass, Buccolacontends, shows us that the language of rights must be coupled with a robustunderstanding of social responsibility in order for liberal ideals to berealized. Truly an original American thinker, this book highlights Douglass’srightful place among the great thinkers in the American liberal tradition.Podcast — Nicholas Buccola on Frederick Douglass and Liberty.

Buccola offers a nuanced portrait that illuminates both Douglass and his place in American intellectual history., Looking broadly and deeply into Douglass's reflections on the requisites and moral purposes of liberal democracy, Buccola amplifies our understanding of Douglass's normative political imagination and skillfully demonstrates that Douglass also appreciated how a free society is nurtured and sustained by a moral ecology of personal courage, moral responsibility, and civic virtue., Nicholas Buccola's rich study of Frederick Douglass recognizes that the natural law teachings of the Declaration provided one of several foundations for Douglass' political thought., Frederick Douglass was a slave, abolitionist, and activist whose most enduring contribution to American history may have been his liberal political theory. Douglass drew on his experiences as a slave to articulate a version of liberalism that contained the basic Lockean, liberal elements but also promoted an ethic of mutual responsibility. That ethic was the basis for Douglasss devotion to community, democracy, and state intervention to create a suitable moral ecology for liberal citizens. It was also a platform for expressing his distrust for gross inequalities issuing from the marketplace. The Political Thought of Frederick Douglassprovides insights not only into Douglasss nineteenth-century theory; it serves as a roadmap for navigating ongoing tensions that persist in twenty-first-century liberalism., Nicholas Buccola's well-conceived, well-researched, and well-argued new study stands out in an increasingly crowded field of work on Frederick Douglass. Displaying a thorough familiarity with Douglass's published and unpublished works and an impressive erudition in his command of pertinent scholarship, Buccola makes a balanced, judicious, innovative case for Douglass's enduring vitality, in particular as a guide for both liberals and communitarians in their ongoing debates about individual rights and civic obligations.

Nicholas Buccola is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Linfield College.