Tag: American Founding

Books

Source of American Caesarism: Review of Harry V. Jaffa

– Willmoore Kendall, National Review, November 7, 1959.
Excerpt: The idea of natural right is not so easily reducible to the equality clause, and there are better ways of demonstrating the possibility of self-government than imposing one’s… More

Equality as a Conservative Principle

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 8:471 (1975). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).
Excerpt: That Conservatism should search for its meaning implies of course that Conservatism does not have the meaning for which it is searching. This might appear paradoxical, since a… More

The Heresy of Equality: Bradford Replies to Jaffa

– M. E. Bradford, Modern Age (Winter 1976).
Excerpt: This essay is a direct response to Harry Jaffa’s “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, VI11 (June, 1975), pp. 471-505, which is itself a… More

Fellows’ Choice

– Hadley Arkes, The Wilson Quarterly 1:3 (Spring 1977), pp. 127-128.
Review of Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

American Conservatism and the American Founding

– Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.
Summary from the Publisher: This book is the fourth in a series (including Equality and Liberty, The Conditions of Freedom, and How to Think About the American Revolution) of reprinted… More

Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz

– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.
Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More

Inventing the Gettysburg Address

Intercollegiate Review 28:1 (Fall 1992). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).
Excerpt: Thirty years ago, Garry Wills was a rising star of the Right, a celebrity in the constel­lation of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Na­tional Review. His essay on “The Conve­nient… More

Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy

– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).
Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More

Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution

– Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994.
Summary from the Publisher: Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question is a unique contribution to the debate, begun by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the… More

Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion

– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).
Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More

Storm Over the Constitution

– Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999.
Summary from the Publisher: Written by one of America’s foremost political and legal theorists, Storm Over the Constitution examines the arguments of some of the leading proponents of… More

The Virtue of Practical Wisdom

– Justice Clarence Thomas, Claremont Institute, February 9, 1999.
Excerpt: We gather here tonight in memory of a great man, a great president whose noble words and selfless deeds enabled this great nation to fulfill its promises of equality and liberty… More

A New Birth of Freedom

– Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More

Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding

Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2001.
Excerpt: In his review of A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War, in the inaugural issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler writes,… More

Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe

– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More

Jaffa’s Lincolnian Defense of the Founding

– Thomas G. West, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: In A New Birth of Freedom, Harry Jaffa presents a powerful defense of the political theory of the American founding. He does it in grand style. Formally, his topic is Lincoln and… More

Jaffa versus Mansfield by Thomas G. West

– Thomas G. West, Perspectives on Political Science 31:4 (Fall 2002).
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa and Harvey Mansfield are two of the ablest among those whose study of America has been shaped and helped by what they learned from Strauss. Both men are patriots. Both… More

The American Founding as the Best Regime

– The Claremont Institute, July 4, 2007.
Excerpt: The Preamble of the Constitution crowns its enumeration of the ends of the Constitution by declaring its purpose to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our… More

Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety

– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.
Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More

Lincoln with Harry Jaffa on Uncommon Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge, Hoover Institution, July 22, 2009.
Summary: In a year that marks the two hundredth year since the birth of Lincoln, and the fiftieth year since the publication of his own Crisis of the House Divided, Harry Jaffa discusses… More

Lincoln in Peoria

Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: A friendly critic has recently characterized my life’s work as dedicated to the moral vision of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria. Of course, as a faithful student of Leo… More

Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding

– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.
Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More

The Declaration in a House Divided

– Video, Jack Miller Center, April 21, 2015.
Summary: Interviews with Diana Schaub, James W. Ceaser, and others on the Declaration of Independence.

Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy

– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More

Making Sense of the American Founding

– "Making Sense of the American Founding" (Interview with Thomas G. West by Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn), American Greatness, October 8, 2017
Hillsdale College professor Thomas West discusses Harry Jaffa and Jaffa’s interpretation of the American founding in this wide ranging interview.    

Essays

Source of American Caesarism: Review of Harry V. Jaffa

– Willmoore Kendall, National Review, November 7, 1959.
Excerpt: The idea of natural right is not so easily reducible to the equality clause, and there are better ways of demonstrating the possibility of self-government than imposing one’s… More

Equality as a Conservative Principle

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 8:471 (1975). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).
Excerpt: That Conservatism should search for its meaning implies of course that Conservatism does not have the meaning for which it is searching. This might appear paradoxical, since a… More

The Heresy of Equality: Bradford Replies to Jaffa

– M. E. Bradford, Modern Age (Winter 1976).
Excerpt: This essay is a direct response to Harry Jaffa’s “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, VI11 (June, 1975), pp. 471-505, which is itself a… More

Fellows’ Choice

– Hadley Arkes, The Wilson Quarterly 1:3 (Spring 1977), pp. 127-128.
Review of Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

American Conservatism and the American Founding

– Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.
Summary from the Publisher: This book is the fourth in a series (including Equality and Liberty, The Conditions of Freedom, and How to Think About the American Revolution) of reprinted… More

Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz

– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.
Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More

Inventing the Gettysburg Address

Intercollegiate Review 28:1 (Fall 1992). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).
Excerpt: Thirty years ago, Garry Wills was a rising star of the Right, a celebrity in the constel­lation of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Na­tional Review. His essay on “The Conve­nient… More

Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy

– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).
Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More

Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution

– Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994.
Summary from the Publisher: Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question is a unique contribution to the debate, begun by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the… More

Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion

– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).
Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More

Storm Over the Constitution

– Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999.
Summary from the Publisher: Written by one of America’s foremost political and legal theorists, Storm Over the Constitution examines the arguments of some of the leading proponents of… More

The Virtue of Practical Wisdom

– Justice Clarence Thomas, Claremont Institute, February 9, 1999.
Excerpt: We gather here tonight in memory of a great man, a great president whose noble words and selfless deeds enabled this great nation to fulfill its promises of equality and liberty… More

A New Birth of Freedom

– Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More

Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding

Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2001.
Excerpt: In his review of A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War, in the inaugural issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler writes,… More

Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe

– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More

Jaffa’s Lincolnian Defense of the Founding

– Thomas G. West, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: In A New Birth of Freedom, Harry Jaffa presents a powerful defense of the political theory of the American founding. He does it in grand style. Formally, his topic is Lincoln and… More

Jaffa versus Mansfield by Thomas G. West

– Thomas G. West, Perspectives on Political Science 31:4 (Fall 2002).
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa and Harvey Mansfield are two of the ablest among those whose study of America has been shaped and helped by what they learned from Strauss. Both men are patriots. Both… More

The American Founding as the Best Regime

– The Claremont Institute, July 4, 2007.
Excerpt: The Preamble of the Constitution crowns its enumeration of the ends of the Constitution by declaring its purpose to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our… More

Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety

– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.
Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More

Lincoln with Harry Jaffa on Uncommon Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge, Hoover Institution, July 22, 2009.
Summary: In a year that marks the two hundredth year since the birth of Lincoln, and the fiftieth year since the publication of his own Crisis of the House Divided, Harry Jaffa discusses… More

Lincoln in Peoria

Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: A friendly critic has recently characterized my life’s work as dedicated to the moral vision of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria. Of course, as a faithful student of Leo… More

Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding

– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.
Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More

The Declaration in a House Divided

– Video, Jack Miller Center, April 21, 2015.
Summary: Interviews with Diana Schaub, James W. Ceaser, and others on the Declaration of Independence.

Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy

– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More

Making Sense of the American Founding

– "Making Sense of the American Founding" (Interview with Thomas G. West by Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn), American Greatness, October 8, 2017
Hillsdale College professor Thomas West discusses Harry Jaffa and Jaffa’s interpretation of the American founding in this wide ranging interview.    

Commentary

Source of American Caesarism: Review of Harry V. Jaffa

– Willmoore Kendall, National Review, November 7, 1959.
Excerpt: The idea of natural right is not so easily reducible to the equality clause, and there are better ways of demonstrating the possibility of self-government than imposing one’s… More

Equality as a Conservative Principle

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 8:471 (1975). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).
Excerpt: That Conservatism should search for its meaning implies of course that Conservatism does not have the meaning for which it is searching. This might appear paradoxical, since a… More

The Heresy of Equality: Bradford Replies to Jaffa

– M. E. Bradford, Modern Age (Winter 1976).
Excerpt: This essay is a direct response to Harry Jaffa’s “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, VI11 (June, 1975), pp. 471-505, which is itself a… More

Fellows’ Choice

– Hadley Arkes, The Wilson Quarterly 1:3 (Spring 1977), pp. 127-128.
Review of Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

American Conservatism and the American Founding

– Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.
Summary from the Publisher: This book is the fourth in a series (including Equality and Liberty, The Conditions of Freedom, and How to Think About the American Revolution) of reprinted… More

Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz

– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.
Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More

Inventing the Gettysburg Address

Intercollegiate Review 28:1 (Fall 1992). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).
Excerpt: Thirty years ago, Garry Wills was a rising star of the Right, a celebrity in the constel­lation of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Na­tional Review. His essay on “The Conve­nient… More

Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy

– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).
Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More

Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution

– Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994.
Summary from the Publisher: Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question is a unique contribution to the debate, begun by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the… More

Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion

– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).
Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More

Storm Over the Constitution

– Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999.
Summary from the Publisher: Written by one of America’s foremost political and legal theorists, Storm Over the Constitution examines the arguments of some of the leading proponents of… More

The Virtue of Practical Wisdom

– Justice Clarence Thomas, Claremont Institute, February 9, 1999.
Excerpt: We gather here tonight in memory of a great man, a great president whose noble words and selfless deeds enabled this great nation to fulfill its promises of equality and liberty… More

A New Birth of Freedom

– Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More

Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding

Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2001.
Excerpt: In his review of A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War, in the inaugural issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler writes,… More

Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe

– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More

Jaffa’s Lincolnian Defense of the Founding

– Thomas G. West, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: In A New Birth of Freedom, Harry Jaffa presents a powerful defense of the political theory of the American founding. He does it in grand style. Formally, his topic is Lincoln and… More

Jaffa versus Mansfield by Thomas G. West

– Thomas G. West, Perspectives on Political Science 31:4 (Fall 2002).
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa and Harvey Mansfield are two of the ablest among those whose study of America has been shaped and helped by what they learned from Strauss. Both men are patriots. Both… More

The American Founding as the Best Regime

– The Claremont Institute, July 4, 2007.
Excerpt: The Preamble of the Constitution crowns its enumeration of the ends of the Constitution by declaring its purpose to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our… More

Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety

– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.
Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More

Lincoln with Harry Jaffa on Uncommon Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge, Hoover Institution, July 22, 2009.
Summary: In a year that marks the two hundredth year since the birth of Lincoln, and the fiftieth year since the publication of his own Crisis of the House Divided, Harry Jaffa discusses… More

Lincoln in Peoria

Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: A friendly critic has recently characterized my life’s work as dedicated to the moral vision of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria. Of course, as a faithful student of Leo… More

Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding

– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.
Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More

The Declaration in a House Divided

– Video, Jack Miller Center, April 21, 2015.
Summary: Interviews with Diana Schaub, James W. Ceaser, and others on the Declaration of Independence.

Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy

– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More

Making Sense of the American Founding

– "Making Sense of the American Founding" (Interview with Thomas G. West by Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn), American Greatness, October 8, 2017
Hillsdale College professor Thomas West discusses Harry Jaffa and Jaffa’s interpretation of the American founding in this wide ranging interview.    

Multimedia

Source of American Caesarism: Review of Harry V. Jaffa

– Willmoore Kendall, National Review, November 7, 1959.
Excerpt: The idea of natural right is not so easily reducible to the equality clause, and there are better ways of demonstrating the possibility of self-government than imposing one’s… More

Equality as a Conservative Principle

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 8:471 (1975). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).
Excerpt: That Conservatism should search for its meaning implies of course that Conservatism does not have the meaning for which it is searching. This might appear paradoxical, since a… More

The Heresy of Equality: Bradford Replies to Jaffa

– M. E. Bradford, Modern Age (Winter 1976).
Excerpt: This essay is a direct response to Harry Jaffa’s “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, VI11 (June, 1975), pp. 471-505, which is itself a… More

Fellows’ Choice

– Hadley Arkes, The Wilson Quarterly 1:3 (Spring 1977), pp. 127-128.
Review of Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

American Conservatism and the American Founding

– Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.
Summary from the Publisher: This book is the fourth in a series (including Equality and Liberty, The Conditions of Freedom, and How to Think About the American Revolution) of reprinted… More

Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz

– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.
Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More

Inventing the Gettysburg Address

Intercollegiate Review 28:1 (Fall 1992). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).
Excerpt: Thirty years ago, Garry Wills was a rising star of the Right, a celebrity in the constel­lation of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Na­tional Review. His essay on “The Conve­nient… More

Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy

– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).
Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More

Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution

– Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994.
Summary from the Publisher: Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question is a unique contribution to the debate, begun by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the… More

Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion

– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).
Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More

Storm Over the Constitution

– Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999.
Summary from the Publisher: Written by one of America’s foremost political and legal theorists, Storm Over the Constitution examines the arguments of some of the leading proponents of… More

The Virtue of Practical Wisdom

– Justice Clarence Thomas, Claremont Institute, February 9, 1999.
Excerpt: We gather here tonight in memory of a great man, a great president whose noble words and selfless deeds enabled this great nation to fulfill its promises of equality and liberty… More

A New Birth of Freedom

– Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More

Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding

Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2001.
Excerpt: In his review of A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War, in the inaugural issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler writes,… More

Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe

– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More

Jaffa’s Lincolnian Defense of the Founding

– Thomas G. West, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: In A New Birth of Freedom, Harry Jaffa presents a powerful defense of the political theory of the American founding. He does it in grand style. Formally, his topic is Lincoln and… More

Jaffa versus Mansfield by Thomas G. West

– Thomas G. West, Perspectives on Political Science 31:4 (Fall 2002).
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa and Harvey Mansfield are two of the ablest among those whose study of America has been shaped and helped by what they learned from Strauss. Both men are patriots. Both… More

The American Founding as the Best Regime

– The Claremont Institute, July 4, 2007.
Excerpt: The Preamble of the Constitution crowns its enumeration of the ends of the Constitution by declaring its purpose to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our… More

Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety

– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.
Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More

Lincoln with Harry Jaffa on Uncommon Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge, Hoover Institution, July 22, 2009.
Summary: In a year that marks the two hundredth year since the birth of Lincoln, and the fiftieth year since the publication of his own Crisis of the House Divided, Harry Jaffa discusses… More

Lincoln in Peoria

Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: A friendly critic has recently characterized my life’s work as dedicated to the moral vision of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria. Of course, as a faithful student of Leo… More

Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding

– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.
Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More

The Declaration in a House Divided

– Video, Jack Miller Center, April 21, 2015.
Summary: Interviews with Diana Schaub, James W. Ceaser, and others on the Declaration of Independence.

Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy

– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More

Making Sense of the American Founding

– "Making Sense of the American Founding" (Interview with Thomas G. West by Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn), American Greatness, October 8, 2017
Hillsdale College professor Thomas West discusses Harry Jaffa and Jaffa’s interpretation of the American founding in this wide ranging interview.    

Teaching

Source of American Caesarism: Review of Harry V. Jaffa

– Willmoore Kendall, National Review, November 7, 1959.
Excerpt: The idea of natural right is not so easily reducible to the equality clause, and there are better ways of demonstrating the possibility of self-government than imposing one’s… More

Equality as a Conservative Principle

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 8:471 (1975). Reprinted in How to Think About the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1978).
Excerpt: That Conservatism should search for its meaning implies of course that Conservatism does not have the meaning for which it is searching. This might appear paradoxical, since a… More

The Heresy of Equality: Bradford Replies to Jaffa

– M. E. Bradford, Modern Age (Winter 1976).
Excerpt: This essay is a direct response to Harry Jaffa’s “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, VI11 (June, 1975), pp. 471-505, which is itself a… More

Fellows’ Choice

– Hadley Arkes, The Wilson Quarterly 1:3 (Spring 1977), pp. 127-128.
Review of Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

American Conservatism and the American Founding

– Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984.
Summary from the Publisher: This book is the fourth in a series (including Equality and Liberty, The Conditions of Freedom, and How to Think About the American Revolution) of reprinted… More

Harry V. Jaffa and American History by Herman Belz

– Herman Belz, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 1984.
Excerpt: One of the most important contributions to American history and political science in the past generation is the work of a political philosopher who, in a significant sense, is an… More

Inventing the Gettysburg Address

Intercollegiate Review 28:1 (Fall 1992). Reprinted in American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984).
Excerpt: Thirty years ago, Garry Wills was a rising star of the Right, a celebrity in the constel­lation of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Na­tional Review. His essay on “The Conve­nient… More

Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy

– Reprinted by The Claremont Institute, January 13, 2015. In Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, eds. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).
Excerpt: From this perspective, the intention of the American Founding, with its separation of church and state, its guarantee of the free exercise of religion, and of freedom of speech and… More

Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution

– Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994.
Summary from the Publisher: Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question is a unique contribution to the debate, begun by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the… More

Professor Jaffa and That Old-Time Religion

– George Anastapalo, in Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994).
Excerpt: Mr. Jaffa, even when he is mistaken in the theoretician’s (to be distinguished from the ideologue’s) emphasis that he evidently cannot help but place upon practical… More

Storm Over the Constitution

– Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999.
Summary from the Publisher: Written by one of America’s foremost political and legal theorists, Storm Over the Constitution examines the arguments of some of the leading proponents of… More

The Virtue of Practical Wisdom

– Justice Clarence Thomas, Claremont Institute, February 9, 1999.
Excerpt: We gather here tonight in memory of a great man, a great president whose noble words and selfless deeds enabled this great nation to fulfill its promises of equality and liberty… More

A New Birth of Freedom

– Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Summary from the Publisher: A New Birth of Freedom is the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America’s foremost scholars of American politics,… More

Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding

Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2001.
Excerpt: In his review of A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War, in the inaugural issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler writes,… More

Philosophy, History, and Jaffa’s Universe

– Edward J. Erler, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: I believe that Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is the book (or nearly the book) that Leo Strauss would have written had his principal concern been the crisis of… More

Jaffa’s Lincolnian Defense of the Founding

– Thomas G. West, Interpretation, Spring 2001.
Excerpt: In A New Birth of Freedom, Harry Jaffa presents a powerful defense of the political theory of the American founding. He does it in grand style. Formally, his topic is Lincoln and… More

Jaffa versus Mansfield by Thomas G. West

– Thomas G. West, Perspectives on Political Science 31:4 (Fall 2002).
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa and Harvey Mansfield are two of the ablest among those whose study of America has been shaped and helped by what they learned from Strauss. Both men are patriots. Both… More

The American Founding as the Best Regime

– The Claremont Institute, July 4, 2007.
Excerpt: The Preamble of the Constitution crowns its enumeration of the ends of the Constitution by declaring its purpose to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our… More

Jaffa’s New Birth: Harry Jaffa at Ninety

– Michael Zuckert, Review of Politics Vol. 71, No. 02 (Spring 2009), pp 207-223.
Excerpt: With the publication of Harry Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom, it is possible to see the overall trajectory of his thinking and to come to some assessment of it. New Birth… More

Lincoln with Harry Jaffa on Uncommon Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge, Hoover Institution, July 22, 2009.
Summary: In a year that marks the two hundredth year since the birth of Lincoln, and the fiftieth year since the publication of his own Crisis of the House Divided, Harry Jaffa discusses… More

Lincoln in Peoria

Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: A friendly critic has recently characterized my life’s work as dedicated to the moral vision of Athens, Jerusalem, and Peoria. Of course, as a faithful student of Leo… More

Harry Jaffa and the Nobility of the American Founding

– Thomas G. West, The Federalist, February 19, 2015.
Excerpt: Jaffa’s intellectual point of departure was his encounter with Leo Strauss. I believe that in Jaffa’s mind, that was the most important thing that ever happened to him, with… More

The Declaration in a House Divided

– Video, Jack Miller Center, April 21, 2015.
Summary: Interviews with Diana Schaub, James W. Ceaser, and others on the Declaration of Independence.

Natural Right in the American Founding: Harry Jaffa’s Legacy

– Edward J. Erler, paper presented at a Roundtable on the Work and Legacy of Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont Institute, APSA annual meeting, San Francisco, California, September 5, 2015.
Excerpt: Harry Jaffa spent nearly his whole career uncovering and articulating the natural right foundations of the American Founding. Leo Strauss, Jaffa’s teacher, wrote in the… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Full Bloom

– Algis Valiunas, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2015.
Excerpt: Harry V. Jaffa, writing in the journal Interpretation, and Charles Kesler, in The American Spectator(both pieces are collected in Essays on The Closing of the American… More

Making Sense of the American Founding

– "Making Sense of the American Founding" (Interview with Thomas G. West by Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn), American Greatness, October 8, 2017
Hillsdale College professor Thomas West discusses Harry Jaffa and Jaffa’s interpretation of the American founding in this wide ranging interview.