Summer Reading Group:
The Bourgeois Revolution and America 250

Frontispiece of Leviathan by Abraham Bosse, with input from Hobbes

(• required readings / + supplemental readings)

Recommended background reading:

+ Karl Marx, "England and Materialist Philosophy" (1845)

Week 1 6/8/26: Hobbes and English Civil War

• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [PDF] (1651/68), Introduction, Chapters XIII-XV

Week 2 6/15/26: Hobbes (continued)

• Hobbes, Leviathan [PDF] (1651/68), Chapters XVII-XIX, XXI, Review and Conclusion

Week 3 6/22/26: Locke and Glorious Revolution

• John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689)

Week 4 6/29/26: Montesquieu and bourgeois right

• Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Books I, II, III, XI Chapters 1-6 ("Of the Constitution of England"), XIX-XXI, XV

Week 5 7/6/26: Jefferson and the American Revolution

• Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
• Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (1776)
• Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virgina (1785), Queries XIV, XVII and XVIII
• Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801), Secret Message to Congress on Western Exploration (January 18, 1803), Third Annual Message (October 17, 1803), Second Inaugural Address (1805), Speech to a Delegation of Indian Chiefs (January 4, 1806)
• Jefferson, selected letters

Week 6 7/13/26: Kant and the bourgeois revolution

• Immanuel Kant, "On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice" (1793)

Week 7 7/20/26: Marxism?

• Arthur Rosenberg, The History of Bolshevism: From Marx to the First Five-Year Plan (1932), Preface and Chapter I: Marx to Lenin 1843–93