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The Founders' Library

Intellectual Foundations of the American Founding

The Historic Documents in this set include the primary texts of moral and political philosophy that influenced the Founding generation—written by philosophers and political theorists from classical antiquity (like Aristotle and Cicero) through the Enlightenment (like John Locke and Montesquieu).
 

Selected by
Paul Rahe

Professor of History and Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College

Jeffrey Rosen

President and CEO, National Constitution Center

Colleen A. Sheehan

Professor of Politics at the Arizona State University School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Intellectual Foundations of the American Founding Documents
The History of Herodotus (ca. 425 BC)

Herodotus | 0425 BC
The War between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians (ca. 431-400 BC)

Thucydides | 0400 BC
The Laws (ca. 367-366 BC) and The Republic (ca. 380 BC)

Plato | 0367 BC
The Politics (ca. 350 BC)

Aristotle | 0350 BC
Nicomachean Ethics (ca. 340 BC)

Aristotle | 0340 BC
The Histories (ca. 167-146 BC)

Polybius | 0146 BC
The Tusculan Disputations (ca. 45 BC)

Cicero | 0045 BC
De officiis (“On Duties”) (44 BC)

Cicero | 0044 BC
The Jugurthine War (ca. 41-40 BC)

Sallust | 0041 BC
Ab urbe condita (“From the City’s Foundation”) (ca. 27–9 BC)

Livy | 0009 BC
Moral Letters to Lucilius (“On Saving Time”) (ca. 65)

Seneca | 0065
Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency (ca. 65)

Seneca | 0065
Annals (ca. 100-110)

Tacitus | 0100
Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (ca. 100)

Plutarch | 0119
The Prince (1513-15) and Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius (1513-17)

Niccolò Machiavelli | 1513
Selected Excerpts (1599-1633)

William Shakespeare | 1599
“Selected Excerpts” (1620)

Francis Bacon | 1601
The King James Bible (1611)

| 1611
De Jure Belli ac Pacis “On the Law of War and Peace” (1625)

Hugo Grotius | 1625
Institutes of the Lawes of England (1628-1644)

Edward Coke | 1628
Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651)

Thomas Hobbes | 1651
The Excellencie of a Free State (1656)

Marchamont Nedham | 1656
The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)

James Harrington | 1656
The Whole Duty of Man According to the Law of Nature (1673)

Samuel von Pufendorf | 1673
A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) and Two Treatises on Government (1690)

John Locke | 1689
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

John Locke | 1690
Discourses concerning Government (1698)

Algernon Sidney | 1698
Cato’s Letters (1720-23)

John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon | 1720
Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue

Francis Hutcheson | 1725
Letters concerning the English Nation (1733)

Voltaire | 1733
Essays Moral, Political and Literary (1741-58)

David Hume | 1741
A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy (1747)

Francis Hutcheson | 1747
The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

Montesquieu | 1748
The Law of Nations (1758)

Emmerich de Vattel | 1758
On Crimes and Punishments (1764)

Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria | 1764
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69)

William Blackstone | 1765
Letter to Bernard Moore (ca. 1773)

Thomas Jefferson | 1773
The Constitution of England, or, An Account of the English Government (1771-75)

Jean-Louis de Lolme | 1775
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

Adam Smith | 1776
Additional Documents Selected By The NCC
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