PHILIP BRETTON

Email: brettonp@msu.edu
Fields: Political theory, liberalism
Dissertation: Hume’s Historical Liberalism
Expected Dissertation Defense: October 2007
Committee: Steven Kautz (Chair), Jerry Weinberger, Arthur Melzer, M. Richard Zinman

Philip Bretton’s teaching and research interests focus on liberalism and modern political theory.  He specializes in the comparison of ahistorical and historical conceptions of liberty.  Comparative politics is his second field.  Philip holds a bachelor’s degree in political theory from the University of Chicago.  He has served as an employee of the Embassy of Morocco, where he wrote summaries of foreign policy publications, composed French-English translations, and reported on congressional hearings.  As a graduate student Philip has been awarded a University Distinguished Fellowship, a Summer Acceleration Fellowship, and a Dissertation Completion Fellowship.  He reads and speaks French.

In a dissertation entitled Hume’s Historical Liberalism Philip classifies David Hume as a liberal political philosopher.  His interpretation rests on Hume’s analysis of religion and politics.  The problem of modern politics is the tendency of “religious parties” to claim absolute rule on the basis of piety.  In English history the parties of King and people seek concentrated power in pursuit of religious aims.  Hume’s solution is to limit the ends of politics to the production of liberty and peace.  Competing interpretations stress conservative and moralistic strains in Hume’s thought, whereas here it is argued that those strains have been deployed in the service of liberal purposes.  Within the limitations of a politics of liberty Hume effects a reconstruction of religion and morality.  He accepted the individualistic politics of the Enlightenment as it was handed to him.  He intended to strengthen the Enlightenment for contemporary and future times.  Philip’s dissertation is based on Hume’s classic work, The History of England.

Philip has presented parts of his dissertation at the MPSA and at Michigan State’s Political Philosophy Colloquium.  He has taught a course on the Politics of American Democracy at Albion College and a recitation section of the Introduction to Political Science course offered by the Department.  He was a participant in the 2006 Miller Summer Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder, organized by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Jack Miller Center for the Teaching of America’s Founding Principles.  Outside of his area of specialization Philip has interests in comparative politics, especially the study of comparative political systems in the history of political theory.