@article{kessler_2020, title={Locke and Tocqueville on Religious Foundationalism}, volume={9}, ISSN={["2161-1599"]}, DOI={10.1086/711032}, abstractNote={In this article, I offer a fresh perspective on John Locke’s and Alexis de Tocqueville’s religious statesmanship that sheds light on the moral and political problems facing America today. Both thinkers maintain that a firmly held set of religious beliefs must ground the popular mores, or character traits, that support liberty. According to most scholars, Locke considers popular enlightenment the best means for promoting these beliefs. I argue, however, that Locke mistrusts intellectual freedom and seeks to use authority to promote the core doctrines of reasonable Christianity, which is his preferred faith. I also compare Locke’s version of religious foundationalism with Tocqueville’s more well-known case for this concept and show how Tocqueville modifies reasonable Christianity to strengthen it against democratic skepticism. I conclude by briefly reflecting on the weakening of America’s religious foundations today and on what this portends for the future.}, number={4}, journal={AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT}, author={Kessler, Sanford}, year={2020}, month={Sep}, pages={594–622} }
 @article{kessler_2002, title={Religious freedom in Thomas More's Utopia}, volume={64}, DOI={10.1017/s0034670500038079}, abstractNote={Thomas More advocated religious freedom inUtopiato promote civic peace in Christendom and to help unify his fractious Catholic Church. In doing so, he set forth a plan for managing church-state relations that is a precursor to liberal approaches in this area. Most scholars locate the origins of modern religious freedom in Protestant theology and its first mature articulation in Locke'sA Letter on Toleration. This reading ofUtopiashows that modern religious freedom has Catholic, Renaissance roots. The essay discusses how scholars have treated Utopian religious freedom and considers the much vexed question of whether More actually favored this principle. It also presents the historical context for More's analysis, his rationale for religious freedom, its effects on Utopian religion and politics, and More's strategy for promoting religious reform in Europe.}, number={2}, journal={Review of Politics}, author={Kessler, S.}, year={2002}, pages={207–229} }
 @article{kessler_1997, title={Tocqueville and the nature of democracy - Manent,P}, volume={91}, ISSN={["0003-0554"]}, DOI={10.2307/2952277}, abstractNote={them. Any attempt to challenge such readings both hopelessly betrays one's lack of literary sophistication and even voices an authoritarian demand for "magisterial" readings (p. 54). Not to yield uncritically to Kemple's interpretations, apparently, is illicitly to refuse to "implicate" oneself in a "complex hermeneutical structure of multiple readings" (p. 56). Kemple's refusal to explore sensitively either the consequences of the hermeneutical strategies he adopts or the kinds of arguments others have offered for them would be worrisome enough (interpretation remains, after all, a notoriously contentious and thorny process!), but the problem goes even deeper. At the same time Kemple renounces any hermeneutical method which might invalidate his own "writerly" readings, or even demand that he actually defend them, he is not at all reluctant to disqualify others' readings. Thus, for instance, Habermas's influential (and certainly debatable) interpretation of Marx is simply (magisterially?) dismissed by Kemple in several pages as "rather simplistic" (p. 28), "limited," and reductive (p. 29); Baudrillard's "restrictive" and "ungenerous" reading is criticized for trivializing the "subtleties and niceties of Marx's analysis" (p. 99); Robert Tucker's analysis is both overly psychologizing and insufficiently "attentive" (p. 54); and Althusser's reading is dispatched as essentially authoritarian. Indeed, far from generously extending to others the interpretative license he grants himself, Kemple rather patronizingly lectures these authors and the other particular (mis)interpreters of Marx he summarily discusses. Kemple also repeatedly declaims against yet other, unnamed readers less "careful" (p. 47) and "versatile" (p. 71) than he.}, number={1}, journal={AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW}, author={Kessler, S}, year={1997}, month={Mar}, pages={173–174} }
 @article{caplow_1994, title={TOCQUEVILLE CIVIL RELIGION - AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROSPECTS FOR FREEDOM - KESSLER,S}, volume={33}, ISSN={["0021-8294"]}, DOI={10.2307/1386504}, number={4}, journal={JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION}, author={CAPLOW, T}, year={1994}, month={Dec}, pages={394–395} }