Dennis C. Rasmussen
Professor, Political Science
Degree
Ph.D., Duke University, 2005
Specialties
Political theory, history of political thought
Courses
Political
Theory
Capitalism,
For and Against
Foundations
of American Political Thought
The Creation of the U.S. Constitution
Biography
Dennis
C. Rasmussen is a political theorist whose research focuses primarily on the
Enlightenment, the American founding, and the virtues and shortcomings of
liberal democracy and market capitalism. He received his Ph.D. from Duke
University in 2005 and his B.A. from Michigan State University’s James Madison
College in 2000, and he has also held positions at Tufts University, the
University of Houston, Brown University, and Bowdoin College. He is the author
of Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of the American
Founders (Princeton University Press, forthcoming), The
Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That
Shaped Modern Thought (Princeton University Press, 2017), The
Pragmatic Enlightenment: Recovering the Liberalism of Hume, Smith,
Montesquieu, and Voltaire (Cambridge University Press, 2014),
and The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society: Adam Smith’s
Response to Rousseau (Penn State University Press, 2008).