Author Archive

Jessica Kimpell

Jessica Kimpell (University of Oxford, DPhil, 2010) is an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University, teaching in the Political Science Department and in the Core Curriculum for Columbia College. She is a political theorist who specializes in republican thought and is currently working on a project on Tocqueville’s ideas and his relationship to republicanism.

Republican thinking today relies heavily on a classical conception of citizenship. Can this ever be compatible with modern commercial society? If there are resources in republicanism for re-thinking the contemporary economic order, it might be worth turning to a republican thinker who wrote on the topic of political economy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in “A Discourse on Political Economy” articulated a key worry now held by various groups today, including the Occupy movement, dissatisfied with existing political responses on poverty, education, health care and economic opportunity.