Faculty Profile for Dr. Paul R DeHart

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Dr. Paul R. DeHart is Professor of Political Science at Texas State University, where he has taught since August 2009. Prior to that he was Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lee University from 2005-2009. He holds a Ph.D. and an MA from the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in political science and philosophy from Houghton College (summa cum laude and with major honors in political science). While at Houghton College he also studied classical vocal performance with the late Paul Giles, a founding performer of the Boston Lyric Theatre.

Dr. DeHart specializes in the American founding, early modern political theory (especially Thomas Hobbes and Locke), social contract theory, the grounds of political authority and obligation, the relationship between religion and political order, natural law. and constitutional design. He is author of The Social Contract in the Ruins: Natural Law and Government by Consent (University of Missouri Press 2024), which Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus at Yale University, calls "a masterpiece" and of Uncovering the Constitution’s Moral Design (University of Missouri Press 2007; paperback 2017). Hadley Arkes, Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions emeritus at Amherst College, says “The remarkable achievement of this book is that the case DeHart makes for the moral telos of the Constitution has been made now in a way that must be utterly compelling to anyone who has not closed his mind entirely to the canons of reason. This is a rare and remarkable achievement. I know of nothing else that does the work this well.” DeHart is also editor, with Carson Holloway, of Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith (Northern Illinois University Press 2014). Wolterstorff says Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order is “a bold and courageous book, contesting the pieties of our present day.” DeHart has published articles in journals such as Polity, Critical Review, Locke Studies, Perspectives on Political Science, and the Catholic Social Science Review. His public scholarship has been discussed within multiple Presidential campaigns and within state government. He has delivered invited lectures at Oxford University in the Rothermere American Institute's Constitutional Thought and History Seminar, in a series for the Attorney General's Office for the State of Texas, and at the Law School of the University of Dayton.

At the undergraduate level, Dr. DeHart regularly teaches American Political Thought: Settlement to the Civil War, The American Founding, Basic Political Ideas, and Senior Seminar. At the graduate level, he teaches Approaches to the Study of Political Science, Justice and Liberty in American Political Thought, Roots of American Constitutionalism, and Social Contract Theory.

In 2014, Dr. DeHart received the Presidential Distinction Award for Excellence in Scholarly Work. He has also received a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2016, He received a College Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has also been recognized as an Alpha Chi Favorite Professor. But better than any award, as he sees it, is to see students become truly intrigued by and animated by the questions and problems of political life.

Teaching Interests

American political thought from settlement in the 17th century through the civil war; the American Revolution, the American founding and especially the Constitutional Convention and the debates between the federalists (who were for the Constitution) and the antifederalists (who were against it) during the ratification period, the historical and intellectual roots of American constitutionalism, social contract theory (Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau) and its critics, justice and liberty in American thought, different approaches to the study of politics.

Research Interests

The roots of American constitutionalism, American founding thought, the nature and foundation of moral obligation, the nature and foundation of political authority and political obligation, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, the state of nature, sovereignty, federalism, natural law, classical political philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas).