Thomas Paine’s Natural Society and the End of Politics

This article offers an interpretation of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense read through its theory of natural society. It argues that Paine’s politics in the pamphlet can be characterized as radically antipolitical: Paine’s theory of natural society led him to conceive of the American Revolution as the final act of politics, as the moment at which humanity could return to its nonpolitical condition in natural society. The article thus argues that Paine’s antipolitical desire was constitutive of his radical politics. Ultimately, however, this article argues that the antipolitical politics espoused in Paine’s pamphlet could not account either for the persistence of politics after the revolution or for the role the pamphlet itself would play in achieving the nonpolitical condition.