American Enlightenment Research Articles

The Problem of the American Enlightenment

THE PROBLEM of the American Enlightenment is full of paradoxes. The first of these is that while most American historians are its partisans, only a few choose to write about it. The opponents of the Enlightenment, Calvinists and revivalists and romantics, have been favorite subjects of our intellectual historians and literary scholars. Many historians, it is true, have written good books about some aspects of the Enlightenment: its social background, its science, and especially its great political figures. Yet few have made much effort to analyze its philosophical or religious allegiances, fewer still have tried hard to compare or relate it to the various European Enlightenments, and nobody at all has attempted anything like a quantitative enquiry into the spread of Enlightened ideas among Americans. One result is that general historians allow themselves to make in passing all sorts of statements that seem perhaps more than they really are contradictory. The Enlightenment met little resistance in colonial America, yet was mostly an upper-class affair. The founding fathers were mostly deists, yet the Calvinist clergy were the most consistent partisans of the Revolution. Some sharper contradictions have had less attention than they deserve. When our only real philosophe was elected president in 18oo, evangelical revivals were sweeping sections of the country that had voted for him. One cannot blame American historians too much for their failure

Book Notes

BOOK REVIEWS 355 BOOK NOTES Religion of the American Enlightenment. By G. Adolf Koch. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968. Apollo Books. Pp. xviii+334. Paper, $2.45) This work, published originally in 1933 by Henry Holt under the title Republican Reh'gion, has long been out of print. The foreword to the new edition by G. Adolf Koch very well explains both rifles and indicates why there is a permanent interest in the subjectmatter of this book. It is the only comprehensive survey of the religious radicalism that was an essential aspect of the American Enlightenment. Much of this radicalism is still embedded in our heritage and culture, but the literature described in this volume is largely unknown. A few militant rationalists like Ethan Allen and Tom Paine are still celebrated, but few readers are familiar with the Reverend William Bentley and the irreverent Elihu Palmer. The thirty-page bibliography of source-materials indicates the significant body of literature and of ideas that were current among the Founding Fathers and are now largely forgotten. It is our very good fortune to have this rare and important volume back in print. --H. W. ~ E R Studi Vichiani. By Giovanni Gentile. Vol. XVI of the new edition of the complete works of Giovanni Gentile; 3rd ed. revised and enlarged by Vito A. Bellezza. (Florence: Sansoni, 1968. Pp. xi+436. L 6000) These studies of Giambattista Vico are worthy of special attention since, in 1968, the tercentenary of Vico's birth was celebrated. The first edition appeared in 1914, the second in 1927. The new material in this third edition constitutes Appendix H. These three new items are all important for anyone studying Vico. One is an address delivered in 1936 in Vico's native Naples on the occasion of the Celebrazioni Campane by the Confederation of the Professions and Artists; it gives a brief account of Vico's career and the development of his thought. Another is an address before the Accademia d'Italia on March 19, 1944, in celebration of the bicentenary of Vico's death; it relates the philosophy of Vico to the Italian Renaissance on the one hand, and to the Resorgimento (especially to Gioberti) on the other. It also discusses the relations of Vico's historicism and empiricism to Cartesian rationalism , British empiricism, and idealistic romanticism. Most interesting, however, for the critical history of philosophy is the third addition, a communication to the Accademia dei Lincei in 1938 for the discussion of Vico's relations to Descartes. Here Gentile, in succinct outline, discusses how Vico was awakened from his dogmatic slumbers by the cogito ergo sum and how he freed himself from Cartesian mathematical method by distinguishing the immediacy of consciousness from scientific certitude and by relating such certitude to natural facts and historical deeds. This is certainly a noteworthy volume in the very fine edition of Gentile's works. --H. W. S. BooKs RECEWED First Editions Barnes, Wesley. The Philosophy and Literature of Existentialism. Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron's Educational Series, 1968. Pp. x+245. $4.50; Paper, $1.75. Beaucamp, Evode. Les Proph&tes d'lsra#l ou le drame d'une Alliance. Qutbec: Presses de l'Universit6 Laval, 1968. Pp. 300. Paper, $3.50. Beaucamp, Evode. Les Sages d'lsra~l ou le fruit d'une Fiddlitd. Qutbec: Presses de l'Universit6 Laval, 1968. Pp. 286. Paper, $3.50. Bolle, Kees W. The Freedom of Man in Myth. Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 1968. Pp. xiv+199. $5. ...

The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society

The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society

Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers: Essays in the Interpretation of the American Enlightenment

Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers: Essays in the Interpretation of the American Enlightenment

Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers: Essays in the Interpretation of the American Enlightenment

Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers: Essays in the Interpretation of the American Enlightenment

Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers: Essays in the Interpretation of the American Enlightenment.

Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers: Essays in the Interpretation of the American Enlightenment.

Pragmatic Wisdom and the American Enlightenment

JF there is truth in the view that ideas and theories originate in felt difficulties, then I would suggest that there is work to be done to understand the nature of the American Enlightenment. For it is more than ordinarily disconcerting to consult the accounts of this important period of intellectual adventure and to find a portrait whose focus distorts the reality. The purpose of this essay is to point out certain significant features of the American Enlightenment that center about the supposedly contradictory terms, pragmatic and wisdom, employed in my title. By conjoining these two terms I am concerned to show that the normal use of them as somehow antithetical is unwarranted; and that the Ameri can Enlightenment, at least, cannot bequnderstood on the basis of the kind of protocol which demands that they be kept apart. The interpretations that offer themselves as descriptions of this unparalleled period of American thought of the eighteenth century appear to make one fundamental charge: that this thought is dogmatic. Some historians maintain that it is dogmatic in so emphasizing that it becomes the ccult of reason.' Other historians trace the dogma not to reason but to

The Enlightenment in Thomas Jefferson

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Enlightenment in Thomas JeffersonHerbert W. SchneiderHerbert W. Schneider Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 53, Number 4Jul., 1943 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/290363 Views: 5Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Intellectual Background of William Ellery Channing

William Ellery Channing was an American Schleiermacher, standing at the turning point from the Enlightenment to Transcendentalism, and, like Schleiermacher, he has been treated by historians as the initiator of a movement. He is understood in terms of what followed him. According to Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, he represents the budding of New England. I wish to reverse the perspective and to present Channing as the culmination of the American Enlightenment. In the Revolutionary generation three distinct systems of thought, three historically separate faiths were flourishing; for want of better terms I shall call them rationalism, pietism, and republicanism. Channing, as I shall attempt to show, inherited each of these faiths, understood the issues at stake, felt the struggle intimately, and attempted to formulate a synthesis of all three. His humanitarianism may therefore fittingly be studied as the summation of the ideals of the American Enlightenment. If I had time, I would follow up the negative side of the argument and show that Channing participated only slightly in the thought of the coming generation, the generation from 1830 to 1860, and that he was, on the whole, not willingly a prophet of Transcendentalism. In his last years, when he saw dimly what was to come, he was repelled by much of it and looked back almost wistfully to the faith of his fathers.