Garry Wills Research Articles

Jefferson and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Critique of Garry Wills's Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

G ARRY Wills's study of the intellectual background to that most famous of all American political documents, the Declaration of Independence, is nothing short of revolutionary.' In what is surely the most ambitious effort to investigate the political philosophy underlying the Declaration since Carl Becker published his monograph in I922,2 Wills, with enormous ingenuity, has attempted a thorough reinterpretation of Jefferson's meaning as it emerges in the document. His thesis, simply put, is that there are really three Declarations: the Declaration as political document (the Declaration adopted by Congress); the Declaration as symbol of nationhood (the Declaration as a product of later reinterpretation); and the Declaration as philosophical treatise (the Declaration as written by Jefferson). The major emphasis of Wills's monograph, and that which provides the subtitle of his book, is on this third DeclarationJefferson's Declaration.3 The heart of his analysis the term is Wills's is his contention that, far from bearing the imprint of Lockean political theory, the Declaration, as Jefferson originally intended it, can be properly understood only if it is analyzed as a product of the Scottish Enlightenment, and that Jefferson's views on the nature of man and society derived not fromrJohn Locke's Two Treatises of Government but from the works of Thomas Reid, David Hume, Adam Smith, Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson, and Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson's system of moral philosophy particularly, Wills contends, contains the key to decoding the theory of the nature and proper functions of government embedded in the Declaration. To his central argument Wills attaches several others in defense of his theory of three Declarations: that the Declaration, to those who signed it, held none of the significance as a

An Underpraised and Undervalued System

Socialism, it appears, is like the Volvo: the thinking person's ideology. It is, according to Irving Howe in World of Our Fathers, the vital inheritance of Jewish immigrants. It attracts many dissidents of Catholic origin, like Michael Harrington, Garry Wills, Rosemary Ruether, and the busy workers at the Center for Concern. According to Henry Ford II, it has come to dominate in the bosom of the Ford Foundation. On television shows corporate tycoons and small businessmen are invariably corrupt, and on the television news—that lucrative portion of one of the most profitable of all industries—profits in other industries are reported on with faint whiffs of moral disapproval.

Garry Wills' Sour Birds

Garry Wills' Sour Birds: An Essay Review Get access JUSTUS GEORGE LAWLER JUSTUS GEORGE LAWLER JUSTUS GEORGE LAWLBR is the Editor of Continuum Books, a division of Seabury Press which continues the original Herder and Herder line; he is also Professor of Humanities in Xavier College, Chicago. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume XLI, Issue 1, March 1973, Pages 122–134, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/XLI.1.122 Published: 01 March 1973

Classicism in Keats's Chapman Sonnet

Journal Article Classicism in Keats's Chapman Sonnet Get access GARRY WILLS GARRY WILLS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Essays in Criticism, Volume XVII, Issue 4, October 1967, Pages 456–460, https://doi.org/10.1093/eic/XVII.4.456 Published: 01 October 1967

Politics and Catholic Freedom. Garry Wills

Politics and Catholic Freedom. Garry Wills

Politics and Catholic Freedom. By Garry Wills. Chicago: Regnery, 1964. 302 pp. $5.95

Politics and Catholic Freedom. By Garry Wills. Chicago: Regnery, 1964. 302 pp. $5.95

BOOK REVIEWS

Journal Article BOOK REVIEWS Get access Politics and Cotholic Freedom. By GARRY WILLS. Foreword by Will Herberg. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964. 302 pages. $ 5.95. E. CLINTON GARDNER E. CLINTON GARDNER Emory University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2, April 1965, Pages 197–198, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/XXXIII.2.197 Published: 01 April 1965

Politics and Catholic Freedom. By Garry Wills. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964. Pp. 302. $5.95.)

Politics and Catholic Freedom. By Garry Wills. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964. Pp. 302. $5.95.)