Reading:
Kenny:
221-228
Osborne:
87-941
Penguin:
as appropriate
Terms:
John
Milton (1608-1674)
Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679)
John
Locke (1632-1677)
Baron
Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Voltaire
(1693-1778)
Algernon
Sydney (1623-1683)
Jonathan
Edwards (1703-1758)
Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766)
Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826)
Important periods and years.
1640s: English Civil War(s)
1650: Arrest, trial, and beheading of Charles I
1650s Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, 1650-68
1660: Restoration. Charles II (1660-1685), James II (1685-1688)
1688: Glorious Revolution. William and Mary. Constitutional Monarchy. English Bill of Rights.
1750: Jonathan Mayhew: A discourse concerning the unlimited submission andnon-resistance to the high powers
1776: Thomas Jefferson. Declaration of Independence.
1789: U. S. Constitution. Bill of Rights.
1640s: King Charles I: The "Cavaliers" Aristocracy (Anglican--Bishops as basis of chruch government.) vs. Parliament: Calvinists: 1) Presbyterians (Presbyters as basis of church government, theocratic. 2) Independents and sectaries. Cromwell and Milton are Independents. Much of the Parliment's New Model Army (headed by Cromwell) are "Levelers."
1640s: American Colonies: Mass Bay Colony English Presbyterians. Plymouth Colony, Salem, Rhode Island: Independents Separatists and Independents.
1688: James II (very high-church Anglican) vs. William (Dutch Reformed Church) and Mary (Anglican?)
1789: Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Washington, Jay...) who are Episcopalians... vs. Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson): who are free thinkers, separatists, Congregationalists, Scottish Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, etc.
Notes:
John Milton (1608-1674)
Latin Secretary (Secretary of State) under Cromwell, promotes a notion of Christian Liberty: God and God’s creation (the universe) are revealed through inspiration and observation, the Son of God is Reason applied to the understanding of God and the universe. Mosaic Law is abrogated by the gospel and sacrifice of the Son; so that “regenerate” man is emancipated from outward authority and is, under divine guidance, a free agent. The Ten Commandments are abolished for Christians, who are to live by the laws of love. “The great and almost the only commandment of the gospel is to command nothing against the good of man, and much more no civil command against his civil good.”[1] “No ordinance, human or from heaven, can bind against the good of man.”[2] Those who, on the basis of the Mosaic law, “burden us with imaginary and scarecrow sins . . . enslave the dignity of man.”[3] Finally, there is no such thing as the “Divine Right of Kings.”
What is Milton’s Paradise Lost?
1. Theological Tract: Christian Humanism
· The fall of man and his redemption through Christ is central to Milton’s understanding.
· Christian as opposed to Jewish view of history: Men can not be redeemed by history.
· Original sin is a fact of existence.
· The Bible is the word of God, but Milton believes in th eprinciple of private interpretation. Moreover, the authority of he Bible must yield to the authority of the Holy Spirit within the individual soul.
· Doctrine of Christian Liberty: Mosaic Law is abrogated by the gospel and sacrifice of the Son; so that “regenerate man” is emancipated from outward authority and is, under divine guidance, a free agent.
· Repudiates the doctrine of predestination: the assertion of man’s free will and responsibility is one of the central themes of the poem. God grants salvation to all believers.
· Reason and Justice are universal absolutes which God himself, so to speak, can not alter.
· Among other things, God is Absolute Reason and he governs a rational universe.
· Human beings are endowed with reason, which can, up to a point, comprehend and rule their own nature and destiny. Men and women are the rational creatures of a rational Deity.
· Reason in people can discern good and evil, unless obscured by custom, sin, superstition, human frailty; because of the weakness of human reason and will, humility, obedience and divine Grace are needed.
· Humanity holds a middle position in the Great Chain of Being. If a person forgets his or her place and through pride aspires to equality with God, he or she upsets the natural order, as Satan did with open revolt. When Adam and Eve sin, the natural order is upset. Nevertheless, sin they must, so they can be redeemed. Sin and disobedience are necessary for salvation and therefore are, so to speak, “good.”
· Science and philosophy are important, but the line must be drawn where such learning obscures or displaces religious and moral insight, or nourishes pride and self-sufficiency.
2. Exercise in Mythography: “Transformational Mythology”
Mythological Archetypes are “transformational.” Their significance changes depending upon how they are viewed, and in relation to the altering dynamics of the story. God, Adam, Eve and Satan all alter in significance as the story unfolds. Consider the following passage from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
The Ancient poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive.
And particularly they studied the genius of every city & country, placing it under its mental deity.
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things.
Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.
3. Political Manifesto: Revolution and Reformation.
4. Farrago of Recondite Scholarship.
5. Commentary on Nuptial relations.
6. Song.
Summation:
Milton's project is to take the Independent Calvinist worldview and from it render a secular anthropological and political understanding. This worldview is "modern" in the sense that religion and the power of the church are mitigated (first) by knowledge and scientific skepticism and (second) by constitutional policy that denies magisterial power to churches. Magisterial power is reserved exclusively to the state--this is the substance of Locke's Letter on Toleration and Jefferson's Virginia Act of Religious Freedom. In this particular and others, Milton laid the groundwork for Locke and Jefferson, who carried Milton's project forward, refining the modern worldview by defining and designing institutions--education, balance of powers, property and labor rights, natural rights, the obligations of governments and the duties of citizens, a free press, the fair and equitable distribution of wealth, and so on--that would establish and maintain the processes of an open, free and liberal society.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
a) Opposed the English Revolution and advocated a strong monarch:
b) Not only the universe but society and people are mechanical too.
c) Leviathan (1651):
i. "Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to everyman, the same consequent to the time wherin men live without other security than which their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such a condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
ii. The state of nature is a war of all against all.
iii. Good and evil are relative. Man's fundamental selfishness is fundamental; to aid survival, men logically form societies
iv. In order to form societies men renounce some of their rights and enter into a social contract: the commonwealth, an artificial man in which the sovereign is the sum of the individuals.
CLASSICAL LIBERAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
Locke’s Political Philosophy: Two Treatises on Government (1689 & 1690)
First Treatise: No divine right of kings. God does not put some men above others.
a) Defense of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and Milton; an attack on Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653) and Hobbes.
Second Treatise:
a) "Man is free and in this condition all men are equal" Locke's State of Nature (compare to Hobbes).
b) Natural Law: The right of private property: The right of private ownership lay in labor.
Since a man's labor is his own, anything he transforms with that labor was his as well.
c) "The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths & putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property."
d) Inalienable Rights, which are ordained by God:
1) Right to Life.
2) Right to Liberty
3) Right to Property
4) Right to Rebel under unjust rulers & laws.
e) "Reason, which is that [moral] law, teaches al mankind who will but consult it, that,
being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or profession."
f) Theory of Checks and Balances: Separation of Powers: Executive and Legislative powers: "Liberal Compromise."
g) Locke's ideas worked in middle class England & America, but produced radical ferment throughout a Europe of absolute monarchies. Do his ideas work in today’s “Corporate” America?
Baron Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Virtue is the principle of a Republic.
Honor is the principle of a Monarchy.
Fear is the principle of a Despotism.
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
a) Wealth of Nations (1776):
1) Economic freedom is the obvious and simple system of a natural liberty.
2) The right way to be moral was to be greedy.
3) The invisible hand of the marketplace.
Neoclassic Aesthetics
1. Neoclassic authors manifested a strong traditionalism, which was often joined to a distrust of radical innovation, and was evidenced above all in their immense respect for classical writers (Greek and Roman writers), who were thought to have established the enduring models, and to have achieved a supreme level of excellence, in most of the literary genres. Hence the term "neoclassic."
2. Literature was conceived as primarily an "art"; one which, though it requires innate talents, must be perfected by long and steady practice, and which consists mainly in the deliberate adaptation of known and tested means to the achievement of foreseen ends upon the audience of readers. The neoclassic ideal, founded especially on Horace's Ars Poetica, is the craftsman's ideal, demanding the utmost finish, correction, and attention to detail. Neoclassic writers strove for stylistic decorum, and for "correctness" in respect to form, in respect to the essential properties of the various genres that have been abstracted from classical works whose long survival has proved their excellence.
3. A person, and especially a person as an integral part of an organized society, was regarded as the primary source of poetic subject matter. Poetry is an imitation of life. Not art for art's sake, but art for humanity's sake, was the ideal of neoclassic humanism.
4. Both in the subject matter and the appeal of art, emphasis was placed on what humans possess in common--representative characteristics, and widely shared thoughts, feelings, and tastes.
5. Neoclassic writers, like the philosophers of the time, viewed an individual as an essentially limited being who ought to address him or herself to accessible goals. Many of the great works of the period, satiric and didactic, attack humanity's "pride," or presumption beyond the natural limits of the species, and enforce the lesson of the golden mean (the avoidance of extremes) and of humanity's need to submit to a restricted position in the order of things--an order often envisioned as a natural hierarchy, or Great Chain of Being.
Source: M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, Fourth Edition.
6. "The business of the poet," said Imlac, "is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind....
"But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions and accidental influences of climate or custom . . . He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same . . . He must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations; as a being superior to time and place.
"His labor is not yet at an end: he must know many languages and many sciences; and, that his style may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony."
Source: Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, Chapter X.
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
The Colonial Background
a) The Virginia Colony (1607)
1) Anglican: planters were mostly members of England's landed aristocracy.
2) Orthodox and conservative, modeled their political patterns after the ideas of the British nobility.
b) The Plymouth Colony of the Pilgrim Fathers (1620)
1) Represented the lower stratum of English society.
2) Peasants, artisans, non-Anglicans, estranged from the Church of England. Had been persecuted in England.
3) Theocratic. Intolerant.
4) Middle class Puritans joined the colony in 1630
a) Mostly farmers.
b) Anglicans in religion seeking to "purify" Anglican dogma.
5) In time the Plymouth Colony was expanded into the Massachusetts Bay Company.
c) The Dutch Settlement (1621)
1) Settled along the Hudson River.
2) Primarily merchants, and only secondarily members of a church.
3) Tolerant in religious matters.
d) Maryland
1) Settled by Roman Catholics
2) Emphasized religious tolerance as a matter of expediency
e) Pennsylvania
1) The Friends or Quakers
a) Freedom of Conscience through Puritan thinking.
“Puritans”
Three threads: Prelacy, Presbyterianism (Congregationalism), Independents
a) Elizabethan England was strongly Protestant
b) Calvinism
c) "Puritanism" survived in New England for three generations without significant
challenges.
d) Congregationalists: intolerant and authoritarian (Massachusetts Bay Colony)
e) Independents: tolerant and liberal (Plymouth Colony, Rhode Island)
f) Concern was with salvation of man and the revelation of God.
f) The world reflects God's perfection. The world is created by God and was God-ruled. Nature was studied in order to find God's workings in the world.
g) Rational knowledge does not redeem man and is not necessary to faith.
h) Reason was used to confirm Puritan theology.
i) rational and anti-rational at same time.
j) Word of God was absolute truth. Logic and reason are means to inquire into the word of God. Reason and the word of God leads to Revelation.
k) Man fell into corruption through "imperious will" or pride. God redeems man through the "Covenant of faith."
l) Puritans regarded themselves as God's chosen. Failure and defeat were part of God's plan.
m) The "Covenant of Grace" maintains that "God keeps us through faith." All who accept and remain in the covenant are saved. All others are lost.
n) Puritan work ethic. Men of Action rather than contemplation. All labor is a worship of God. Prosperity is a favor to man for his religious faith.
o) Puritanism provided the seeds of Emersonian Pantheism and, later, American Pragmatism.
Schools
a) New England
1) Basis of citizenship was the Bible and the Catechism.
2) Religious and democratic ideals: liberty and learning existed in a holy alliance.
3) Every child shall be blessed with learning, since liberty invests in them with the rights and duties of citizenship.
4) Higher learning in New England
a) Harvard College
1) Many men in New England were University men form Emmanuel College, Cambridge (Puritan).
2) General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Company founded college at Newtowne, 1639.
3) John Harvard, a Congregational minister and graduate of Emmanuel bequeaths his library of 260 volumes to Newtowne College, which is renamed after him, 1639.
4) Harvard trains puritan ministers.
b) Yale College (1701) patterned after Harvard, for the education of ministers for the united Connecticut and New Haven colonies, which had been united and had set up a system of grammar schools in 1655.
5) Quakers
6) New Amsterdam and the New York City Colony.
7) The Southern Colonies
a) Not entirely favorable to the democratic policy of educating the masses.
b) Privileged education for their children in private schools.
c) Schools not established until 1705.
d) Poor were educated in charity schools, training in useful trades, the schools were supported largely by the Society for the Preparation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which was based in England.
e) College of William and Mary founded in 1693.
Philosophers of the Early Years
a) First Great Awakening--probably not as significant as many historians of culture will argue. The "New Lights" were proficient at amplifying their significance though their writings.
1) “New Lights” and “Old Lights”
b) Samuel Johnson (1696-1772). (How does he fit in here?)
c) Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) Calvinist philosopher. "New Light."
D) Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766). "Old Light."
The Revolution
a) Aversion to things English
b) French thinkers influenced Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, but main philosophical thrust was Lockean.
c) Deism: Belief in the existence of God in Nature rather than the God of revealed religion. Deism: "System of natural religion assuming the existence of God while denying the validity of revelation" (American Heritage Dictionary).
1) God becomes "negligible and peripheral."
2) God makes the world and steps back.
d) American Enlightenment (European Enlightenment)
e) Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
1) Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason.
f) Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766)
1) A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers (1750) celebrated the execution of King Charles I. Argued against political absolutism, the divine right theories which seek to justify absolutism, and argued the right of revolution. Gave the American Revolution a footing in Natural Religion. John Adams called the work the opening gun of the American Revolution.
2) Mayhew was inclined toward Deism and Arianism. Argued from the pulpit that salvation came from moral struggle rather than free grace. That true religion includes the love of liberty and hate of tyranny and oppression. When government fails, people should overthrow it.
3) Influenced by: John Locke (1632-1704), John Milton (1608-1674), Algernon Sydney (1622-1683), Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688), Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747), with added inspiration from the Scriptures, especially Paul.
g) Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
a) Rationalistic, practical morality.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
a) Varied interests: natural sciences, art, history, religion, exploration, mechanical gadgets. Was interested in learning for the sake of learning.
b) Lost faith in conventional religion, but never questioned established morality.
c) Zeal for religious freedom.
d) Disliked Calvinism, but considered himself a disciple of Jesus' moral doctrines.
e) At the College of William and Mary he established the professorships of anatomy, medicine, law, and modern languages, in the process abolishing the professorships of Hebrew, theology, and ancient languages.
f) Believed that there were regularities (universals) in Nature and human nature, discovered by science and applied for the benefit of Mankind.
g) Critical of Plato, but friendly to Epicurean ideas. Profoundly influenced by Newtonian thought.
h) Jefferson's religious credo (written to Benjamin Rush in 1800):
"I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility
against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
(Is there perhaps a hint buried here as to why Jefferson changed Locke's "property" to "happiness" in the Declaration?)
Jefferson’s religious expressions and assumptions about religion:
". . . the law's of nature and Nature's God . . . "
". . . Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness . . . "
". . . --That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the governed . . ."
". . . in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions . . ."
"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge . . ."
". . . Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens . . . civil incapacitations . . . beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness and go against] the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being a Lord both of body and mind . . . [chooses not to control the body or mind through coercion] as was in h s almighty power to do . . . "
". . . the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others . . . "
". . . false religion over the greatest part of the world, and through all time [has been] . . . established and maintained [by the above legislators and rulers] . . ."
" . . . to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical . . .
". . . forcing . . . [a man] to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable [comforting] liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern . . . "
". . . our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions [or, our religious opinions have no influence on our civil rights], any more than our opinions . . . [have influence on] physics and geometry . . ."
" . . . [state supported religion encourages hypocrisy, and encourages civil magistrates to intrude . . . [their] powers into the field of opinion . . . [and repress thee religious opinions of others] which at once destroys religious liberty . . ."
" . . . [legislators have time only for] the rightful purposes of civil government . . . maintaining peace and good order . . ."
". . . . truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she [truth] is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from from the conflict , unless by human interposition [actions of tyrants] disarmed of her natural weapons . . . [which are] free argument and debate[.]
". . . errors cease . . . to be dangerous when . . . [truth] is permitted freely to contradict them . . ."
" . . . [n]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever . . . nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief . . . all men shall be free to profess, and by argument maintain, their own opinion in matters of religion . . ."
". . . the rights hearty asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or t narrow its operation, such act shall be am infringement of natural right."
Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802
". . . religion is a matter that lies solely between a man and his God . . ."
". . . [A man] owes account to none other [than God] for his faith or his worship . . ."
". . . the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions . . . "
(Note: Does "hate crime" legislation control actions or opinions?)
". . . Adhering to this expression [--separation of church and state, Article I--] of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties . . . "
". . . I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessings of the common Father and Creator of man . . "
Observations:
1) Jefferson's political considerations led to scientific ideas and religious conclusions. Or, his scientific ideas and religious considerations led to political conclusions.
2) Science, politics and theology are not treated as separate compartments of culture.
3) Reason (and faith in reason) is applied to all areas of human concern and endeavor. Reason yields no inconsistencies or conflict of results.
4) The American political system--the American nation--owes its existence to faith in Reason. America was the first nation to be based on Reason.
5) In Germany in the, nation building in the 19th century nation building was based on culture and ethnicity.
6) Why did the French Revolution fail? The French Revolution was based upon rational assumptions that were variable and transforming according to cultural leadership (see Descartes and Rousseau)?
7) Why did the American Revolution succeed? America was the first nation to be based on Reason (see Bacon and Locke)? Middle class? Located out side the mainstream of Europe?
The American Idea of Revolution:
In his seminal book on The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn identifies five currents of thought that were significant to forming the world view of the colonists who struggled against the British Empire. The initial four are as follows: first, “the heritage of classical antiquity;” second, the “ideas and attitudes associated with the writings of Enlightenment rationalism;” third, the tradition represented by English common law; and, fourth, the “political and social theories of New England Puritanism.” However, according to Bailyn,
important as all these clusters of ideas were, they did not in themselves form a coherent intellectual pattern, and they do not exhaust the elements that went into the making of the Revolutionary frame of mind . . . The ultimate origins of this distinctive ideological strain lay in the radical social thought of the English Civil War, and of the Commonwealth period.Bailyn goes on to say that the permanent form of the American revolutionary world view had fully formed by the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth-centuries. Interestingly enough but not surprisingly, Milton figures significantly as a progenitor of this opposition theory. If this is true, the American Revolution is properly an outcome of radical “poetical” processes of late-Protestant thought. In more modern terms, this revolutionary mindset is characterized by patterns of investigation sharing close affinities with analytic philosophy and critical synoptics. Before, however, analytic and synoptic perception is possible, thought has to be set free to range beyond the limits of custom and conventional knowledge.
Bernard Bailyn. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992).
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: THE ESSENCE OF MODERNISM
Separation of Church and State in the US: a Historical Perspective
From the U.S. Constitution:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
From Amendment XIV
1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State
wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
The Reformation
Martin Luther (1483-1546) Justification (salvation) through faith and not works.
Nails 95 Theses to the Church Door in Wittenberg, 1517.
John Calvin (1509-1564) Men and women were sinful and depraved and totally dependent for salvation on the mercy of a pure, all-powerful God. Predestination.
English Reformation
1509-1547: Henry VIII
1547-1553: Edward VI
1553-1558: “Bloody” Mary. Three hundred Protestants burned at the stake. Three centuries later Jane Austin writes: "This woman [Mary] had the good luck of being advanced to the throne of England, in spite of the superior pretensions, Merit and Beauty of her Cousins Mary Queen of Scotland and Jane Grey. Nor can I pity the Kingdom for the misfortunes they experienced during her reign, since they fully deserved them..."
1558-1603: Elizabeth I
1603-1625: James I
1625-1649: Charles I
1640s: English Revolution/Civil War: Parliament (so-called Puritans--Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Independents, radicals) vs. King Charles I (Anglican). Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) is set during this period in America.
John Milton (1608-1674): Latin Secretary (Secretary of State) under Cromwell, promotes a notion of Christian Liberty: God and God’s creation (the universe) are revealed through inspiration and observation, the Son of God is reason applied to the understanding of God and the universe. Mosaic Law is abrogated by the gospel and sacrifice of the Son; so that “regenerate” man is emancipated from outward authority and is, under divine guidance, a free agent. The Ten Commandments are abolished for Christians, who are to live by the laws of love. “The great and almost the only commandment of the gospel is to command nothing against the good of man, and much more no civil command against his civil good.”[5] “No ordinance, human or from heaven, can bind against the good of man.”[6] Those who, on the basis of the Mosaic law, “burden us with imaginary and scarecrow sins . . . enslave the dignity of man.”[7] Finally, there is no such thing as the “Divine Right of Kings.”
1649: Charles I is tried and beheaded by Cromwell and the Army. Commonwealth (Council of State) 1649-53.
1651: Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). To preserve the social contract the authority of the ruler is absolute. Men have no right to rebel.
1653: England is not ready for republican democracy. Oliver Cromwell dissolves Parliament and becomes Lord Protector. Cromwell dies in 1658, his son, unable to rule, restores Parliament.
1660: Parliament calls Charles II. Restoration of English throne, Charles II. The middle classes will struggle with the monarchy for the next 28 years.
1679: Act of Habeas Corpus passed forbidding imprisonment without trial.
1680: Patriarcha,or the Natural Right of Kings, Sir Robert Filmer (d.1653). Filmer asserts divine authority of kings and denies any right to resistance.
1685-88: Reign of James II (Catholic). 1687 Declaration of Liberty of Conscience extends toleration to all religions (chiefly to accommodate Catholics).
1689: “Glorious Revolution.” William and Mary of Orange are invited to take the throne (one reason being to save England from Roman Catholicism) and land in England. James II flees to France.
1689: Bill of Rights establishes constitutional monarchy in Britain. Toleration act guarantees freedom of worship to dissenters in England.
1689 & 1690: John Locke (1632-1704) publishes his Treatises on Government. Two Treatises of Government: In the former the false principles of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers are detected and overthrown; the latter is an essay concerning the true original extent and end of civil government. First Treatise repudiates Divine Right of Kings. God does not put some men above others. Second Treatise:
--“Man is free and in this condition all men are equal.”
--The right of private property. The right of private ownership originates in labor. Since a man’s
labor is his own, anything he transforms with that labor is his as well.
--“The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths & putting themselves under
governments is the preservation of their property.”
--Inalienable Rights, which are ordained by God: 1) Right to Life; 2) Right to Liberty; 3) Right
to Property; 4) Right to Rebel against unjust rulers & laws.
--“Reason, which is that [moral] law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that, being all
equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or profession.”
--Checks and Balances; Separation of Powers into Executive and Legislative powers:
“Liberal Compromise.”
--Locke’s ideas worked in middle class England and America, but produced radical ferment
throughout a Europe of absolutist monarchies.
House of Hanover (1714-1901): George I (1714-1727), George II (1727-1760), George III (1760-1820)
America:
1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock, form repressive theocracy. Period of colonization begins. Congregationalist establishment remains unchallenged in New England until the 1730s.
1730-70: First Great Awakening in New England, Mid Atlantic, down to NC. New Light Congregationalists and Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists (after 1770) challenge Congregationalist and Episcopalian authority:
Gilbert Tennent: New Jersey
Jonathan Edwards: Boston
George Whitefield: Anglican, (follower of John Wesley, Methodist).
Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1809): West Church, Boston
1750: Boston: Mayhew publishes a sermon entitled “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers: with Some Reflection on the Resistance Made to King Charles I” (http://www.lawandliberty.org/mayhew.htm). In this sermon Mayhew justifies (but criticizes the proceedings leading to) the execution of Charles I. Argues against political absolutism, the divine right theories which seek to justify absolutism, and argued the right of revolution. John Adams called Mayhew’s sermon the opening gun of the American Revolution. On other occasions Mayhew preached salvation came from moral struggle rather than grace, that true religion includes the love of liberty and hate of tyranny and oppression.
1759: Virginia: Patrick Henry defended a parish sued by its rector for lost wages due to the Two-Penny Act. According to Henry, the Act had been passed for the good of the people; the king and “father of his people,” who disallowed the act had “degenerated into a tyrant, and forfeits all rights to his subjects obedience.” Some of those present mutter “treason.” Henry next attacked the clergy: “We have heard a great deal,” he said, “about the benevolence and holy zeal of our reverend clergy. But how is this manifested? . . . Do they feed the hungry and clothe the naked? No! These rapacious harpies would, were their power equal to their will, snatch from the hearth of their honest parishioner his last hoecake, from the widow and her orphan children her last milch cow! The last bed—nay, the last blanket—from the lying-in woman [woman in labor]!” Henry concluded that in disregarding the Two-Penny Act the clergy had acted with characteristic disregard of the public good and thus violated the principle upon which established churches must rest: “The only use of an established church and clergy in society is to enforce obedience to civil sanctions, and . . . when a clergy cease to answer these ends, the community have no further need of their ministry, and may justly strip them of their appointments.” In this case, “instead of useful members of the state, they ought to be considered as enemies of the community, and . . . very justly deserved to be punished with signal severity.”
1759-1763: The Mayhew-Apthorp controversy. Unable to establish itself in America without Parliament’s authorization, in 1759 the Anglican Church sought to work around the law by setting up a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at a mission in Cambridge on the very doorsteps of Harvard University. East Apthorp, the person appointed to the post, was supercilious and arrogant. In his preaching and writing, Apthorp identified Christian orthodoxy with episcopacy, and equated New England nonconformity with superstition, fanaticism, hypocrisy, persecution, popery and Mohammedanism. Anthorp contributed to the fears that an American episcopate was going to be established in New England. In response, Mayhew published Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society (1763), which criticized the Society for violating its charter, and claimed the society was “setting alter against alter” with the design of deceiving New England nonconformists into submitting to the establishment of the Church of England. Mayhew hurled invectives against the Church: a mode of worship that was completely alien “from the simplicity of the Gospel and apostolic times,” an “enormous hierarchy,” the same “mitred, lordly successors of the fishermen of Galilee,” who had originally driven the colonists’ ancestors from “the fair cities, villages and delightful fields of Britain” into the “arms of savages and barbarians.” Mayhew warned that religious oaths would be demanded as they were in Britain, and that the colonists would “be taxed for the support of bishops and their underlings.” Mayhew warned that an over-all establishment could be created by an act of parliament or by fiat of the crown; but neither parliament nor the crown had the right to extend the ecclesiastical laws of England to America. Moreover, England had no right to reach in any other way into the internal affairs of the colonies.[8]
1765: Boston: Mayhew preaches a sermon against the Stamp Act. Riots follow.
1770: Boston Massacre. British troops present because of postwar depression in England (after the Seven Years war/French and Indian War) fight with colonists over jobs on the docks of Boston.
1773: Boston Tea Party
July 4, 1776: Declaration of Independence
Acts of Religious Freedom and Tolerance
During the 70s and 80s, acts guaranteeing religious tolerance and freedom were passed throughout the colonies/states prohibiting the establishment of any one religion and to protect nonconformists by placing all religions on an equal footing, through. Controversy in New England continues into the early 1800s.
June, 1776: Virginia Declaration of Rights. “Religion can be directed only by reason and conviction . . . all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.” Important sections authored by James Madison, who was influenced by claims of Presbyterians, “persecuted Baptists,” as well as notions of Natural Law. However, the Episcopal Church remained established in Virginia for another ten years.
1786: Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow-citizens he has a natural right; that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right.[9]
1801: Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut were persecuted because they were not part of the Congregationalist establishment in that state. The Danbury Baptist Association, concerned about religious liberty in the new nation writes to President Thomas Jefferson, Oct. 7, 1801:
“Sir,
Among the many millions in America and Europe who rejoice in your Election to office; we embrace the first opportunity which we have enjoyd in our collective capacity, since your Inauguration, to express our great satisfaction, in your appointment to the chief Majestracy in the United States; And though our mode of expression may be less courtly and pompious than what many others clothe their addresses with, we beg you, Sir to believe, that none are more sincere.
Our Sentiments are uniformly on the side of Religious Liberty -- That Religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals -- That no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious Opinions - That the legitimate Power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor: But Sir our constitution of government is not specific. Our ancient charter together with the Laws made coincident therewith, were adopted on the Basis of our government, at the time of our revolution; and such had been our Laws & usages, and such still are; that Religion is considered as the first object of Legislation; and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights: and these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgements, as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen. It is not to be wondered at therefore; if those, who seek after power & gain under the pretense of government & Religion should reproach their fellow men -- should reproach their chief Magistrate, as an enemy of religion Law & good order because he will not, dare not assume the prerogatives of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.
Sir, we are sensible that the President of the United States, is not the national legislator, and also sensible that the national government cannot destroy the Laws of each State; but our hopes are strong that the sentiments of our beloved President, which have had such genial affect already, like the radiant beams of the Sun, will shine and prevail through all these States and all the world till Hierarchy and Tyranny be destroyed from the Earth. Sir, when we reflect on your past services, and see a glow of philanthropy and good will shining forth in a course of more than thirty years we have reason to believe that America's God has raised you up to fill the chair of State out of that good will which he bears to the Millions which you preside over. May God strengthen you for the arduous task which providence & the voice of the people have cald you to sustain and support you in your Administration against all the predetermined opposition of those who wish to rise to wealth & importance on the poverty and subjection of the people.
And may the Lord preserve you safe from every evil and bring you at last to his Heavenly Kingdom through Jesus Christ our Glorious Mediator.
Signed in behalf of the Association.
Nehh Dodge
Ephram Robbins The Committee
Stephen S. Nelson
On January 1, 1802, in response to the letter from the Danbury Baptist Association, Jefferson wrote:
Gentlemen:
The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which are so good to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all of his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessings of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.
1800: Jefferson’s Motto (written by Benjamin Rush): “I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”
English Common Law vs. Religious Law:
English Common Law was source of legal authority and understanding. Where metaphysical assumptions were thought necessary, Natural Law (Reason) was cited. Legal scholars sought to identify and remove church law from common law. In the Laws of Alfred a pious copyist had prefixed four chapters of mosaic law, an inclusion which Jefferson described as fraud, forgery and monkish fabrication. Anti-establishment laws were designed to:
1. Take religious matters out of common law. Example of religious law: heresy was a capital offense punishable by burning, according to the writ of de haerectico comburando.
2. Foil the designs of Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton, who wanted to create institutions to control and exploit people.
3. Encourage people to live together.
4. Pacify radical nonconformists.
5. Protect the United States from religious violence and warfare.
OTHER AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS AND SCHOOLMEN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton and Paine were the definitive thinkers of the period. Others:
John Witherspoon (1723-1794)
1) Scottish Presbyterian minister.
2) Ecclesiastical Characteristics (1753), a conservative diatribe against the current Scottish theological controversy.
3) A Serious Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Stage (1757), an attack upon all drama.
4) The Trial of Religious Truth by its Moral Significance (1759), a sermon attacking natural religion.
5) Migrated to America in 1768 to become president of Princeton University, where he was first of the line of representatives of Scottish common-sense realism, and drove out Berkeley's idealism. He favored founding a moral philosophy of human nature without conflict between reason and religion, what Santayana called "the genteel tradition" in American philosophy.
6) A signer of the Declaration of Independence, member of the Continental Congress.
7) Lectures on Moral Philosophy (1800).
7) "Man is neither pure spirit or pure body."
8) Calvinistic and transcendental: An attempt to correct the skepticism of Hume by advancing the hypothesis that knowledge is first, last, and at all times a knowledge of objects (see Reid).
9) "We have duties:
a) . . . to ourselves, such as temperance and frugality.
b) . . . to God, in obedience to His Law as set forth by the Scriptures."
c) . . . to our neighbors involving both "natural rights and rights acquired by legal and social conventions."
10) Eventually, Witherspoon's teachings failed in their persuasiveness.
Timothy Dwight (1752-1817)
1) President of Yale University from 1795-1817
2) Represents the "enlightened orthodoxy" of the period, as Paine and Franklin represent "enlightened heresy."
3) Rationalism is balanced by orthodox religion: there is no real conflict between reason and revealed religion. Where such conflict occurs is due to our natural limitations as human beings, and our ignorance.
4) Faith in the ultimate rationality of revealed religion saves us from the dangers and challenges to faith represented by abstract reason.
4) Dwight claimed the authority of the Bible was absolute.
5) The finite human mind is capable of reason, which yearns for transcendent truth.
6) Emerson would eventually provide the poetry to satisfy reason's yearning for transcendent truth.
Benjamin Rush (1745-1813)
1) Outstanding scientist of the period.
2) Signer of the Declaration of Independence.
3) Physician, reformer, moralist, churchman, practical man of affairs.
4) Influenced by Scottish common-sense realism: science and learning,
philosophy and religion, all contribute to an understanding of the fundamental relationships, indirect and indirect, between God, the world, and man.
AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
Transcendentalism
1) Originating in Germany (Kant, post-Kant: F.W. Schelling (1775-1834), Schiller, Goethe, brought to the English speaking world through Carlisle and (esp.) Coleridge, who were discovered by the New England clergy.
2) Lies somewhere between the poetic metaphysics of Edwards and the prosaic (and “profane”) Deism of Franklin and Paine.
3) 1820-1860: America had become rich, men had become intoxicated by their
own importance, Puritan humility had been lost and, with it, the sense
of the sacred and the holy. The earth was made for man by man. Heaven and
Earth had been cut asunder. How could they be brought together again?
4) Transcendentalism rediscovered heaven, beauty, and the ineffable. A
poetic movement in the costume of philosophy, progress, democracy, social
reform (abolitionism), spiritual equality, experiments in Utopian living (Brook Farm, Fruitlands), back-to-nature, self reliance, non-conformity and civil disobedience (Thoreau), Unitarianism, spiritualism, animal magnetism, phrenology, mystic cults, and so on.
5) A religious philosophy born at a time when liberal theology and the
philosophy on which theological opinions were based was creating
dissatisfaction. Transcendentalism is a reaction against excessive emphasis on science and rationalism, both of which are characteristic of the Enlightenment.
6) Transcendentalism sought a direct relationship between the soul and
God (not through reason, but through mysticism and emotion). The
transcendental project was to pass beyond not only the conventional
avenues of communication and the senses, but also the churches, the clergy, and the Scriptures.
7) Combines Edward's Calvinist notions of the Elect possessing a
"supernatural sense" or intuition, with Kant's notions that God, freedom and immortality are not phenomenal, and are not reached through the senses or through scientific thinking.
8) Man has an intuitive capacity for grasping ultimate truth, and this achieving direct knowledge of the supernatural and greater universe that exists beyond the reach of the senses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
1. Publications:
a) Nature (1836)
b) American Scholar Address (1837), Phi Betta Kappa address.
c) The Divinity School Address (1838), to the graduating class.
d) Essays, First Series (1841)
e) Essays, Second Series (1844)
f) Representative Men (1850)
g) Conduct of Life (1860)
h) Society and Solitude (1870)
2. Calvinist/Congregationalist background. Calvinism is at times anti-intellectual in temper. Emerson always showed a bias against the rational, the logical, or against metaphysical theory. Little interest in or acquaintance with science and philosophy. Rather than logic, he preferred intuitionism, intuitive insight, sensitivity, and receptivity as methods of seeking knowledge and examining reality.
3. Emerson shares much in common with Edwards: Both born into families of Congregational clergymen. Reared in an intellectual and refined atmosphere, where moral restraint was strongly encouraged. Both were delicate, fragile children, sensitive, over-intellectualizing, brooding. But Edwards was an intellectual powerhouse; Emerson was a poet.
4. Emerson became a Unitarian minister, but left, disheartened.
5. In 1833, Emerson went to Europe to meet Coleridge, and Carlyle
to rethink his life. Aboard ship he discovered that God could be found in the depths of his own heart. He did not need Europe and, having found his own salvation within himself, preached self-reliance the rest of his life.
6. 1835, returned to America and embarked upon a career as a writer and lecturer.
7. According to Kant, "transcendental" referred to faculties of reason: The faculty of judgment (Transcendental Analytic); and the critique of reason proper (Transcendental Dialectic). Like other American transcendentalists, Emerson did little to find out what Kant meant.
8. For Emerson, "Transcendentalism" was a dogma whereby man has knowledge (a higher understanding) which derives from faculties higher than the faculty of reason. Emerson is supposed to have learned of the distinction between understanding and reason from Coleridge, who is supposed to have learned the distinction from Kant.
9. Emerson's teachings were sometimes mystical, sometimes Swedenborgian, showing the idea of humanity as the greater man; and sometimes Emerson taught "self reliance" was the source and meaning of his philosophy.
10. The function of culture is to lead the individual away from the natural, to correct the egoist, to reform the individualistic theory of success and to search for the ideal outcome of individualism: "men of original perception and action." These would be poet-philosophers, like Emerson.
11. Emerson disregarded the precise meaning of words. He claimed the text determines the meaning of words. Sometimes Emerson is rationalistic, sometime he is anti-rationalistic.
12. Against dogma he praised reason. Against science he was the champion of revelation, intuition, faith, insight, and poetic expression. Understanding and insight were complementary.
13. Emerson had no articulate theory of knowledge, only a working hypothesis.
14. He was more Platonic than Kantian.
15. In the search for true selfhood, Emerson placed emphasis on "self-reliance."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
1. Less interest in cosmic speculation than Emerson, who was in a sense Thoreau's "guru."
2. Walden is the record of an individual trying to discover for himself his own values.
3. Revered nature as a living bible.
4. Thoreau was on a mystic quest for the absolute. He viewed many of his contemporaries with disdain, a and considered man in general to be trapped in worldliness, and leading lives of quiet desperation.
5. Civil Disobedience was written after Thoreau spent a night in jail for not paying his taxes (in protest of the Mexican War, the treatment of Indians, and the Fugitive Slave Law).
6. Anarchist: Agrees along with Jefferson that government is necessary, but believed that democracy is not the final form of government, which will come when independent, truly self-reliant individuals are prepared for a non- government state.
7. Churches are full of quackery and spiritual cripples.
8. Man at the highest was man unorganized. Actually, this was the
underlying spirit of the Puritan. Seen also underlying the philosophy of Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Henry James the Elder; evident also in the empirical radicalism of William James' philosophy of pragmatism.
9. In the search for true selfhood, Thoreau found meaning in being independent and "beside himself."
Henry James, the Elder (1811-1882)
1. Father of Henry James and William James
2. Three main principles:
a) The individual is nothing--all the individual seems to be is from nature: the inheritance from the human race and society.
b) We gain our real selfhood from God alone.
c) Real being is created out of non-being through an intermediate step of creation.
3. Creation is a process of two movements:
a) Formation: Nature: illusory being, the quickening of the void unto itself.
b) Redemption: Society: real being, the finished spiritual work of God.
4. Nature is the unredeemed for of man. Society id the redeemed form of man.
5. Democracy is social and moral rather than political. Democracy is not advanced through national wealth, honor, or glory, but through the increase of human relations among the members of society.
a) Government is necessary because society is immature.
b) Laws describe men negatively; laws declare what men are not, what they are.
c) Democracy is the herald of moral perfection in man, the forerunner of a redeemed society.
d) Social democracy is the precursor of the spirituality of the kingdom of God on earth.
6. In the search for true selfhood, James tried to account for man's spiritual development in terms of indwelling divinity.
Other Transcendentalists and Transcendentalist Sympathizers
a) James Marsh
b) Frederick Henry Hodge
c) Caleb Sprague Henry
d) Theodore Parker (1810-1860)
e) Bronson Alcott
f) Margaret Fuller
Counterpoint
The transcendentalists were criticized, ridiculed, and rejected by Hawthorne in several of his works. See the novel The Blithedale Romance, the Introduction to Mosses From an Old Manse, and the short stories "The Hall of Fantasy" and "The Celestial Railroad"; they are also satarized by Melville in the novels Moby-Dick and The Confidence-Man. In an essay on Hawthorne, Poe suggested that Emerson should be hung.
[2] De Doctrina Christiana (Of Christian Doctrine), composed 1658-65; disappeared at Milton’s death & rediscovered in 1823.
[6] De Doctrina Christiana (Of Christian Doctrine), composed 1658-65; disappeared at Milton’s death & rediscovered in 1823.
[8] Writing fifty-four years later, John Adams remembers the controversy “spread an universal alarm against the authority of Parliament. It excited the general and just apprehensions that bishops, and dioceses, and churches and priests, and tithes, were to be imposed on us by Parliament. It was known that neither King, nor ministry, nor archbishops could appoint bishops in America without an Act of Parliament; and if Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of England with all its creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, and tithes, and prohibit all other churches . . .” Adams, Works, X, 288.
[10] Robert S. Alley, Professor of Humanites, Emeritus, University of Richmond, from his article, "Public Education and the Public Good," published in William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Vol. 4, Issue 1, Summer 1995.
And Lipscomb, Andrew and Bergh, Albert, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 16, pp. 281-282.
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