American Enlightenment From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The American
Enlightenment is a period of intellectual ferment in the thirteen American colonies in the period
1714–1818, which led to the American Revolution, and
the creation of the Contents [hide] ·
1 Dates ·
7 Liberalism and republicanism ·
8 "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" ·
9 Deism Dates[edit] Various dates for the American
Enlightenment have been proposed, including the dates 1750-1820,[1] 1765 to 1815,[2] and 1688-1815.[3] One somewhat more precise start date
proposed [4] is the introduction of a collection
of donated Enlightenment books by Colonial Agent Jeremiah Dummer into the library of the small
college of Yale at Saybrook Point,
Connecticut on or just after October 15, 1714. They were received
by a young post-graduate student Samuel Johnson,
of Religious tolerance[edit] A switch from sectarian politics and
established religion in many states to religious tolerance, ecumenicalism, and
the disestablishment of state religion was one of the distinguishing
features of the American Enlightenment. The passage of the new Connecticut
Constitution on October 5, 1818, overturned the
180-year-old "Standing Order" and the The Connecticut
Charter of 1662, whose provisions dated back to the founding of the
state in 1638 and the Fundamental Orders of
Connecticut; it has been proposed as a date for the triumph if not
the end of the American Enlightenment.[8] The new constitution guaranteed
freedom of religion, disestablished the Congregational church,
and ended the last effective theocracy in Intellectual currents[edit] Between 1714 and 1818 a great
intellectual change took place that changed the British Colonies of America
from a distant backwater into a leader in the fields of moral philosophy,
educational reform, religious revival, industrial technology, science, and,
most notably, political philosophy. It saw the disestablishment of religion in
all the states, and a consensus on a "pursuit of happiness" based
political philosophy. Architecture[edit] After 1780, the Federal-style of American Architecture began to diverge
from the Georgian style and became a uniquely American genre; in 1813, the
American architect Ithiel Town designed and in
1814-1816 built the first Gothic Style church in North America, Trinity Church on the
Green in New Haven, predating the English Gothic revival by a decade. In
the fields of literature, poetry, music and drama some nascent artistic
attempts were made, particularly in pre-war Philadelphia, but American
(non-popular) culture in these fields was largely imitative of British culture
for most of the period, and is generally considered not very distinguished. Republicanism[edit] Politically, the age is
distinguished by an emphasis upon economic liberty, republicanism and religious
tolerance, as clearly expressed in the United States
Declaration of Independence. Attempts to reconcilescience and religion resulted in a
rejection of prophecy, miracle, and revealed religion, resulting in an
inclination toward deism among some major
political leaders of the age. American
republicanism emphasized consent of the
government, riddance of aristocracy, and fear of corruption. It represented the
convergence of classical republicanism and English
republicanism (of 17th century Commonwealthmen and 18th century English Country Whigs).[9] J.G.A. Pocock explained the intellectual sources
in
European sources[edit] Sources of the American
Enlightenment are many and vary according to time and place. As a result of an
extensive book trade with The Scottish Enlightenment also influenced
American thinkers. David Hume's Essays and his History of England were widely read
in the colonies,[12] and Hume's political thought had a
particular influence on James Madison and the Constitution.[13] Another important Scottish writer
was Francis Hutcheson.
Hutcheson's ideas of ethics, along with notions of civility and politeness
developed by the Earl of
Shaftesbury, and Addison and Richard Steele in their Spectator, were a major influence on
upper-class American colonists who sought to emulate European manners and
learning. By far the most important French
sources to the American Enlightenment, however, were Montesquieu'sSpirit of the Laws and Emer de Vattel's Law of Nations. Both informed early American ideas
of government and were major influences on the Constitution. Voltaire's histories were widely read but seldom cited.Rousseau's
influence was marginal. Noah Webster used Rousseau's educational ideas of
child development to structure his famous Speller. A German
influence includes Samuel Pufendorf, whose writings were also commonly cited by
American writers. Liberalism and
republicanism[edit] Since the 1960s, historians have
debated the Enlightenment's role in the American Revolution. Before 1960 the
consensus was that liberalism, especially
that of John Locke, was paramount; republicanism was largely ignored.[14] The new interpretations were
pioneered by J.G.A. Pocock who argued in The Machiavellian
Moment (1975) that, at least in the early
eighteenth-century, republican ideas were just as important as liberal ones.
Pocock's view is now widely accepted.[15] Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Woodpioneered the argument that the Founding Fathers
of the United States were more influenced byrepublicanism than they were by liberalism. Cornell University Professor Isaac Kramnick, on
the other hand, argues that Americans have always been highly individualistic and therefore Lockean.[16] In the decades before the American
Revolution (1776), the intellectual and political leaders of the colonies
studied history intently, looking for guides or models for good (and bad)
government. They especially followed the development of republican ideas in The Whig canon and the
neo-Harringtonians, John Milton, James Harrington and Sidney,Trenchard, Gordon and Bolingbroke,
together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance masters of the tradition as far
as Montesquieu,
formed the authoritative literature of this culture; and its values and
concepts were those with which we have grown familiar: a civic and patriot
ideal in which the personality was founded in property, perfected in
citizenship but perpetually threatened by corruption; government figuring
paradoxically as the principal source of corruption and operating through such
means as patronage, faction, standing armies (opposed to the ideal of the
militia), established churches (opposed to the Puritan and deist modes of
American religion) and the promotion of a monied interest — though the
formulation of this last concept was somewhat hindered by the keen desire for
readily available paper credit common in colonies of settlement. A neoclassical
politics provided both the ethos of the elites and the rhetoric of the upwardly
mobile, and accounts for the singular cultural and intellectual homogeneity of
the Founding Fathers and their generation.[18] The commitment of most Americans to
these republican values made inevitable the American Revolution, for Leopold von Ranke, a leading German historian, in 1848 claims
that American republicanism played a crucial role in the development of
European liberalism: By abandoning English
constitutionalism and creating a new republic based on the rights of the
individual, the North Americans introduced a new force in the world. Ideas
spread most rapidly when they have found adequate concrete expression. Thus
republicanism entered our Romanic/Germanic world.... Up to this point, the
conviction had prevailed in "Life, Many historians[21] find that the origin of this famous
phrase derives from Locke's position that "no one ought
to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."[22] Others suggest that Jefferson took
the phrase from Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of The Virginia Declaration of
Rights adopted by the Virginia Convention of
Delegates on June 12, 1776, adopted a few days before
Jefferson's draft but written earlier, and written by George Mason, is: That all men are by nature equally
free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they
enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest
their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of
acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and
safety. The United States
Declaration of Independence, which was primarily written by We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness. Deism[edit] Thomas Paine Both the Moderate Enlightenment and
a Radical or Revolutionary Enlightenment were reactions against the authoritarianism, irrationality, and obscurantism of the established churches.
Philosophers such asVoltaire depicted
organized Christianity as a tool of
tyrants and oppressors and as being used to defend monarchism, it was seen as
hostile to the development of reason and the progress of science and incapable
of verification. An alternative religion was deism,
the philosophical belief in a deity based on reason, rather than religious
revelation or dogma. It was a popular perception among the philosophes, who adopted deistic attitudes to
varying degrees. Deism greatly influenced the thought of intellectuals and Founding Fathers,
including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, perhapsGeorge Washington and, especially, Thomas Jefferson.[25] The most articulate exponent was Thomas Paine, whose The Age of Reason was written in France in the early
1790s, and soon reached the United States. Paine was highly controversial; when
Religious tolerance[edit] Enlightened Founding Fathers,
especially Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington, fought for and eventually attained religious freedom for minority denominations.
According to the founding fathers, the
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