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Overview
This is a story about a dangerous idea--one which ignited revolutions in America, France, and Haiti; burst across Europe in the revolutions of 1848; and returned to inflame a new generation of intellectuals to lead the abolition movement--the idea that all men are created equal.
In their struggle against the slaveholding oligarchy of their time, America's antislavery leaders found their way back to the rationalist, secularist, and essentially atheist inspiration for the first American Revolution. Frederick Douglass's unusual interest in radical German philosophers and Abraham Lincoln's buried allusions to the same thinkers are but a few of the clues that underlie this propulsive philosophical detective story. With fresh takes on forgotten thinkers like Theodore Parker, the excommunicated Unitarian minister who is the original source of some of Lincoln's most famous lines, and a feisty band of German refugees, philosopher and historian Matthew Stewart tells a vivid and piercing story of the battle between America's philosophical radicals and the conservative counterrevolution that swept the American republic in the first decades of its existence and persists in new forms up to the present day. In exposing the role of Christian nationalism and the collusion between northern economic elites and slaveholding oligarchs, An Emancipation of the Mind demands a significant revision in our understanding of the origins and meaning of the struggle over slavery in America--and offers a fresh perspective on struggles between democracy and elite power today.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781324003625
- ISBN-10: 1324003626
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
- Publish Date: March 2024
- Dimensions: 9.92 x 6.06 x 1.34 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.45 pounds
- Page Count: 400
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“The idea of America that we celebrate today—the one against which we constantly test an imperfect reality—dates not from 1776 or 1787 but from 1865,” writes historian and philosopher Matthew Stewart. With a combination of in-depth scholarship and beautiful writing, An Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War Over Slavery, and the Refounding of America shows how Enlightenment-era visions of freedom, reason, justice and humanism inspired Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and prominent abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. With others, they helped to bring about a “refounding” of the country. Stewart stresses that for the three men, "philosophy was an indispensable guide on the road to emancipation. They turned to reason because, as they understood it, reason is the great enemy of unreasonable distributions of wealth.” They had their work cut out for them. By the mid-19th century, Stewart writes, slavery had undergone a “colossal transformation” that was “grander in scope, more calculated in its cruelty, and far more deeply integrated in the political economy of the new republic.” The country so relied on slavery that the “factories of New England and old England alike were scarcely conceivable without the produce of enslaved people in the American South.” Slavery gave rise to an oligarchy that not only developed a racial caste system, but also became a fundamental ill of American history, relying on the appearance of democracy to achieve undemocratic ends. The story of abolitionists, writes Stewart, “is about an emancipation of the mind as much as of the body." Stewart not only dives into the work of Douglass, Lincoln and Parker, but also profiles little-known figures who played important roles—some as thinkers from abroad, others as activists in the U.S.—in opposing slavery, and paints an inspiring portrait of those who wanted to “make the world anew.” Anyone interested in American history or real-life applications of philosophy should find this splendid narrative eye-opening and thought-provoking.
“The idea of America that we celebrate today—the one against which we constantly test an imperfect reality—dates not from 1776 or 1787 but from 1865,” writes historian and philosopher Matthew Stewart. With a combination of in-depth scholarship and beautiful writing, An Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War Over Slavery, and the Refounding of America shows how Enlightenment-era visions of freedom, reason, justice and humanism inspired Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and prominent abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. With others, they helped to bring about a “refounding” of the country. Stewart stresses that for the three men, "philosophy was an indispensable guide on the road to emancipation. They turned to reason because, as they understood it, reason is the great enemy of unreasonable distributions of wealth.” They had their work cut out for them. By the mid-19th century, Stewart writes, slavery had undergone a “colossal transformation” that was “grander in scope, more calculated in its cruelty, and far more deeply integrated in the political economy of the new republic.” The country so relied on slavery that the “factories of New England and old England alike were scarcely conceivable without the produce of enslaved people in the American South.” Slavery gave rise to an oligarchy that not only developed a racial caste system, but also became a fundamental ill of American history, relying on the appearance of democracy to achieve undemocratic ends. The story of abolitionists, writes Stewart, “is about an emancipation of the mind as much as of the body." Stewart not only dives into the work of Douglass, Lincoln and Parker, but also profiles little-known figures who played important roles—some as thinkers from abroad, others as activists in the U.S.—in opposing slavery, and paints an inspiring portrait of those who wanted to “make the world anew.” Anyone interested in American history or real-life applications of philosophy should find this splendid narrative eye-opening and thought-provoking.