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The Enlightenment in America
The Enlightenment in America by Henry F. May is a serious work about how and why eighteenth-century enlightenment occured. This book works two main themes or ideas in early America. The enlightenment and protestantism, but this book goes deeper as enlightenment with protestantism always in the background as matrix, rival, ally, and of course enemy. This book is about Enlightenment as religion.

This book is divided into four sections: The Moderate Enlightenment, 1688-1787; The Skeptical Enlightenment, 1750-1789; The Revolutionary Enlightenment, 1776-1800; and The Didactic Enlightenment, 1800-1815. The author takes us through each of these time frames and gives the reader a basic comparitive analysis as to the times and events of the day. Politics, law, education, science and epistemology all are interplayed and are important in general discussion. To understand the political thought better we start with religion.

Men of the late eighteenth century, no matter what their calling, seldom thought about any branch of human affairs without referring consciously to some general beliefs about the nature of the universe and man's place in it. So, with this tome, enlightenment is itself basic.. to believe in two propostions: first, that the present age is more enlightened than the past; and second, that we understand nature and man best through the use of our natural faculties. We find that in the years that enlightenment and protestantism were either allies or rivals neither was simple or undivided.

This book brings into play ideas, ideas of Voltaire, Hume and Paine; Rousseau, Locke, Samuel Clarke, and Montesquieu all work toward the final outcome of the enlightenment that worked through to the Founding Fathers. Most of the Founding Fathers were deists, but perplexity of the American culture has always been deeply Calvinistic.

Your brain will get a workout reading this book, as this is the most comprehensive survey of enlightenment as it relates to the eighteenth-century America. When reading about the Founding Fathers and their lives and times, reading this book about the history of ideas will put things into perspective.