The Very Idea

We’ll have occassion to dwell quite a bit on the less positive aspects of New England puritanism, and Foner presents the puritan model of freedom as the foil for “American freedom” which, he says, “began in revolution.” But we shouldn’t lose track of the ways in which the puritans were, through a combination of adherence to Bible doctrine and acknowledgment of necessity, humane and progressive figures. It’s important to remember that there is not some catastrophic or revolutionary transformation in the colonial populace between the Plymouth Rock landing and the War of Independence. What occured was a gradual process, punctuated […]

GREAT IDEAS: SO WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT, ANYWAY? For the duration of the semester, we’re all going to be concerned with “great ideas.” Specifically, in this section, we’ll be looking at, or looking for, “Great Ideas in America.” It would be convenient if, here at the outset, we could just lay out some criteria for judging the “greatness” of ideas and go from there. With our criteria in place, we could just assemble a group of “great texts,” or Great Books, embodying ideas of unquestionably greatness, and familiarize ourselves with them. For a variety of reasons, things won’t be quite […]