Nathaniel Hawthorne as Political Philosopher

Nathaniel Hawthorne as Political Philosopher
Author: John E. Alvis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2017-07-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351503820

Using the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne as a case study, John E. Alvis shows that a novelist can be a political philosopher. He demonstrates that much of Hawthorne's works are rooted in the American political tradition. Once we view his writings in connection with the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, we grasp that what Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had stated explicitly, Hawthorne's fiction conveys dramatically. With examples drawn from Hawthorne's shorter works, as well as acknowledged classics, such as The Scarlet Letter, John E. Alvis shows that Hawthorne's characters bear something sacred in their generic humanity, yet are subject to moral judgment. He conveys reciprocity between obligations regulating individual relations and the responsibilities of individuals to their community.From America's founding proclamations in the Declaration of Independence we take a sense of national aspirations for a political order that conforms to laws of nature and nature's God. From this higher law emerge the principles enumerated in that revolutionary document. Are these principles confined to the political, or do they reach into the experience of citizens to inform conduct? Do they include family, local community, and individual face-to-face relations with neighbors and strangers? Can one make a distinct way of life by fidelity to such standards as higher law, equality, liberty, natural rights, and consent?This study is distinguished from other writings on Hawthorne in its largely positive focus on America. Alvis characterizes Hawthorne as a rational patriot who endorses America's new terms for human association. This fascinating study provides new insights into the mind of one of the greatest American writers.

Nietzsche as Political Philosopher

Nietzsche as Political Philosopher
Author: Manuel Knoll
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2014-08-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110377918

This collection establishes Nietzsche's importance as a political philosopher. It includes a substantial introduction and eighteen chapters by some of the most renowned Nietzsche scholars. The book examines Nietzsche's connections with political thought since Plato, major influences on him, his methodology, and his influence on subsequent thought. The book includes extensive coverage of the debate between radical aristocratic readings of Nietzsche, and more liberal or democratic readings. Close readings of Nietzsche's texts are combined with a contextualising approach to build up a complete picture of his place in political philosophy. Topics include the relevance of Bonapartism and classical liberalism, Nietzsche on Christianity, the cultural history of Germany, the Übermensch, ethics and politics in Nietzsche, and the controversial question of his political preferences and affinities. Nietzsche's political thought is compared with that of Humboldt, Weber and Foucault. The book is essential reading for anyone concerned with Nietzsche's thought, political philosophy, and the history of political ideas.

Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context

Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context
Author: Monika M. Elbert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 902
Release: 2018-11-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108650538

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of Nathaniel Hawthorne and demonstrates why he continues to be a critically significant figure in American literature. The first section focuses on Hawthorne's interest in and knowledge of past (Puritan and colonial) and contemporary nineteenth-century history (women's, African American, Native American) as the inspiration for his writings and the source of his literary success. The second section explores his fascination with social history and popular culture by examining topics as mesmerism, utopian life styles, theatrical performances, and artistic innovations. The third section looks at how Hawthorne succeeded and excelled in the literary marketplace, as an author of children's literature, literary sketches, and historical romances. In the fourth section, Hawthorne's literary precursors, peers, colleagues, and successors are analyzed. In the final section, Hawthorne's attachment to family, nature, and home is examined as the source of creative inspiration and philosophical questing.

Handbook of American Romanticism

Handbook of American Romanticism
Author: Philipp Löffler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2021-07-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110592231

The Handbook of American Romanticism presents a comprehensive survey of the various schools, authors, and works that constituted antebellum literature in the United States. The volume is designed to feature a selection of representative case studies and to assess them within two complementary frameworks: the most relevant historical, political, and institutional contexts of the antebellum decades and the consequent (re-)appropriations of the Romantic period by academic literary criticism in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

America's Indomitable Character Volume IV

America's Indomitable Character Volume IV
Author: Frederick William Dame
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2014-09-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 3735746306

Volume IV of America's Indomitable Character contains information on: A synopsis of Volume III. Philosophical and intellectual streams of thought as they came from Old Europe and connected with the intellectual developments of the New America. Transcendentalism and Dark Romanticism. A presentation regarding Nature, human nature, society, the social contract in the following authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, (Sarah) Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Theodore Parker, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson. How the development of a national literature contributed to the development of an American character identity. Identities and affinities between the American authors and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Reiseweg of Rousseau's spirit to America. A conclusive summary of all four volumes. How the Democrat Party after the Civil War and up to Barack Hussein Obama has been exceedingly active in making sure that the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for the United States of America were not applied to all Americans - from the Democrat Party affiliated Ku Klux Klan, through the communist takeover of the Democrat Party, to the defeat of racism in the second half of the twentieth century and the re-emergence of racism with the racist class division polemics of Barack Hussein Obama in the twenty-first century. How the Democrat Party has dumbed-down American citizens. How Barack Hussein Obama, the putative president of the United States of America, has hollowed out the substance and laws that were once the backbone of America's character identity; from symbolical insults, through the expansion of social programs and the weakening of national defense, to the destruction of America's religious identity and the erosion of the middle class. This is Barack Hussein Obama's active destruction of American character identity.

The Political Philosophy of Alexander Hamilton

The Political Philosophy of Alexander Hamilton
Author: Michael P. Federici
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2012-07-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421405393

Introduction:Hamilton's significance --The personal background of a political theorist --Hamilton's philosophical anthropology --Theoretical foundations of constitutionalism --Hamilton and American constitutional formation --Hamilton's foreign policy --Hamilton's political economy --Hamilton and Jefferson --Conclusion:Hamilton's legacy.

Natural Right and the American Imagination

Natural Right and the American Imagination
Author: Catherine H. Zuckert
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1990
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780847676965

Discusses ways in which works by James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner explore the central issue of political philosophy.

The Philosophy of Henry Thoreau

The Philosophy of Henry Thoreau
Author: Lester H. Hunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2019-10-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350079049

Henry Thoreau is widely considered to be one of the greatest nature writers, among whose best-known works are Walden and Walking. In this book, Lester Hunt shows that his writings have a compelling philosophical dimension as well. Thoreau seldom argues for his ideas the way other philosophers do. Rather than setting up proofs designed to trap the reader into agreeing with him, he challenges the reader – by means of narratives, jokes, questions, and paradoxes -- to recognize possibilities previously unknown and unexplored. Thoreau's own explorations led him to several distinctively philosophical theories: an intuitionist metaethics, an ethics based on virtue and self-realization, a politics that is fundamentally individualist and anarchist, and a secular religion in which nature is pre-eminent.