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The Heretical Origins of the American Republic
by Matthew Stewart
Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy?
Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the underappreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party - these radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as "infidels" and "atheists" in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.
The ideas that inspired them were neither British nor Christian but largely ancient, pagan, and continental: the fecund universe of the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, the potent (but nontranscendent) natural divinity of the Dutch heretic Benedict de Spinoza. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart pursues a genealogy of the philosophical ideas from which America's revolutionaries drew their inspiration, all scrupulously researched and documented and enlivened with storytelling of the highest order. Along the way, he uncovers the true meanings of "Nature's God," "self-evident," and many other phrases crucial to our understanding of the American experiment but now widely misunderstood.
Stewart's lucid and passionate investigation surprises, challenges, enlightens, and entertains at every turn, as it spins a true tale and a persuasive, exhilarating argument about the founding principles of American government and the sources of our success in science, medicine, and the arts.
"Starred Review. In affording a fresh perspective on the difficult but exhilarating birth of this country, Stewart shows that the often superficially misunderstood words of the Declaration of Independence are even more profound than they appear." - Kirkus
"In this controversy-stirring book, Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic) invites us to enter a Revolutionary America whose leaders are not the conventional Christians most politicians imagine, but infidels, atheists, and unconventional thinkers….editor's recommendation." - Barnes and Noble
"Sure to stir controversy on all fronts, Nature's God will set the agenda for serious discussion of the American Revolution's significance in world history." - Peter S. Onuf, author of The Mind of Thomas Jefferson
"Splendid…imaginative but never fanciful, even at its most surprising...This is partisan scholarship as it should be written, and much needed service to the public." - Alan Ryan, author of The Making of Modern Liberalism
"In a book that offers you a chance to rethink much of what you thought you knew about America's founders, Matthew Stewart traces the little-known influence of secular philosophers, from Epicurus through Spinoza, on the revolutionary generation and offers a lively, powerful, and erudite refutation of the myth that the framers of our secular Constitution had any intention of founding an orthodox Christian nation." - Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
This information about Nature's God was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Matthew Stewart is the author of the books The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World and The Management Myth: Debunking the Modern Philosophy of Business. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
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