America was created by philosophy

C

Cypress

"Cypress you motherfucking whore!"
"Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy." —Margaret Thatcher

Commentators often suggest that Americans have no political philosophy. The standard line is that Americans are doers, not thinkers; pragmatists, not philosophers. On first glance, this seems insightful; however, close examination of the corpus of American political thought makes clear that this thought-action dichotomy is illusory. Born of English parents and developed in changing and increasingly heterogeneous contexts, American political thought has cycled around an essentially liberal core for nearly 400 years.

Although Americans tend not to think explicitly in terms of abstract theory, our very institutions are informed by theory. In fact, as Garry Wills has noted, America is an “invented” country, the construct of men who consciously built political structures to govern a nation. The traditional concerns of political philosophy guided them: the nature of humans, the sources of legitimate social and political authority, the nature of, the role of the individual citizen, and the proper ends of social and governmental order. Thus, instead of being theory-poor, American institutions are rooted in, and have developed from, explicitly philosophical origins. Wittingly or not, this conditions American citizens: Our thought and actions are theory bound and guided.



source credit Joseph F. Kobylka, professor of political science
 
No sense in challenging this because it was said by Joseph F. Kobylka who is a professor of political science. No one can question or debate it.
 
Quincunx said:
No sense in challenging this because it was said by Joseph F. Kobylka who is a professor of political science. No one can question or debate it.
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You don't have to discuss the ideas of brilliant or important people if you don't want to.

In that case, I expect to never see you participate in a thread about Darwin's theory of evolution or Einsteins theory of relativity.


I think Margaret Thatcher has latched onto a kernel of truth. In a sense, the intellectual fathers of the American experiment are John Locke and Montesquieu.
 
Cypress said:
You don't have to discuss the ideas of brilliant or important people if you don't want to.

In that case, I expect to never see you participate in a thread about Darwin's theory of evolution or Einsteins theory of relativity.


I think Margaret Thatcher has latched onto a kernel of truth. In a sense, the intellectual fathers of the American experiment are John Locke and Montesquieu.
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You join the right wing in refusing to post the source of the text.
 
It's OBVIOUSLY true that America was founded by Enlightenment Thinkers who couched all their ideals in terms of the philosophy they were imbibing at the time. That does not mean modern America is anywhere even remotely like that.

We are quickly becoming a low-literacy, solipsistic society of pure consumers. We live to watch Tik Tok videos about cats and we worship money. There is very little left of the Enlightenment in our Late Stage Capitalist society that values greed over all.
 
BidenPresident said:
Why do forum people not know how to post a link to the source of the text?!
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There is no link, because I copied it from a PDF.

It's interesting because it is a perspective I have not heard. I always bought into the caricature of America as a simple minded nation primarily concerned with pragmatic interests.

I never really thought of our country being based on a deep engagement with philosophy. Which maybe has a kernel of truth, because our destiny was shaped to some extent by Locke and Montesquieu.
 
Cypress said:
There is no link, because I copied it from a PDF.

It's interesting because it is a perspective I have not heard. The caricature of America is of a simple minded nation primarily concerned with pragmatic interests.

I never really thought of our country being based on a deep engagement with philosophy. Which maybe has a kernel of truth, because our destiny was shaped to some extent by Locke and Montesquieu.
Click to expand...

no link no read
 
Cypress said:
"Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy." —Margaret Thatcher

Commentators often suggest that Americans have no political philosophy. The standard line is that Americans are doers, not thinkers; pragmatists, not philosophers. On first glance, this seems insightful; however, close examination of the corpus of American political thought makes clear that this thought-action dichotomy is illusory. Born of English parents and developed in changing and increasingly heterogeneous contexts, American political thought has cycled around an essentially liberal core for nearly 400 years.

Although Americans tend not to think explicitly in terms of abstract theory, our very institutions are informed by theory. In fact, as Garry Wills has noted, America is an “invented” country, the construct of men who consciously built political structures to govern a nation. The traditional concerns of political philosophy guided them: the nature of humans, the sources of legitimate social and political authority, the nature of, the role of the individual citizen, and the proper ends of social and governmental order. Thus, instead of being theory-poor, American institutions are rooted in, and have developed from, explicitly philosophical origins. Wittingly or not, this conditions American citizens: Our thought and actions are theory bound and guided.



source credit Joseph F. Kobylka, professor of political science
Click to expand...

I don't know if this is on topic, but Philosophy 101 was a very important freshman class in college.
It helped keep my GPA on a respectable level.
I'm hard pressed to even imagine an easier A than that.
Those As helped boost up all those Gentleman's Cs.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
I don't know if this is on topic, but Philosophy 101 was a very important freshman class in college.
It helped keep my GPA on a respectable level.
I'm hard pressed to even imagine an easier A than that.
Those As helped boost up all those Gentleman's Cs.
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You obviously learned nothing from that class.
 
BidenPresident said:
At a real college?
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Yup. A good and expensive one.

I'd have gotten more A's but I was boxing for spending money
and between getting hit in the head and the time spent in the gym,
that might not have helped my GPA.

The army drafted me before I was reduced to your intelligence level, however, and also, despite trying, failed to get me killed.

In any case, thanks for asking.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Yup. A good and expensive one.

I'd have gotten more A's but I was boxing for spending money
and between getting hit in the head and the time spent in the gym,
that might not have helped my GPA.

The army drafted me before I was reduced to your intelligence level, however, and also, despite trying, failed to get me killed.

In any case, thanks for asking.
Click to expand...

Yet you know less than nothing about philosophy.
 
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