Henry F. May and the Revival of the American Enlightenment: Problems and
Possibilities for Intellectual and Social History

Dixon, John

doi:10.5309/willmaryquar.71.2.0255

The William and Mary Quarterly

2014

DOI: 10.5309/willmaryquar.71.2.0255

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Henry F. May and the Revival of the American Enlightenment: Problems and Possibilities for Intellectual and Social History

John Dixon¹

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Cited by 4 publications

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“Jacobins” at Princeton: Student Riots, Religious Revivalism, and the Decline of Enlightenment, 1800–1817

Bow

2015

Mod. Intell. Hist.

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This essay considers how American Enlightenment moralists and Evangelical religious revivalists responded to “Jacobinism” at the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, from 1800 through 1817. At this time, disruptive student activities exemplified alleged American “Jacobin” conspiracies against civil society. The American response to “Jacobins” brought out tensions between two different competing intellectual currents at the College of New Jersey: a revival of Christian religious principles led by Princeton trustee Reverend Ashbel Green and, in contrast, the expansion of Samuel Stanhope Smith's system of moral education during his tenure as college president from 1795 through 1812. As a moralist, Smith appealed to Scottish Common Sense philosophy in teaching the instinctive “rules of duty” as a way to correct unrestrained “passions” and moderate “Jacobin” radicalism. In doing so, Smith developed a moral quasi-relativism as an original feature of his moral philosophy and contribution to American Enlightenment intellectual culture. Green and like-minded religious revivalists saw Princeton student uprisings as Smith's failure to properly address irreligion. This essay shows the ways in which “Jacobinism” and then the emerging age of religious revivalism, known as the Second Great Awakening, arrived at the cost of Smith's “Didactic Enlightenment” at Princeton.

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“Jacobins” at Princeton: Student Riots, Religious Revivalism, and the Decline of Enlightenment, 1800–1817

Bow

2015

Mod. Intell. Hist.

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Searching for ‘Moderate Enlightenment’: From Leo Strauss to J. G. A. Pocock

Mithen

2024

History of European Ideas

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“The weapon which wounds the rationalist kills the truth of revelation”: the Christian roots of “intellectual atheism” in nineteenth-century America

Tison

2016

American Nineteenth Century History

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Henry F. May and the Revival of the American Enlightenment: Problems and Possibilities for Intellectual and Social History

Cited by 4 publications

References 1 publication

“Jacobins” at Princeton: Student Riots, Religious Revivalism, and the Decline of Enlightenment, 1800–1817

“Jacobins” at Princeton: Student Riots, Religious Revivalism, and the Decline of Enlightenment, 1800–1817

Searching for ‘Moderate Enlightenment’: From Leo Strauss to J. G. A. Pocock

“The weapon which wounds the rationalist kills the truth of revelation”: the Christian roots of “intellectual atheism” in nineteenth-century America

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