A01=Hannah Spahn
abolitionism
African American intellectuals
African American literature
American Enlightenment
American Revolution
Anglophilia among African American intellectuals
anti-Eurocentric Enlightenment
antirationalism
antislavery
antislavery and abolitionism
appropriation
Author_Hannah Spahn
Benjamin Banneker
Black
black uplift
blackness
blindness
Cartesianism
Category=NHK
citizenship
colonization movement
communities of feeling
culture
David Walker
Declaration of Independence
democracy
discovery
double consciousness
education
empiricism
epistemological nationalism
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eq_isMigrated=2
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equality
Federalists
founding father
Frances Watkins Harper
Francis Bacon
Frederick Douglass
freedom
government
humanity
identity
ignorance
Immanuel Kant
irony
James McCune Smith
Jefferson as literary trope
Jefferson's Enlightenment of Feeling
Jeffersonian Enlightenment
Jefferson’s Enlightenment of Feeling
John Locke
knowledge and democracy
learning
Lemuel Haynes
Madison Hemings
manners
materialism and empiricism
Monticello
nationalism
nationhood
natural rights
paralipsis
Phillis Wheatley
philosophy
prejudice
public opinion
race
Ralph Ellison
rationalism
reason
religion
Rene Descartes
Sally Hemings
secularization
shared knowledge
slavery and democracy
subjectivity of feeling
Thomas Jefferson
universalism
universalist principles of democracy
veil metaphor
Virginia
W.E.B. DuBois
Wheatley as founder of African American literature
Wheatley's Enlightenment of Principle
Wheatley’s Enlightenment of Principle
white uplift
whiteness
William J. Wilson
William Wells Brown
Product details
- ISBN 9780813951195
- Weight: 487g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 14 May 2024
- Publisher: University of Virginia Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The vital influence of Black American intellectuals on the legacy of Thomas Jefferson’s ideas
The lofty Enlightenment principles articulated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, so central to conceptions of the American founding, did not emerge fully formed as a coherent set of ideas in the eighteenth century. As Hannah Spahn argues in this important book, no group had a more profound influence on their development and reception than Black intellectuals. The rationalism and universalism most associated with Jefferson today, she shows, actually sprang from critical engagements with his thought by writers such as David Walker, Lemuel Haynes, Frederick Douglass, and W. E. B. Du Bois.
Black Reason, White Feeling illuminates the philosophical innovations that these and other Black intellectuals made to build on Jefferson’s thought, shaping both Jefferson’s historical image and the exalted legacy of his ideas in American culture. It is not just the first book-length history of Jefferson’s philosophy in Black thought; it is also the first history of the American Enlightenment that centers the originality and decisive impact of the Black tradition.
The lofty Enlightenment principles articulated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, so central to conceptions of the American founding, did not emerge fully formed as a coherent set of ideas in the eighteenth century. As Hannah Spahn argues in this important book, no group had a more profound influence on their development and reception than Black intellectuals. The rationalism and universalism most associated with Jefferson today, she shows, actually sprang from critical engagements with his thought by writers such as David Walker, Lemuel Haynes, Frederick Douglass, and W. E. B. Du Bois.
Black Reason, White Feeling illuminates the philosophical innovations that these and other Black intellectuals made to build on Jefferson’s thought, shaping both Jefferson’s historical image and the exalted legacy of his ideas in American culture. It is not just the first book-length history of Jefferson’s philosophy in Black thought; it is also the first history of the American Enlightenment that centers the originality and decisive impact of the Black tradition.
Hannah Spahn is Professor of American Studies at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie UniversitÄt Berlin and the author of Thomas Jefferson, Time, and History.
