Two Cities: The Political Thought of American Transcendentalism

by Daniel S. Malachuk

Overview

Since the late eighteenth century the ideals of political democracy and individual flourishing have become so entangled that most people no longer differentiate them. The American Transcendentalists did. Two Cities is the first comprehensive account of the original but still underrated political thought of this movement, especially that of its three major authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau.

For decades, Daniel S. Malachuk contends, readers have misinterpreted the Transcendentalists as worshipping democracy and secularizing personhood. Two Cities proves the opposite. Focusing on their major writings, Malachuk presents the Transcendentalists as wresting apart and thus clarifying democracy as a profane project and individuality as a sacred one. Building upon this basic insight, the book affirms many recent but discrete conclusions about the movement’s various contributions (especially to liberalism, environmentalism, and public religion) and shows that we will understand how these commitments hang together only when we “re-transcendentalize the Transcendentalists.”

In five useful chapters—on the two-cities tradition within the history of liberalism, on the rival and subsequently dominant “overlap” theories of Lincoln and others, and on the unique contributions to two-cities thought by each of the major authors—Two Cities reintroduces readers to the Transcendentalists as among the most original and important contributors to American political thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700623020
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	10/07/2016
Series:	American Political Thought
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Daniel S. Malachuk is professor of English at Western Illinois University. He is the coeditor of A Political Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction “The last Improvement Possible?”

1. The Right to Two Cities

An Ancient Question: An Early Modern Answer * From Overlapping to Coinciding Cities * Modern Liberalism, or Democratic Cant Theorized * “Democratic Individuality” * From “Historical Discourse” (1835) to “Self-Reliance” (1841) * Conclusion

2. “Knock, and it shall be opened”: Fuller’s Higher Lawsuit

The Hellenic Critique * The Hebraic Critique * Democracy and Conscience Incommensurable, 1839-1843 * The Masterwork: “The Great Lawsuit” (1843) * Democracy as Despotism, 1846 * Democracy’s Revived Promise, 1846-1850

3. Higher Law Debates and Overlapping Cities

The “Living North”: Originalism * Aspirationalism * Proceduralism * Conclusion

4. “As justice satisfies everybody”: Emerson and the City of Man

The 1840’s: “Politics,”Early Antislavery Writings, “Napoleon” * The Antislavery Writings of the 1850s * The Masterwork: The Conducts of Life (1860) * 1862 Onward

5. “So we saunter toward the Holy Land”: Thoreau and the City of God

Between Self and Society * Higher-Use Ecology * From Civil Obedience to Disobedience * “Slavery in Massachusetts” and Walden (1854) * The Masterworks: “Life without Principle,” “The Allegash and East Branch,” “Walkling” * “Walking”:The Four Facets of the City of God * “Why Are You Out There?”

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

Illuminates the distinctive historical as well as normative importance of the political thought of American Transcendentalism as realized in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau.

From the Publisher