Review of the past : Doubt and disillusionment : The formulation and reaffirmation of Americanism ; Flamboyant patriotism ; The swing toward disillusionment in literature ; Criticism ; Economic and political doubts ; The realistic rewriting of American history ; Decline of moral and religious belief
The power of ideals : The two charges against ideals, as non-casual and non-verdical ; The alleged impotence of ideals. Epiphenomenalism ; Social efficacy of high-grade mentality ; Tradition. The social inheritance ; Culture and civilization ; The ideal nature of institutions ; The meaning of nationality ; Puritanism and democracy
The appraisal of a historic creed : The charge of relativity ; Viewing the past from the present ; The values of pastness ; Understanding the past in terms of the present ; Appraising a past creed by a present norm ; The norm of reflective agreement, or harmonious happiness ; The moral bias of nationalism ; Critical appraisal of the past, types of error ; The option of satire and piety ; Application to puritanism and democracy
Who were the puritans? : The definition of a historic cult ; Historic puritanism ; Anglican reformers ; Settlers of New England ; The puritan revolution ; The New England theocracy ; Jonathan Edwards and the great awakening ; The diffusion of puritanism in the United States
What did the puritans believe? : General definition ; Puritanism as Christianity ; Puritanism as protestant. Generic Protestantism ; Characteristic protestant doctrines ; Calvinism, its general mission. Orthodoxy and discipline ; Later developments of Calvinism ; Calvinism and the protestant heresies. Antinomianism, Anabaptism, Quakerism, socinianism, arminianism ; Jonathan Edwards ; Presbyterian and congregational versus episcopal ; Congregationalism versus prebyterianism ; Puritanism as theocratic. Alternative relations of church and state ; The trend toward theocracy
The declaration of independence : Limits of the present study, American democracy of the eighteenth century ; The American revolution, its remoter conditions ; Immediately inciting causes ; The reasons for the American revolution. Its legal justification ; The philosophical justification as embodied in the declaration of independence ; The historic role of the declaration of independence ; Jeffersonian democracy ; Jascksonian democracy ; The romantic-humanitarian movement ; The issue of slavery. Lincoln as an exponent of democracy ; Unionism and nationalism ; The declaration of independence as an enduring national creed
The enlightened philosophy of the declaration : General character of the enlightenment ; Newton and the cult of science ; Religious philosophy of the enlightenment ; Moral philosophy ; Adam Smith ; Natural law. The view of Richard Hooker ; Transitional elements in Hooker ; Natural law. Locke and Hobbes ; The state of nature. Natural rights. Locke and Hobbes ; Compact and the right of revolution ; Optimism
The making of the American mind : Representative mean of the enlightenment ; The English inheritance ; The American legal tradition ; American political philosophy ; Religious sources and influences. Dissenters versus Anglicans and Catholics ; Puritanism versus democracy ; Puritan seeds of democracy ; Revolutionary puritans ; The modifying influence of the frontier. Its pervasiveness. Equality ; Political and social effects ; Manifest destiny
Appraisal of Puritanism : The importance of salvation : The idea of a supreme good ; Its meaning
the love of God ; Faith, grace, and human inability.
The hierarchy of value ; Evil and temptation ; The temptations of appetite ; The temptations of familial love and patriotism ; The temptations of art and esthetic pleasure ; The critics of puritanism ; Puritanism's partial truth ; Puritanism's errors
The moral athlete : The puritan's zeal as arising from dualism, static and dynamic ; Purism, perfectionism, and strictness ; The reduction of static to dynamic dualism ; The negating of lower goods ; The puritan's cult of will power
its alleged consistency with his theology ; Training and self-examination ; Hypocrisy and self-righteousness ; Asceticism and fanaticism
The ultimate individual : Definition of the problem ; The concreteness of the soul ; The internal unity of the soul as person ; Its externality. Soul and body ; Relations between the soul and God ; Critique of puritan spiritism ; The individualism of faith. Thought, discussion, and agreement ; Dissent and contentiousness ; Individualism and justice. Meanings of justice ; Individual responsibility. Emphasis on retributive justice ; The individual and the experience of regeneration ; The danger of subjectivism
The economic virtues : The virtues conducive to worldly success ; Their sanctions in puritan piety ; The moral control of worldly fortune ; Puritanism and capitalism ; The puritan's calling and the division of labor ; Private property and contract ; Profit and competition ; The accumulation of wealth ; The cycle of advancing worldliness
The community of righteousness : Evangelism as the expressions of personal piety ; The moralizing of philanthropy ; Paternal versus maternal benevolence ; The solidarity of piety. Its social condition. Contagion ; Piety and cooperation ; The social quality or nature of piety ; Puritan theocracy ; The logic of social control. Analysis of the idea of covenant ; The breakdown of theocracy in New England ; Religious toleration dictated by political expediency ; Civility and godliness: separation of spheres ; Toleration as a quality of religion ; From puritanism to democracy ; The antinomy of individualism and solidarity. The solution of individualism by liberalism
The sovereignty of God : The puritan's preoccupation with God ; Theistic authoritarianism. Rejection of the prudential interpretation ; The divine attributes and the motives of obedience. Reduction of omniscience and omnipotence to goodness ; God as retributive justice ; The subordination of justice to mercy ; Reinterpretation of the meaning of justice ; God as love. The personality of God ; The triumph of righteousness ; The problem of evil. Evil rationalized by justice ; The explanation by human freedom ; The conquest of evil ; Pluralistic and dualistic implications
Appraisal of democracy : The supremacy of reason and conscience : The critique of democracy ; Democracy's theoretic claim ; The rationalization of authority. Statism versus moralism ; Statism. Tyranny and the corporate will ; Moralism. The ethical premises of political judgment ; Critique of the doctrine of 'natural rights' Confusion of temporal and logical relations.
Intuitionism versus experimentalism ; The doctrine of 'compact' Is the state original or artificial? ; Tolerance, its meaning and limits ; Tolerance as a condition of true knowledge ; Tolerance as a condition of agreement and consent ; Liberalism versus uniformitarianism, religious ; Liberalism versus uniformitarianism, political and economic
The individual as the seat of value : Social versus political democracy ; The good life: universalistic individualism ; The individual versus the corporate or collective good ; Individual rights, minimal and maximal ; The finality of the rational individual or person ; Individualism versus egoism ; The alleged agreement between egoism and universalism ; Individualism versus regimentation ; The sociality of the individual
Popular government : The definition of political democracy ; Government by consent ; The problem of sovereignty ; All individuals as organs of reason ; All individuals as representing interest ; Individual self-realization and autonomy ; Unanimity of opinion ; Irrational sources of unanimity ; Unanimity of interest. The public good ; The allege failure of democracy
Liberty and the limits of government : Meaning of freedom and liberty ; Positive versus negative liberty ; The moral justification of liberty ; The liberty of the moral will-personal, social, and international ; Legal liberty, a liberty under government: its negative aspect ; Legal liberty: its positive aspect ; Civil liberty: or liberty versus government ; Civil liberty: the menace of disloyalty, or tyranny ; Civil liberty: the menace of excess, or paternalism ; Civil liberty: the menace of inefficiency, the limits of enforcements ; Political liberty, or liberty for government. Enlightenment and consent ; Political liberty: its partisan use ; Political liberty: its revolutionary use
Equality and fraternity : Equality of kind ; Equality of human appeal ; Equality of worth and dignity ; Equality of moral and political right ; Equality before the law ; Equality of opportunity ; Equality of attainment ; Equality of respect. Fraternity ; Equality for self and equality for others
The universal humanity : America's mission to mankind ; Cosmopolitanism ; The sentiment of universal humanity ; The ethics of internationalism ; World polity ; War and peace ; Tolerant nationalism ; The progress of mankind. Civilization ; Democracy and religion.
