Two Cities
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.
Two Cities
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.
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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.

