The Influence of Philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) on American Thought and Culture

FAIN: FEL-258065-18

Claire Rydell Arcenas
University of Montana (Missoula, MT 59801-4494)

The completion of a book-length study on the influence of John Locke’s writings on America’s political and cultural history, from the colonial era to the 20th century.

My book, Locke in America, elucidates the extraordinary trans-Atlantic influence of the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke on American thought and culture from before the American Revolution through the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement to today. It tells the story of how and why Americans transformed Locke, best known to them in the 18th and 19th centuries as an epistemologist of the Scientific Revolution, into “America’s Philosopher” in the 20th century—the supposed founder in his Second Treatise of a distinctly American liberal democratic political tradition resting on property rights, individual liberty, freedom of religious practice, and representative government. This is the first sustained study of Locke’s American influence across multiple centuries. By addressing the political and cultural resonance Locke has in the United States today, this project seeks to advance the goals of the Common Good Initiative.

Associated Products

Locke as a Negative Exemplar in the Early United States (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Locke as a Negative Exemplar in the Early United States
Author: Claire Rydell Arcenas
Abstract: Today, John Locke’s contributions to American political thought are understood almost entirely in terms of his Second Treatise (1690). Prior to the Cold War, however, Locke influenced Americans in a variety of important, but hitherto underappreciated, ways. In this paper, I address a particularly interesting aspect of Locke’s changing influence: late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Americans’ preoccupation with his involvement in creating a set of Fundamental Constitutions (1669) for the English colony of Carolina. I show that, against the political backdrop of the early national period, Americans exhumed Locke’s unsuccessful attempt at drafting a constitution for Carolina and interpreted it as a striking example of the perils of governments born of abstraction rather than practical experience.
Date: 01/24/2020
Primary URL: http://www.mceas.org/seminars_friday.shtml#url
Primary URL Description: The McNeil Seminar Schedule
Conference Name: McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Friday Seminar

Why John Locke's Mistakes Mattered in the Early United States (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Why John Locke's Mistakes Mattered in the Early United States
Author: Claire Rydell Arcenas
Abstract: Today, John Locke’s contributions to American political thought are understood almost entirely in terms of his Second Treatise (1690). Prior to the Cold War, however, Locke influenced Americans in a variety of important, but hitherto underappreciated, ways. In this paper, I address a particularly interesting aspect of Locke’s changing influence: late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Americans’ preoccupation with his involvement in creating a set of Fundamental Constitutions (1669) for the English colony of Carolina. I show that, against the political backdrop of the early national period, Americans exhumed Locke’s unsuccessful attempt at drafting a constitution for Carolina and interpreted it as a striking example of the perils of governments born of abstraction rather than practical experience.
Date: 01/31/2020
Primary URL: http://www.newberry.org/01312020-claire-arcenas-university-montana
Primary URL Description: Newberry Library, American Political Thought Seminar
Conference Name: Newberry Library, American Political Thought Seminar

America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life (Book)
Title: America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life
Author: Claire Rydell Arcenas
Abstract: The influence of polymath philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) can still be found in a dizzying range of fields, as his writings touch on issues of identity, republicanism, and the nature of knowledge itself. Claire Rydell Arcenas’s new book tells the story of Americans’ longstanding yet ever-mutable obsession with this English thinker’s ideas, a saga whose most recent manifestations have found the so-called Father of Liberalism held up as a right-wing icon. The first book to detail Locke’s trans-Atlantic influence from the eighteenth century until today, America’s Philosopher shows how and why interpretations of his ideas have captivated Americans in ways few other philosophers—from any nation—ever have. As Arcenas makes clear, each generation has essentially remade Locke in its own image, taking inspiration and transmuting his ideas to suit the needs of the particular historical moment. Drawing from a host of vernacular sources to illuminate Locke’s often contradictory impact on American daily and intellectual life from before the Revolutionary War to the present, Arcenas delivers a pathbreaking work in the history of ideas.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo161605939.html
Primary URL Description: University of Chicago Press page
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780226638607
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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