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Black reason, White feeling : the Jeffersonian enlightenment in the African American tradition / Hannah Spahn

Author
Spahn, Hannah, 1975-
Additional Titles
Jeffersonian enlightenment in the African American tradition
Published
Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2024.
Copyright Date
©2024
Physical Description
xi, 311 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

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Series
Contents
I feel : therefore I exist -- Uncritical reason -- Opinion is power -- Deep-rooted prejudices -- The lessons of reason -- Malignant prejudice -- Pedagogies of character -- Above Jefferson's veil -- Conclusion : a Jeffersonian double consciousness.
Summary
"This book argues that the universalist ideals we associate with Thomas Jefferson were not a product of his thinking but instead the outcome of Black intellectuals critically engaging with his work across the long nineteenth century"--
"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"--
Subject(s)
ISBN
9780813951188 hardcover
0813951186 hardcover
9780813951195 paperback
0813951194 paperback
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Endowment Note
Steighton (Steve) A. Watts, Jr. Endowment
View MARC record | catkey: 44288074