One has to wonder if the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson in particular, knew just what a powder keg they were about to set off with the Declaration of Independence.
No, I'm not talking with Britain, I am talking about the progeny. Those words that are soon to be 240 years old are still being argued, misconstrued, parsed out and fought over more so than ever. One of the reasons may be that when it comes to American philosophers the list is pretty bare. All the famous Enlightenment thinkers are European and as generations went on people like Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault, Max Weber kept that tradition alive. What about in America? Don't we believe stuff? Don't we have an ideology? I would argue yes and I would also argue that the most poignant political American philosophical prose is the Declaration of Independence. This summer we are going to dive in to the Declaration and really study it. Not just your fifth grade history class "learn" but really try to decipher what makes this 240-year old document so relevant and so important in an era of iPhones and Justin Bieber. I ask that you come along on this journey because I surely cannot do it alone. This is an intellectual exercise but an extremely important one considering the context of the world we live in. I mean if politicians are going to claim to "make America great again" then we have to know what it "was" so we can make it again. If we want to understand how a slave owner could write about everyone have the right to freedom then we need to dig deeper. If we want history be more than facts and keep it alive as a discipline and a relevant contribution to our culture than we must do more with it than a computer can. We must use our brains for it is a muscles and all muscles not in use atrophy. So join me and let's see what we can do. At the very least we can make connections or think through ideas we had never considered before. At most, we might be able to sharpen our critical thinking skills and use those powers to do great things.
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August 2016
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