A group blog to promote discussion, debate and insight into the history, particularly religious, of America's founding. Any observations, questions, or comments relating to the blog's theme are welcomed.
Charles Page Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742-1798
I was at the David Library today leafing through various books. The iPhone "works" as a photocopy machine. These are four pages of the above mentioned book that I thought relevant to Wilson's political theology.
. Cell phones are great. . I remember some sixty years ago I was in the Chicago Museum of Art with my Voigtlander camera and was setting up to take a picture of some of the statues. Geez, I thought the guards were going to have be thrown in jail. But, with a cell phone, today, I could take all the pictures I want. .
I've only done the first page, but here we see James Wilson---typical of the Scottish Common Sense Enlightenment [SCSE]---defending natural law via the "innate moral sense."
He also has a distrust of "reason," that reason---thought---can pervert truth in the mind, working as rationalization.
Or as I like to put it, If you can't lie to yourself, who can you lie to?
And even though [the rather atheistic] David Hume isn't part of the SCSE, he too questions the honesty of human "reason," that we use our brains more to justify our prejudices ["passions"] than use our noodles to come to the right ideas.
And in fact, recent science studying the workings of the human brain seems to back that up...!
Great stuff, Jon, and thank you. As always, the more I read of James Wilson the more I'm stunned at his wisdom, a giant who stands astride the Old World and the New.
And in fact, he was born and educated in Scotland during the SCSE, and happily [for us] moved to America in 1766.
The greatest Founder nobody ever heard of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wilson
[Except for American Creation blog readers, of course, and a few others out there.]
As far as I understand them Hume thought "reason" suffered from the is/ought gap as much as "revelation" did (indeed, I think Hume invented the "is/ought" gap). I think Wilson agreed, "reason" alone was insufficent, but needed "the innate moral sense" to plug what Hume would term the "is/ought" gap. So it's not just "reason," but "reason and the senses." Throw in some revelation and have them all three working together and then you get a complete picture.
Mark the dead pixel with a grease pencil, then wipe the area with a dampened cloth after turning off your TV. Apply light pressure to the cloth with the capped end of a pen. Remove the pen and cloth after 15-20 seconds. Wipe the grease pencil from your screen and turn on the television. Go through this article to know how to fix dead pixel on Samsung TV.
I'm really impressed with this article. The author's ability to convey such depth and meaning in such a short piece is truly remarkable. If you're experiencing webcam issues, try restarting your computer. Sometimes, a simple reboot can resolve temporary software glitches and restore the functionality of the webcam. Read this article to learn more about how to fix webcam problem.
7 comments:
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Cell phones are great.
.
I remember some sixty years ago I was in the Chicago Museum of Art with my Voigtlander camera and was setting up to take a picture of some of the statues. Geez, I thought the guards were going to have be thrown in jail. But, with a cell phone, today, I could take all the pictures I want.
.
I've only done the first page, but here we see James Wilson---typical of the Scottish Common Sense Enlightenment [SCSE]---defending natural law via the "innate moral sense."
He also has a distrust of "reason," that reason---thought---can pervert truth in the mind, working as rationalization.
Or as I like to put it, If you can't lie to yourself, who can you lie to?
And even though [the rather atheistic] David Hume isn't part of the SCSE, he too questions the honesty of human "reason," that we use our brains more to justify our prejudices ["passions"] than use our noodles to come to the right ideas.
And in fact, recent science studying the workings of the human brain seems to back that up...!
Great stuff, Jon, and thank you. As always, the more I read of James Wilson the more I'm stunned at his wisdom, a giant who stands astride the Old World and the New.
And in fact, he was born and educated in Scotland during the SCSE, and happily [for us] moved to America in 1766.
The greatest Founder nobody ever heard of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wilson
[Except for American Creation blog readers, of course, and a few others out there.]
As far as I understand them Hume thought "reason" suffered from the is/ought gap as much as "revelation" did (indeed, I think Hume invented the "is/ought" gap). I think Wilson agreed, "reason" alone was insufficent, but needed "the innate moral sense" to plug what Hume would term the "is/ought" gap. So it's not just "reason," but "reason and the senses." Throw in some revelation and have them all three working together and then you get a complete picture.
Mark the dead pixel with a grease pencil, then wipe the area with a dampened cloth after turning off your TV. Apply light pressure to the cloth with the capped end of a pen. Remove the pen and cloth after 15-20 seconds. Wipe the grease pencil from your screen and turn on the television. Go through this article to know how to fix dead pixel on Samsung TV.
I'm really impressed with this article. The author's ability to convey such depth and meaning in such a short piece is truly remarkable. If you're experiencing webcam issues, try restarting your computer. Sometimes, a simple reboot can resolve temporary software glitches and restore the functionality of the webcam. Read this article to learn more about how to fix webcam problem.
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