Black Reason, White Feeling: The Jeffersonian Enlightenment in the African American Tradition (Jeffersonian America) - Softcover

Spahn, Hannah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813951194 ISBN 13: 9780813951195

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2024

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Hannah Spahn is Professor of American Studies at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and the author of Thomas Jefferson, Time, and History.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813951194
• ISBN 13: 9780813951195
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328