Nature's God
The Heretical Origins of the American Republic
29 August 2014
Description
A startling, paradigm-shifting exploration of the revolutionary part of the American Revolution: the ideas that changed the world for good.
Erudite Thomas Jefferson, wily Benjamin Franklin, rough-hewn general Ethan Allen and Thomas Young (who instigated the Boston Tea Party)—the radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as "infidels" and "atheists" in their time, they wanted liberation from a king but also from supernatural religion. The ideas that inspired them were largely ancient, pagan and continental: the fecund universe of Lucretius; the potent natural divinity of Spinoza.
From the meaning of "nature’s God" and "self-evident" in the Declaration of Independence to the sources of The United States’s success in science, medicine, the arts, religious tolerance and democratic governance, Matthew Stewart’s investigation surprises, challenges, enlightens and entertains as a philosophical detective story of the highest order.
Reviews
"...splendidly polemical account of the philosophy of the founding fathers..." — Prospect
Also By: Matthew Stewart 
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"A devastating bombardment of managerial thinking and the profession of management consulting…A serious and valuable polemic." —Wall Street Journal
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"A devastating bombardment of managerial thinking and the profession of management consulting…A serious and valuable polemic." —Wall Street Journal
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"Exhilarating…Stewart has achieved a near impossibility, creating a page-turner about jousting metaphysical ideas, casting thinkers as warriors." —Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review
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"Exhilarating…Stewart has achieved a near impossibility, creating a page-turner about jousting metaphysical ideas, casting thinkers as warriors." —Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review
