第二周Eighteenth.ppt

Eighteenth Century America --Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin I. General introduction of their status Contrasting ways of thinking represented by Edwards and Franklin shaping the national life of America in the 18th century. Their different aim determined the American character as a racial fact. The rift of conception and the ideational collision quickened the pace of the Revolution. II. Puritanism as manifested in Edwards and Franklin 1. Religious idealism vs. common sensical conception about the universe. 2. The Great Awakening and The Thinking of Enlightenment III. The Great Awakening 1. Background: It was an evangelical movement meant to address and redress the new “sins”. The European Enlightenment fostered the pursuit of deism and skepticism among the educated. The newly gained property of puritan and Quaker merchants were also luring them into the pursuit of materialist gains. Many people seemed to be drifting away from the old path of religious piety and there appeared people for whom no religious faith was needed. 2. The Great Awakening and Jonathan Edwards Calvinist belief and tenets: A. man was, since the Fall , basically evil and enslaved by his sense of sin. B. God was all, and would in his mercy and love work for man’s salvation. C. For man, all he could do was to worship the almighty and hope. 2. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) The last great voice to reassert the Calvinist stance so as to bring people back to its hold. B.Revival of the “original New England way” of worshipping God. C. A mere intellectual comprehension of God is not enough, an individual must be emotionally moved to understand the presence of God. 3.The contradiction in Edwards Newton’s mechanical view of the universe influenced Edwards and tried to hold the mystical and pantheistic tendency in check. Religious thinking colored by Lockean thesis that knowledge is not given from on high, it is empirical, its source being the senses. 4. Edwards as a literary