David Sollenberger

Walt Whitman’s prominent and consistent use of the word “atom” from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass to the 1891-92 deathbed edition has prompted much debate about the sources and meanings of the term in his work. This interest in the concept is not surprising, given his fascination with the changing world of science, philosophy, and technology around him. Indeed, perhaps no scientific idea experienced more development in the 19th century than the atom. Both the increasingly detailed scientific understanding of the atom and chemical processes more generally, as well as the ancient atomism of Epicurus and Lucretius undoubtedly contributed to Whitman’s idea of the atom. Yet, I argue that neither atomic theory fully captures the way Whitman uses the term in his poetry. The poet’s ideas more closely mirror the Naturphilosophie of F.W.J. Schelling, a German philosopher who rejected the Enlightenment and Epicurean picture of atoms as “dead mechanism,” was intimately familiar with the cutting edge of chemistry in his own time (though he would be viewed as too speculative and non-empirical by the next generation of chemists), and advanced his own view of nature as “active,” “dynamic,” and “autonomous.”

Abraham Lincoln’s political thought is an important turning point in American political ideas and practices. For Harry Jaffa, Lincoln represented a return to the principles of the Declaration of Independence while Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey saw him derailing the American political tradition. More recently Joseph R. Fornieri has portrayed Lincoln’s enduring legacy as a product of his status as a “philosopher statesman” rather than a pragmatist and Grant N. Havers has demonstrated the centrality of “charity” to his political religion. In a new book on his political thought, George Kateb has also added Lincoln to Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman as an innovator in the development of “democratic individuality,” and maintains the secularity of Lincoln’s political religion. What has not been addressed directly by political theorists, however, is the distinctly “Romantic” bent of Lincoln’s political thought. Despite his fidelity to the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s evocations of “natural” or “human” rights are quite limited and although he was deeply influenced by Enlightenment radicals like Paine and Volney, his unorthodox religious language has little in common with their anti-clericalism. Rather, Lincoln’s political thought should be understood in a mid 19th century intellectual context where Romantic political ideas could be found throughout American culture. The Romanticism of literary figures like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, and its formative effect on the Transcendentalist movement and Second Great Awakening has been well documented, but its influence on American politics has been understudied. Lincoln was part of a generation of political thinkers and actors that was forced to rethink the Enlightenment and classical ideals of the Founders in the context of slavery. Liberal Enlightenment ideals like the natural right to property and the rule of law had been used to defend slavery intellectually while liberal and democratic institutions had been captured by slave power. Perhaps most disturbing to Lincoln and his generation was that this seizure was possible because of the legalism inherent in the liberal institutions of the founding. Lincoln’s political thought represents a Romantic renewal of Enlightenment liberalism in a time of crisis, one that reimagined law, rights, and democratic institutions as a kind of “political religion,” with an emotional and aesthetic appeal instead of a cold, impersonal, unlovely, and instrumental means for preserving liberty.

David Walsh's work has remained primarily in conversation the continental tradition, attempting to show suspicious readers, as he himself once was, what makes this philosophy an essential way to understand ourselves, our politics, and our place in the universe at the beginning of the 21st century. While he has been in conversation with particular American thinkers on particular subjects, he has not consistently engaged the tradition of American philosophy as a whole. And yet, David’s work fits well into this tradition. His desire to shift to an existential mode of philosophical inquiry and emphasis on the person as the center of that existence mark his reflections as quite American.