The Persistence of Liberty: An American Philosophy

by David Ross Netherton

Overview

This appealing book treats the genesis of contemporary American taste, tolerance and energy. The Persistence of Liberty illuminates the idealistic perspective that so many Americans share. In collected essays, it is part cultural history and part odyssey, traveling across recurring themes of the latter twentieth century in prose poetry that draws upon the arts, natural sciences, evolution of the spirit, and the liberty of the American moment to form its own practical philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948796798
Publisher:	Hermes Editions
Publication date:	11/01/2019
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

David Netherton has lived and worked in Europe and Latin America, and writes about the community of nations and America's place in it. Educated in Boston and Vienna, he trained in epidemiology and global health at Harvard and earned his doctorate in philosophy in the UK. He was born in Chicago in 1948, and he and his wife, Joanne, have two sons. They live in New England.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 BOOK OF HABITS 1

CHAPTER ONE Modus Vivendi 3

CHAPTER TWO Popular Alienation 11

CHAPTER THREE Inheriting Nostalgia 18

CHAPTER FOUR Bebop Doo-wop 26

CHAPTER FIVE Dreams of Disaster 36

2 BOOK OF HERESIES 45

CHAPTER SIX Letter to Abigail 47

CHAPTER SEVEN Ordinary Alchemy 56

CHAPTER EIGHT Double Souls 65

CHAPTER NINE Waiting for Change 72

CHAPTER TEN Hymn to Hypatia 82

3 BOOK OF VOYAGES 93

CHAPTER ELEVEN Kansas Valkyrie 95

CHAPTER TWELVE Tempo di Valse 102

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Café Vandal 112

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Doctrine’s Orders 123

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Supreme Futures 133

4 BOOK OF VISIONS 139

CHAPTER SIXTEEN National Endowments 141

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Video Incest 147

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Twisted Fate 156

CHAPTER NINETEEN Bert Lonestone, Left Field 165

CHAPTER TWENTY Mei Kuo 176

Chapter Epigraphs 186

Index 190

Editorial Reviews

“Sweeping references forced me to be an engaged and active reader. There is also beautiful poetry in the book…put together in such lyrical, elegant and compelling ways.” --ARIELLE ECKSTUT, AUTHOR, The Secret Language of Color

From the Publisher

2020-01-07
A collection of essays that aim to plumb the depths of the American psyche.

Debut author Netherton, an adjunct lecturer in philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, bravely undertakes a philosophically ambitious project to capture the nature of the American mind. One obstacle to such an anatomy, he observes, is the nation's relative youth—our "sense of history stretches back only a few decades"—but Americans have a sense of nostalgia in the absence of long-standing tradition, which provides insight into their peculiar marriage of hardheaded pragmatism and idealism. For the majority of Americans, the author asserts, a commitment to progress is a "natural feeling"—a hopefulness that's often expressed in materialistic terms as the expectation of "abundance," which culminates in a "religion of accumulation." Despite the political and cultural debts that the United States owes to its European predecessors, Netherton says, Americans in the first half of the 20th century were "individualistic, iconoclastic, and a little untidy." In his quest to construct a "practical philosophy" that reflects America's cultural inclinations, he takes readers on a meandering tour, focusing on the period from the 1940s to the '90s. Much of the ground that he covers is familiar, with discussions of self-reliance and racism that seem almost obligatory. However, he does sometimes dazzle with refreshing, original insights; his treatment of the quixotic pursuit of "secret knowledge" is memorably astute. Overall, though, the author's approach is exasperatingly unstructured, as he leapfrogs from subject to subject in a seemingly stream-of-consciousness manner. Indeed, he often seems more interested in making esoteric references than providing useful illustrations. His prose laboriously aims for the poetical but usually achieves only opacity: "In our individual cosmologies, many who habitually harbor less confidence in tomorrow long for the incandescent spirit that reaches through the high vacuum and places us gently on the soaring dove."

Some genuine insight into American culture hampered by a lack of clarity.

Kirkus Reviews