Writing about Richard Samuelson’s review of Gordon Wood’s new book on Adams and Jefferson yesterday, I omitted the link to Richard’s excellent review. Here it is: “Best of enemies.” As is frequently the case with the Claremont Review of Books, here we have a case of perfectly matched reviewer and book.
Quotable quote: “Wood’s bias is to trace ideas to sub-rational sources. He points to Adams’s tendency ‘to borrow heavily from writings that seemed to answer his emotional needs at the moment.’ Hence he seldom presents Adams explaining or elaborating, or, ultimately, thinking. He does, however, recognize his insight. Of Adams’s extract from Adam Smith, Wood notes that his account of the passion for distinction seems actually richer than Smith’s treatment.’”
One more: “Gordon Wood is the most talented historian of his generation. The misfortune is that, for all his accomplishments and accolades, his method presumes that there is not a robust or transhistorical human nature. From that perspective the classic understanding of history—as philosophy teaching by example—remains unintelligible or is reducible to ‘ideology.’”
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.