Intellectual Life in America: A History

by Lewis Perry

This historical study of intellectuals asks, for every period, who they were, how important they were, and how they saw themselves in relation to other Americans. Lewis Perry considers intellectuals in their varied historical roles as learned gentlemen, as clergymen and public figures, as professionals, as freelance critics, and as a professoriate.

Looking at the changing reputation of the intellect itself, Perry examines many forms of anti-intellectualism, showing that some of these were encouraged by intellectuals as surely as by their antagonists. This work is interpretative, critical, and highly provocative, and it provides what is all too often missing in the study of intellectuals—a sense of historical orientation.

Genres: History, American History

484 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Lewis Perry is John Francis Bannon, S.J., Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Saint Louis University. His previous books have dealt with anarchism, antislavery movements, American intellectual life, and moral problems in history. He lives in St. Louis, MO.

Reviews

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Through his survey of American intellectual history from the 17th through the 20th century, Perry attempts to understand the place of intellectuals in a democratic society, with particular concern for the charge of intellectual elitism. Perry argues that the current of American intellectualism transformed from that of Enlightenment “virtue” to that of 19th century “culture,” a conceptions which was more aesthetic than political. Democracy caused segmentation and specialization on intellectual interests.
Religion is a decisive agent of intellectual change, with a primary role in his narrative: with beginnings in a hierarchical Christian world view, through strains of utopian, millennial, and progressive strains that retained an element of Providence. According to Perry, religious revivals spurred a mood of rebelliousness that led to Revolution; and he, furthermore, argues that religious change was “inevitable” after the Revolution; the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal is based on a sense of providence and moral virtuosity, religious revivals functions as a national “linchpin” during the antebellum years (136), with the ministry forming a specialized religious class, and even late 19th century “Culture” was conceptualized as “quasi-religious” (267). Although he gives some attention to regional variation, Perry also makes a case for early New England intellectualism as the foundation for national intellectual identity.