/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23315597]

What books heavily influenced the Founding Fathers? Was it.. let me guess.. the Greeks?

[Anonymous No.23315599]

>>23315597
Probably some satanic shit. America is the ultimate satanic project.

[Anonymous No.23315600]

>>23315597
John Locke and the Bible I think.

[Anonymous No.23315609]

>>23315597
Like the other anon said, John Locke is pretty much the essential guy. “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” is taken from Locke’s formula of the fundamental rights being no harm to “ the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.”

Hobbes is also interesting, he offers a secular defense of monarchy (no divine right). The whole English Civil War in the 1600s, with Parliament (made up of Puritans and their ilk) against the King (whose faction was the Cavaliers) tells you that the revolution in America was probably part of a much longer series of events than is usually taught in US History classes.

[Anonymous No.23315624]

>>23315597
A lot of things.

Francis Bacon's New Atlantis
The Holy Bible
Thomas Moore's Utopia
John Locke
yes, the Greeks (obviously Plato)
and many other things

[Anonymous No.23315650]

>>23315597
All the replies mentioning the Greeks without qualification are wrong. Jefferson's nominalism depends on the rejection of classical metaphysics. Most of the classical philosophy he did embrace was from the Hellenistic ethics.
>The introduction of this new principle of representative democracy has rendered useless almost every thing written before on the structure of government: and in a great measure relieves our regret if the political writings of Aristotle, or of any other antient, have been lost, or are unfaithfully rendered or explained to us.
http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0234

[Anonymous No.23315657]

>>23315650
>As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece & Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines: in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. the merit of his philosophy is in the beauties of his style. diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. his prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention.
http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-15-02-0141-0001
>>23315597
>>23315599
>>23315624
>"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
-Thomas Jefferson (Letter - from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 11 April 1823)
>"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason."
-Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack)
>”This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it"
-John Adams (Letter - from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 19 April 1817)

[Anonymous No.23315710]

>>23315597
Montesquieu is probably the number one influence on many parts of the constitution.
Blackstone and his compendium and commentary of common law are the reason US law was shaped this way.
Roleplaying as the Ancients was part of life in the late 18th century but it's different from being the real main influence.

[Anonymous No.23315731]

>>23315597
Talmud

[Anonymous No.23315749]

>>23315597
the french actually

[Anonymous No.23315902]

The Romans too

[Anonymous No.23315912]

>>23315597
No, actually the Romans like Cicero. Jefferson hated Plato because he believed in female emancipation and in his words “ a Pell mell society.”

[Anonymous No.23317775]

bump

[Anonymous No.23317789]

The Talmud
The Zohar