Abstract

The Meaning of Americanism won the $1000 prize in the 1956 Philosophical Library essay contest. The sub-title describes it as “An Essay on the Religious and Philosophical Basis of the American Mind”. The use of the cliché “American mind” must be regarded as less than felicitous since Dylan Thomas’s visit to America when “for the first time he gazed at the broad open spaces of the American mind”. The book is, however, a serious study of democracy in the United States. It discusses the various influences—especially that of the philosophy of John Locke—which went to the formulation of the Declaration of Independence and the writing of the American Constitution. The author is of the opinion that if the values of American democracy are to be preserved the Lockeian approach is not sufficient; what is needed, he declares, is “democratic personalism”.