What Are They Reading?

By Victor Navasky

April 18, 2002

Pick: THE AMERICAN SOUL: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders.
By Jacob Needleman.
Tarcher/Putnam. 371 pp. $25.95.

» More

Who would have thought that at a moment when McCullough, Brookhiser, Ellis and others are writing on various Adamses and other Founders that one of the most provocative meditations would come from Jacob Needleman, one of the country's leading metaphysicians?

His latest book, The American Soul, does for the Founders what an earlier book of his, The Way of the Physician, did for the medical profession. Namely, in a plausible way--even for agnostics like myself--he brings a metaphysical, in this case a spiritual, dimension to bear on our understanding of science, politics, economics and history.

In these abbreviated remarks, I'm not going to attempt to do justice to the new perspective he brings to the table, not to mention my night-table. But to give you an inkling, let me but cite some of the quirky yet profound questions he begins to raise when considering, say, our Founding Father. After acknowledging that Washington, like every hero of the American pantheon, is a representative of the idea of freedom, Needleman asks:

"Are we limited to conceiving that freedom only in external political terms? Or are we not obliged to return as well to the inner meaning of freedom as a relationship between parts of oneself? What, after all, could be the ultimate value of outer freedom of liberty in the external sense of the term, if inwardly we are and must remain enslaved and tyrannized? For, let us emphasize again, the deepest spiritual source of the early colonists' rejection of political and religious tyranny was that such tyranny prevented them from searching for inner freedom."

That is the framework within which Needleman analyzes not merely the most influential man in our history, whom he calls "our nation's chief symbol of will and mastery," but the rest of the founders as well. And yes, Needleman's "Founders" include Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton et al., but also Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman.

In places, The American Soul is too abstract and airy--and sometimes Needleman sounds a little too religious (albeit in an unconventional sense) for my taste, although he would undoubtedly deny it. But then, who else has tried to capture, penetrate, surround, describe and understand America's soul?

About Victor Navasky

Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation, was the magazine's editor from 1978 to 1995 and publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005. He is currently the director of the George Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University. His books include Kennedy Justice, the American Book Award winner Naming Names and, most recently, A Matter of Opinion. more...
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Blogs

» Editor's Cut

Around the Nation | The week we went Rouge. Plus, Moyers on Afghanistan.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
46 Comments

» The Beat

Health Care Bill Advances, as Harry Reid Trumps Sarah Palin | The death panelist-in-chief rallied her followers to "KILL THE BILL." But 60 senators decided to follow the real leader.
John Nichols
55 Comments

» The Notion

Palin as the Church Lady | Going Rogue book tour brings passive-aggressive rightwing Christianity to the fore.
Leslie Savan
144 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Friday | The "Second Amendment" sale; the raving paranoids of the right.
Eric Alterman

» The Dreyfuss Report

Chongqing: Socialism in One City | China is managing the most important event in the world: the urbanization of half a billion people. Fast.
Robert Dreyfuss
218 Comments

» Act Now!

Toward Copenhagen | A guide to joining the movement against climate change.
Peter Rothberg
75 Comments