PB: I question that notion of the USA springing form the so-called “Enlightenment”.
Perhaps the Founders were informed to a degree by the “Scottish Enlightenment”, but the “French Enlightenment”, with its other Continental components, had much less impact, and a case could be made that they were repulsed by the latter’s positivism, excessive reliance on a rather simplistic notion of “reason” and, above all, its incredulity. One does observe that a sound knowledge of history–both ancient and nearer to their times–and a pragmatic understanding of human nature, much informed by Christian concepts, where their most profound guides.
This recourse to the “Enlightenment” to explain America is more of a 19th and 20th century attempt to characterize that period rather than an actual fact of those revolutionary times, and one must note that in this century those that push the “Enlightenment” construct have had their own agendas. Famously, Socialists have often posited that their “scientific socialism” is heir to the “great tradition of the Enlightenment. Comically, we see this in demonstrated by the EU politicians of our day. In the Anglosphere, the very term itself only appears in the mid 19th century. Whatever the case, let us admit that the term denotes a period and not a particularly philosophical or political movement: In these matters the “Enlightenment” contains many positions, some of which are quite contradictory. One is left with the image of Beethoven scratching out his dedication to Napoleon on the autograph copy of the his 3rd symphony upon hearing that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor.
I think that the sources of America are many, but chief among them are reactions to the 30 Years War and all that came with it, a reaction to the new entrenchment of the Ancient Regime after that war, and a good many happy accidents in the conditions of America’s development as a colony. The weight given matters of Faith in the history of our formation reflects this.
If the central points of the Enlightenment are the destruction of the old European aristocratic hierarchical order and an attendant suppression of religion as a guiding social and political institution, then one might well call WW1 the “apogee” of the Enlightenment, however bitter a pill this might be for our current professoriate to swallow.
