American Intellectual History and the Great Ideas

During the past few years American intellectual historians have become more interested in the social context of ideas than in the ideas themselves. But a careful analysis of how the American people during the past three centuries have defined the Great Ideas—freedom, authority, justice, equality, truth, love, and beauty—is of crucial importance for understanding American history as a whole; and it can also throw a great deal of light on how Americans think and behave in the contemporary world.