The Politics of Feeling in the Transatlantic Age of Reason

 The Politics of Feeling in the Transatlantic Age of Reason 

January 21st, 2022 at 5:30 p.m. EST

Virtual & Free

By the late eighteenth century, it was widely assumed that the political sphere was an arena of reason in which feelings ought to play no part. After all, this was the ‘age of reason’, not passion. Taking a panoramic view of political culture in the transatlantic age of revolution, this talk by Barra Foundation International Fellow, 2020-2021, Matthew Roberts, will show how the quest for a politics of pure reason was neither possible nor, in many cases, desirable. Through a case study of loyalism and anti-Jacobinism, Roberts will explore the place, nature and significance of feeling amongst those who opposed the French Revolution. At the center of his talk is the English journalist William Cobbett who lived in Philadelphia in the 1790s and and whose papers are held at the Library Company and Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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