The Age of Reason

[Telos]

As I read this I am just flabbergasted - utterly flabbergasted that I have not encountered this book in my schooling. It was written by an influential figure in the democratic revolution, who is perhaps one of the most integral powers that helped ensure the liberties many of us in the free world enjoy today. Now more than 300-years-old, it does not seem to have lost any meaning... or edge. Thomas Paine was probably 400 years ahead of his time.

I don't understand how a work like this, written by an author so powerful, so long ago, could go so ignored by so many?

An excerpt:

But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born — a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun, that pour down the rain, and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?

Why are there so many New Age authors, when all this time we've had Thomas Paine?

http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/index.htm

[The Present Moment]

"Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been weilded in vain."
-John Adams

[Telos]

What about the Greeks? The Romans. The philosophers, and great minds that have shaped our consciousness - and they indeed shaped our consciousness in very tangible ways.

Are they still taught today anyways?

Only in college, and not very well from my experience. Those who are in college prep schools might, though.

I should mention that I also went to a Catholic school, so this book would've been complete anathema.

Makes me want to start to a revolution, or something! ;)

[Hans Solo]

One of THE most important works in American History is "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine.  It was instrumental in bringing about the American Revolution.

Read it here:
http://www.constitution.org/tp/comsense.htm

Han Solo

[Telos]

Thank you for that, Solo. The connection to the recent 4th of July holiday was unintentional but definitely appropriate!