Seeking the Truth

This anthology of essays from the great nineteenth-century thinker Orestes A. Brownson will engage the reader with key writings from one of the most compelling American Catholic intellectuals. Brownson was a spiritual seeker who migrated through Presbyterian ism, Universalism, skepticism, Unitarianism, and Transcendentalist thought, and finally at age 41 to Catholicism. Politically, he found himself anticipating socialism in the 1830s, then, turning into a disciple of John Calhoun's states' rights constitutionalism, and later he incorporated his criticisms of mass democracy into a unique philosophical defense of the Constitution that emerged in full bloom during the Civil War. This anthology will be of great use for academics, graduate and undergraduate students, seminarians, and educated lay readers. The significance of Seeking the Truth is how it allows tire reader to walk with Brownson through his intellectual journey and gain a further understanding of one of the best social, political, and religious thinkers of the nineteenth century.