Abstract

This study details the compatibility of ideas between Jonathan Edwards and Emanuel Swedenborg that helped forge the theological socialism of Henry James Sr. Duban demonstrates how a forgotten newspaper exchange between the elder James and Unitarian minister Henry Whitney Bellows clarified the Puritan foundations of the elder James's philosophy. Henry James Jr., in turn, transformed the phenomenalistic and Edwardsian foundations of his father's philosophy into the psychological dramas of major novels, although deeming the father's political radicalism destructive of aesthetic valuation.