Exploring the Life and Legacy of Robert Ingersoll: The Great Agnostic and the Rise of American Freethought

Anckarström: Robert Ingersoll war einer der besten Redner der amerikanische Geschichte. In der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts kamen die Menschen meilenweit um ihn reden zu hören. Er kritisierte die Sklaverei und die Religion und er setzte sich für die Gleichberechtigung der Frauen ein. Und seine Reden waren sehr unterhaltsam; einige werden heute noch als Beispiele in Rhetorik-Seminaren eingesetzt. Diese Biographie schildert das Leben von Robert Ingersoll. Am besten sollte man seinen Reden im Original lesen. Ein Genuss!

Germany on Aug 22, 2015

Paul Wilkinson: Excellent book on the historicity of Secularism in the USA and the great R G Ingersoll

United Kingdom on Jan 10, 2015

Nico Brusso: In "The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought," Susan Jacoby (Yale University Press, 2013) brings us a concise recountal of Mr. Ingersoll's illustrative life, high-lighted by selected quotes from a few of his lectures, speeches, orations, or whatever you want to call them.

Way before TV, way before Rock 'n' Roll, way before Hip Hop, or before any of the standing, waving, singing, shouting, rocking attendees at our innumerable modern Concerts, Robert Green Ingersoll was the public entertainment of the day, with his proclamations against religions, against so-called holy books, against religious organizations and their deluded leaders, and even more deluded followers. He led the day in the Freethought movement.

Today, Ingersoll is as little generally known and as little recognized, as Thomas Paine (and his "Age of Reason") and many others. Of course, the "new atheists" -- Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens -- aren't really so "new," and they are hopeful of leading a resurgence, limited though it is. Still, scores of thinkers preceded them, and there are many like-minded contemporaries, though definitely in...

United States on Jun 19, 2013

Mike: When I heard a couple of weeks ago there was a new book on Ingersoll out by Susan Jacoby, I ordered a copy and it was a very good read. I don't think I learnt much new about Ingersoll, but it was different from other biographies I have read in that it is written thematically rather than chronologically, and its strength was the way it attempts to explain the significance of Ingersoll in the context of his own times and American society today. One of the key things it identifies is he was not a scientist or a philosopher, but was able to interpret and promote the new ideas of free-thought to the average person. His appeal was widespread, not just among freethinkers. Jacoby emphasises how modern his views were on topics from feminism to animal welfare, and that unlike some of the 'new atheists' was not devoid at the same time of the poetic \ emotional and romantic side of life. Interesting points as well about the prevalence of social Darwinism at the time and how Ingersoll separated himself from such ideas. He saw Darwin not as setting down survival of the fittest, and he showed that far from being shocked at the idea of being descended from apes, showed how these ideas supported...

United Kingdom on Jun 15, 2013

J.S.: Susan Jacoby has put together a wonderful short monograph about Robert Green Ingersoll, but readers should know that, as something of a counterpoint to her comprehensive history of the American freethought movement published a few years ago,  Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism , this present work is no exhaustive treatment of Ingersoll's life and times. She actually admits as much, referring interested readers to the Great Agnostic's most recently published biography, Frank Smith's  Robert G. Ingersoll: A Life . The work here under consideration is rather more of a set of essays on various aspects of Ingersoll's thought, with biographical tidbits included for background and clarity, and with the bluntly stated purpose of encouraging contemporary atheist activists to look to Ingersoll's own brand of activism as a positive example of patience, manners, and moderation. Admittedly, some of the "New Atheists" need this kind of advice: they can be so rabidly evangelistic about their own convictions, even to the point of using any propaganda whether true or false to back them up, that they often appear as mere angry mirror images of the angry fundamentalists and...

United States on Feb 06, 2013