Philadelphia's Enlightenment and the Slavery Debate between Benjamin Rush and Richard Nisbet

Unlike Davies, Nina Reid-Maroney claims that religion and the Enlightenment were compatible with each other and the Christian Enlightenment offers her a good perspective to explain Philadelphia’s medical school. In her book — Philadelphia's Enlightenment, 1740-1800: Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason, placing Rush at the center of the Philadelphia circle and tracing his intellectual debt to the enlightened Edinburgh, she argues that the Philadelphia medical school best expressed Philadelphia’s enlightened Christianity. As a member of the Philadelphia’s medical circle, Rush was an archetype of Philadelphia’s Christian Enlightenment. According to her, “by introducing a strong strain of Calvinism through the back door of chemistry and physiology, the Edinburgh physicians unwittingly provided Rush with the instruments by which a redemptive Enlightenment might transform Philadelphia’s community of science.” Incorporating the moral philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment into its medical knowledge, the Philadelphia circle was able to accommodate both reason and faith.


As a representative of this circle, Rush’s criticism of empiricism and his embrace of intuition in his medical practice made him a prime example of Philadelphia’s Christian Enlightenment. Reid-Maroney tells us how the Enlightened Christianity could help us to approach the inner minds of the Philadelphian thinkers. However, she neglects to explore Rush’s antislavery view in terms of enlightened Christianity. In this paper, following Davis and Reid-Maroney, I would like to contextualize Rush in the eighteenth century Atlantic antislavery movement, as well as the Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, and examine how his Christian Enlightenment shaped his antislavery views.