In this remarkable work, Roger Lundin seeks the source of American moral and cultural authority in the shift from nature to experience figured in the thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson. While the pragmatic tradition concludes that experience must generate the very light that will lead us out of its own darkness, From Nature to Experience returns to religion for illumination and truth. This is a story of nineteenth-century sources and twenty-first century consequences in which literature, history, philosophy, and theology are joined in order to form a truly original critique of American culture.

"Roger Lundin's 'story of nineteenth-century sources and twenty-first-century consequences' narrates the American disenchantment of nature and the ensuing rise (and fall) of experience with admirable subtlety; along the way offering a devastating deconstruction of that ongoing philosophical champion of experience, pragmatism." - Cultural Encounters

"Roger Lundin has provided a powerful 'genealogy of moral authority.'" - Christianity Today

"This book is an important contribution to the study of the history of American pragmatism, modern methods of literary criticism and hermeneutics, and 20th-century Protestant theology. . . . Highly recommended. Graduate and research collections." - CHOICE

"Full of striking insight." - First Things

"A thoroughly documented, closely reasoned critique of the religious and literary temperament of Europe and the United States during the last two centuries." - Touchstone: A Journal Of Mere Christianity

"Re-enchanting Emerson for a post-critical America while simultaneously reasserting the possibility of a supernatural source of authority beyond history, From Nature to Experience is itself an exemplary work of the critical (and hopeful) imagination." - Books and Culture

"From Nature to Experience is both learned and provocative." - Journal of American History

"Lundin is to be commended for his book's scope. . . . Lundin demonstrates considerable talent in unraveling the complex story of cultural authority's shift from nature and revealed religion to personal experience. . . . From Nature to Experience is one of the best examples of a work written from a religious perspective on a subject whose scholars tend to err on the side of freethinking. . . . Lundin has produced a truly inspiring addition to the field of American intellectual history." - H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online

"From Nature to Experience charts the development and weighs the consequences of American pragmatism. . . . Lundin's book is convincing and frequently quite moving. . . . As it stands From Nature to Experience registers as a modest, yet uncompromising, brief against pragmatism and the consequences of its place as American culture's status quo." - Journal of Religion