Adams never referred to the book as an autobiography, it provides an account of Adams’s life from youth to the time of writing. By analyzing modernity through self-inquiry, Adams addresses a question that perhaps only Emerson and Nietzsche had come close to investigating: with the former authorities of God, history, great statesmen, and even individual agency gone, how do you construct the self? Adams frames this question as his search for presaging Hannah Arendt’s asking is Authority?” when this “education,” “What “even prepolitical authority which ruled the relations between adults and children, teachers and pupils, is no longer secure.” Carlyle, Tocqueville, and Mill had been concerned with the loss of great men: Adams is concerned with the loss of those who looked up to them. This is the first of two arguments I plan to make of The The Education of Henry Adams. second focuses specifically on Adams’s form of self-inquiry. It is significant that it was Adams’s editor to add the book’s first subtitle, and not its author. Developing toward Autobiography,” “An the end of the Enlightenment, autobiography builds individual authority through the mastery of one’s experience and its public declaration. doesn’t The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin simply narrate Franklin’s rejection of paternal authority and entrepreneurial development: it also exemplifies Franklin’s turning to the self as the grounds of analysis through which to know the world. Authors before Adams like Franklin or Frederick Douglass had looked to autobiography to replace paternal authority with one invested in the individual and reading populace. But with those authorities slipping away, Adams writes the as a return to the Education confession, a genre of literature reliant upon a pre-Enlightenment conception of authority and epistemology: to write on the self, as Augustine did, is to know oneself an external through authority, rather than to confirm one’s self as authority alone. The goal of the recalls Education that of the whose author told God you my selves are reunited’” Confessions, “in ‘scattered
Adams never referred to the book as an autobiography, it provides an account of Adams’s life from youth to the time of writing. By analyzing modernity through self-inquiry, Adams addresses a question that perhaps only Emerson and Nietzsche had come close to investigating: with the former authorities of God, history, great statesmen, and even individual agency gone, how do you construct the self? Adams frames this question as his search for “education,” presaging Hannah Arendt’s asking “What is Authority?” when “even this prepolitical authority which ruled the relations between adults and children, teachers and pupils, is no longer secure.” Carlyle, Tocqueville, and Mill had been concerned with the loss of great men: Adams is concerned with the loss of those who looked up to them. This is the first of two arguments I plan to make of The Education of Henry Adams. The second focuses specifically on Adams’s form of self-inquiry. It is significant that it was Adams’s editor to add the book’s first subtitle, “An Autobiography,” and not its author. Developing toward the end of the Enlightenment, autobiography builds individual authority through the mastery of one’s experience and its public declaration. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin doesn’t simply narrate Franklin’s rejection of paternal authority and entrepreneurial development: it also exemplifies Franklin’s turning to the self as the grounds of analysis through which to know the world. Authors before Adams like Franklin or Frederick Douglass had looked to autobiography to replace paternal authority with one invested in the individual and reading populace. But with those authorities slipping away, Adams writes the Education as a return to the confession, a genre of literature reliant upon a pre-Enlightenment conception of authority and epistemology: to write on the self, as Augustine did, is to know oneself through an external authority, rather than to confirm one’s self as authority alone. The goal of the Education recalls that of the Confessions, whose author told God “in you my ‘scattered selves are reunited’”
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