EXCEPTIONALISM OF AMERICA: SOME REFLECTIONS

• Authors: Parafianowicz Halina
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The concept of American exceptionalism was used to search for the peculiar and unique in American identity, character and history, and to describe the 'more perfect society', the 'best political system', and its high values, superiority etc. According to its supporters and believers, American unique political philosophy and its democracy provided the best model also for other nations. Certainly, such rhetoric gave also a lot of counter-arguments to many skeptics and critics of the idea of the US exceptionalism. The meaning of exceptionalism is pretty capacious and Americans quite easily redefine it while finding many other useful definitions of their uniqueness. One of the most and better known around the world is the belief that the United States was a country of 'progress', an 'opportunity, abundance and plenty', and sort of 'promising land' for the newcomers. In a sense America is exceptional, the more so that the faith in the uniqueness of its experience, destiny and the idea of promotion of its ideas and progress in the world (e.g. mission) were inherent parts of American history. Perhaps America was rather less exceptional than it was imagined and propagated by its believers. Exceptionalist tendencies, positive or negative, have not vanished till now and wouldn't totally disappear. We may also simply conclude that the topic of exceptionalism is not distinctively American one because it is pretty hard to find a country and/or nation that had not developed the concept of its uniqueness at certain period of its history.

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Journal: Białostockie Teki Historyczne
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 9
• Pages: 213-224
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Parafianowicz Halina

• Institute of History of the University in Bialystok, Plac Uniwersytecki 1, 15-420 Bialystok, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11PLAAAA109112