<P> Though Edwards reformed Puritan theology using Enlightenment ideas from natural philosophy, and Locke, Newton, and Berkeley, he remained a Calvinist and hard determinist . Jonathan Edwards also rejected the freedom of the will, saying that "we can do as we please, but we cannot please as we please ." According to Edwards, neither good works nor self - originating faith lead to salvation, but rather it is the unconditional grace of God which stands as the sole arbiter of human fortune . </P> <P> While the 17th - and early 18th - century American philosophical tradition was decidedly marked by religious themes and the Reformation reason of Ramus, the 18th century saw more reliance on science and the new learning of the Age of Enlightenment, along with an idealist belief in the perfectibility of human beings through teaching ethics and moral philosophy, laissez - faire economics, and a new focus on political matters . </P> <P> Samuel Johnson has been called "The Founder of American Philosophy" and the "first important philosopher in colonial America and author of the first philosophy textbook published there". He was interested not only in philosophy and theology, but in theories of education, and in knowledge classification schemes, which he used to write encyclopedias, develop college curricula, and create library classification systems . </P> <P> Johnson was a proponent of the view that "the essence of true religion is morality", and believed that "the problem of denominationalism" could be solved by teaching a non-denominational common moral philosophy acceptable to all religions . So he crafted one . Johnson's moral philosophy was influenced by Descartes and Locke, but more directly by William Wollaston's Religion of Nature Delineated and the idealist philosopher of George Berkeley, with whom Johnson studied while Berkley was in Rhode Island between 1729 and 1731 . Johnson strongly rejected Calvin's doctrine of Predestination and believed that people were autonomous moral agents endowed with freewill and Lockean natural rights . His fusion philosophy of Natural Religion and Idealism, which has been called "American Practical Idealism", was developed as a series of college textbooks in seven editions between 1731 and 1754 . These works, and his dialogue Raphael, or The Genius of the English America, written at the time of the Stamp Act crisis, go beyond his Wollaston and Berkeley influences; Raphael includes sections on economics, psychology, the teaching of children, and political philosophy . </P>

What political ideas and philosophies influenced the american revolution