“The Only Man of Nature That Ever Appeared in the World”: “Walking” John Stewart and the Trajectories of Social Radicalism, 1790–1822

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the ideas of “Walking” John Stewart (1747–1822), a little-known adventurer and philosopher active in debates over social reformation during the French Revolutionary period. Renowned as a peripatetic who walked from India to Britain, Stewart befriended Thomas Paine and others during the early years of the Revolution. His main aim was to persuade them of the value of his philosophy, which was derived from French materialism as well as Hindu and Buddhist sources. But Stewart also came under the influence of the Shakers, Dunkers, Moravians, and other North American sectarian communities. As early as 1791 he commended small-scale “cohabitations” of no more than 100 men and 100 women as the ideal form of association. Here, and in his radical approaches to marriage and sexual relationships, he strikingly anticipated the ideas of Robert Owen and the early socialists.