Joseph Buchanan (August 24, 1785 – 1829) was an American materialist philosopher, who taught at Transylvania University. He was the father of spiritualist Joseph Rodes Buchanan.Ayer, Hugh M. “A Prophet and a Science Are Born.” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 48, no. 4, 1952, pp. 379–96. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27788061. Accessed 23 Aug. 2026. He wrote The Philosophy of Human Nature (1812), "one of the earliest systematic and consistent presentations of materialism to be published in America." Buchanan established a Pestalozzian Seminary in 1814.The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment. (2015). United Kingdom: Bloomsbury. p. 179 He died in a yellow fever epidemic.
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