Great Ideas of Philosophy - American Freedom

I am sorry to plug a product on my blog, but I have to give credit to the author when I quote him and I feel the need to quote because he says it so well.

The product I refer to is a course on CD called "Great Ideas of Philosophy". You can find a summary of the course here. The lecturer is Dr. Robinson and the course is fantastic. He has opened my mind to many new ideas (new to me, at least) and awoken me at times from a kind of dogmatic slumber. Seriously. I'm working through the lectures for a second time and I think I may go for a third someday.

I was impressed recently by one of his lectures entitled "The Federalist Papers and the Great Experiment". He discusses the experiment of the American Republic as a culmination of some of the products of recent European philosophy (e.g. Kant, Reid, Montesquieu) and as a practical implementation of some of the theorizing that had been going on for some time. In spite of its intellectual heritage, Dr. Robinson makes the case that the American experiment was original in certain ways, but that's a topic for another blog post.

He tells us that Montesquieu, among other things, proposes the necessary ingredients for three different types of government. For despotism to flourish, he says, the required disposition among the populace is one of fear. For a monarchy to flourish, the required disposition is honor. And for a republic to flourish, the required disposition is virtue. I'm not prepared to defend that proposal, but I'll let Montesquieu handle that. I just want to focus on the last piece of it.

Montesquieu

I love the United States. I feel so blessed to live here. I've lived abroad and visited other countries and have always enjoyed myself. I love the diversity I see among people, cultures, food, etc. Every land has beautiful scenery, interesting history, and unique ideas. I think all of that is great. But having been born in the US, I have a special love for this land and its people and though I've loved living in and visiting other countries, this is my home.

One of the things I love about the US is our heritage of freedom. And I believe we have become a great country in large part because individual citizens have had the freedom to work hard and succeed. New ideas, inventions, and technologies have often been encouraged and protected and I think the US has helped to raise the standard of living of its own people and, to some extent, the rest of the world. The US is not the only country to have made the world a better place (and it has admittedly done its share of evil), but I love it for the good it has done.

Drawing on Montesquieu's idea, Robinson claims that "power without virtue is a sure path to a life without a point". He later adds (emphasis is mine),

Whatever differences there were among the Founders, there was one thing that united them all. This sort of experiment in self-governance presupposes an instructed population, products of a good education with a point ... and the point being the development of citizens, the use of the resources of the community for the express purpose of creating that most unique of human entities -- the citizen, the responsible, informed, inner-directed, virtuous person. This is quite different from one trailing degrees, having Ph.D.s, enjoying expertise, great celebrity, being able to act in movies, etc. No, it's a matter of character. And the view was that that character was forged chiefly by observing good examples and through education. Jefferson thought public education was the absolute foundation of this. So the answer to the question, "What kind of creature is right for self government?" is one that a worthy government works to create. One doesn't come out of the womb with the status of a virtuous citizen. As Aristotle taught, it's a lifelong labor.

Professor Robinson, Oxford University

Education (and I will add religion) as a path to virtue - and virtue as the necessary ingredient for a successful republic seem to have been ideas behind many of the writings of the Founders around that time period.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will  be." - Thomas Jefferson

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams

"Republican governments could be supported only be pure religion or austere morals. Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." - John Adams

 "A republic must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty." - John Witherspoon

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin

"Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks - no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea." - James Madison

At one point in his lecture, Robinson says, speaking of the chief architect of the Constitution, "Madison knows human nature to be fickle, gullible, foolish. The right kind of government can't rid human nature of its defects, but it can control them long enough for persons to engage in the lifelong mission of self-correction."

I see a correlation between virtue, freedom, personal responsibility, individual growth and development, and so on. I don't completely understand all of the interdependencies, but I'm grateful that our founders had the wisdom to see some of this and offer us a system of government that limited the possibility of tyranny and has often served to encourage the kind of virtue that makes true freedom possible.