When Europe’s ideas changed, therefore, the nation of the Enlightenment was helpless. It was left defenseless, without the philosophic resources necessary to withstand the protracted Kantian battering. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, American intellectuals, succumbing docilely to the European lead, turned increasingly against every one of America’s founding ideas and ideals. While the people, taking the American system for granted, were working to build a magnificent industrial structure, the intellectuals were working to undermine the system, to discredit its root premises, to sap its self-confidence, to erode its institutions, to remake the United States in the image of the successive waves of European irrationalism.
The result is America today: a nation with the remnants of its distinctive meaning and institutions buried under more than a century and a half of intellectual wreckage; a nation which has kept some imperishable part of its original soul, but surrendered its mind to the alien ideas of the anti-Enlightenment; a country intellectually prostrate, haunted by a pervasive, undefined sense of uneasiness, of ominous foreboding, of national self-betrayal; a country torn by a profound conflict, without guidance or coherent direction, unable to follow its Founding Fathers or to renounce them.
Philosophically, the new country-to-be did not have an auspicious beginning. For a century the dominant intellectual influence in the colonies of the new world was the worst of the ideas of the old world: the devout Calvinism best articulated by the Puritans.
God as the vindictive sovereign of the universe; faith as the primary means of knowledge; life as a pilgrimage through an alien realm; man as a “nothing-creature” defiled by Original Sin; salvation as a miracle inexplicably granted or denied according to a rigid scheme of predestination; morality as a yoke from which man dare not pluck his neck; pleasure as a distraction, pride as the cardinal vice, human strength or efficacy as a miserable delusion; virtue as self-sacrifice, “a Surrender of our Spirits and our Bodies unto God” (and “a world of self-denial” in behalf of the neighbor)—these are the central themes of the religion that the most influential settlers from Europe brought with them to the Atlantic sea-board. 1
The mentality of Augustinianism had been transplanted to a virgin continent. It was the period of America’s Middle Ages.
Since man is innately depraved, the Puritans argued, a dictatorship ruled by the elect is required to curb his vicious impulses and enforce the Lord’s commandments. Since wealth, like all values, is a gift from Heaven, men of property are not owners of their wealth, but stewards charged with a divine trust; such men are properly subject to whatever economic controls the elect deem it necessary to impose. God, in short, rules nature; his agents, therefore, rule men.
It has been said—mostly by illiterates and conservatives—that the belief in God is at the base of the American system, and that the United States is a product of Christian piety. In fact, the religious mentality was not the source of this country’s distinctive institutions, but the fundamental obstacle to their emergence. So long as men took the idea of God seriously, the idea of America, the America conceived by the Founding Fathers, was not possible.
The transition out of the Puritan era was mediated in part by the Puritans themselves, owing to their dual heritage. As a late-sixteenth-century development, the Puritan outlook everywhere bears the mark not only of the medieval mind, but also, though less prominently, of the early modern struggle to live again in this world.
Having finally rediscovered this earth, men (including the Puritans) were eager to exploit their discovery, and it did not take long for them to grasp that this required intellectual training, personal initiative, productive enterprise (as against superstition, passivity, poverty, and the like). The former were new values in the modern world, admired to some extent throughout Europe, wherever men were animated by the Renaissance spirit. In America, these values took root more profoundly than in Europe, as a matter primarily of practical necessity. In the Puritan settlements, the requirements of existence coincided with the spirit of the Renaissance: in a wilderness, it is the values of human thought and action—or barbarism or death.
To identify the admiration of productive enterprise as the “Puritan ethic” is a misnomer, if it implies that such admiration is a religiously inspired phenomenon. What the Puritans (and their equivalents during the period) contributed to the new value-orientation was not its essential content, but its entrapment in the leftover meshes of medievalism. The claim that the pursuit of worldly success is a duty decreed by a wrathful God ; the conversion of men’s eager desire to exploit nature, into a grimly fearful struggle for salvation; the insistence that work must be performed selflessly, to serve God and the neighbor—all of it is medievalism reaching out to embrace and to tame an antithetic spirit.
Puritanism in America is religion trying to make terms with life on earth. It is an unstable compromise, made of two opposite philosophic approaches. In due course each was to be developed further.
The first element to be developed was the Renaissance approach. In the early decades of the eighteenth century the European Enlightenment came to America.
In every area of thought, the American Enlightenment represents a profound reversal of the Puritans’ philosophic priorities. Confidence in the power of man replaced dependence on the grace of God—and that rare intellectual orientation emerged, the key to the Enlightenment approach in every branch of philosophy: secularism without skepticism.
In metaphysics, this meant a fundamental change in emphasis: from God to this world, the world of particulars in which men live, the realm of nature. For centuries of medievalism, nature had been regarded as a shadowy reflection of a transcendent dimension representing true reality. Now, whatever the vestigial concessions to the earlier mentality, men’s operative conviction was that nature is an autonomous realm—solid, eternal, real in its own right. For centuries, nature had been regarded as a realm of miracles manipulated by a personal deity, a realm whose significance lay in the clues it offered to the purposes of its author. Now the operative conviction was that nature is a realm governed by scientific laws, which permit no miracles and which are intelligible without reference to the supernatural. Now, when men looked at nature, they saw not erratic intervention from beyond (nor inexplicable chance), but order, stability, “eternal and immutable” principles, i.e., the reign of absolute, impersonal cause and effect.
In such a universe, the fundamental epistemological principle was the sovereignty of human reason. For centuries men had sought primary truth in revelation, submitting docilely to the alleged deliverances of supernatural authority, or—later—had sought a compromise between the domain of the secular intellect and the domain of faith. Now the animating conviction was that the rational mind is man’s only means of knowledge. Faith, revelation, mystic insight, along with the whole apparatus of Christian dogmas, mysteries, sacraments —all these the spokesmen of the Enlightenment swept aside as the futile legacy of a primitive past. Reason the Only Oracle of Man, Ethan Allen titled his work, expressing the widespread viewpoint. “Fix reason firmly in her seat,” writes Jefferson to a nephew, “and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”2
Reason—according to the characteristic Enlightenment conception-is a faculty which acquires knowledge on the basis of the evidence of the senses; there are no divinely inspired, innate ideas. It is a faculty which, properly employed, can discover explanatory principles in every field and achieve certainty in regard to them. Since these principles, thinkers held, are absolute truths stating facts of reality, they are binding on every man, whatever his feelings or nationality; i.e., knowledge is objective. It was not heavenly illumination or skeptical doubt or subjective emotion that the Enlightenment mind extolled (“enthusiasm,” i.e., irrational passion, was regarded as the cardinal epistemological sin); it was the exercise of the f
act-seeking intellect—logical, deliberate, dispassionate, potent.
The consequence of this viewpoint was the legendary epistemological self-confidence of the period—the conviction that there are no limits to the triumphant advance of science, of human knowledge, of human progress. “The strength of the human understanding is incalculable, its keenness of discernment would ultimately penetrate into every part of nature, were it permitted to operate with uncontrolled and unqualified freedom,” writes Elihu Palmer, a militant American spokesman of the period. “[I]t has hitherto been deemed a crime to think ... ,” he says; but at last men have escaped from the “long and doleful night” of Christian rule, with its “frenzy,” its “religious fanaticism,” its “mad enthusiasm.” At last men have grasped “the unlimited power of human reason” —“Reason, which every kind of supernatural Theology abhors—Reason, which is the glory of our nature....” Now, “a full scope must be given to the operation of intellectual powers, and man must feel an unqualified confidence in his own energies.”3
A being who has discovered “the glory of his nature” cannot regard himself as a chunk of depravity whose duty is self-abasing obedience to supernatural commandments. After centuries of medieval wallowing in Original Sin and the ethics of unthinking submissiveness, a widespread wave of moral self-confidence now swept the West, reflecting and complementing man’s new epistemological self-confidence. Just as there are no limits to man’s knowledge, many thinkers held, so there are no limits to man’s moral improvement. If man is not yet perfect, they held, he is at least perfectible. Just as there are objective, natural laws in science, so there are objective, natural laws in ethics; and man is capable of discovering such laws and of acting in accordance with them. He is capable not only of developing his intellect, but also of living by its guidance. (This, at least, was the Enlightenment’s ethical program and promise.)
Whatever the vacillations or doubts of particular thinkers, the dominant trend represented a new vision and estimate of man: man as a self-sufficient, rational being and, therefore, man as basically good, as potentially noble, as a value.
For centuries the dominant moralists had said that man must not seek his ultimate fulfillment on earth; that he must renounce the pleasures of this life, whether as a flesh-mortifying ascetic or as an abstemious toiler, for the sake of God, salvation, and the life to come. With the new view of reality and of man, this could no longer be taken seriously. Now a new concept of the good moved insistently to the forefront of men’s mind. The purpose of life, it was held, is to live, to live in this world and to enjoy it. Men refused to wait any longer. They wanted to achieve happiness—now, here, and as an end in itself.
For centuries, whatever their concern with the individual soul, the medievals had derogated or failed to discover the individual man. In philosophy, the Platonists had denied his reality ; in practice, the feudal system had (by implication) treated the group—the caste, the guild, etc.—as the operative social unit. Then, in post-medieval Europe, a dawning appreciation of the individual had appeared in two different forms, in the Renaissance and the Reformation movements. Now, particularly in America, that generalized appreciation became a specific, ruling conviction.
Since reality is this world of particulars, thinkers held, the individual is fully real; the potency and value of man the rational being means the potency and value of the individual who exercises his reason. Thus when the Enlightenment upheld the pursuit of happiness, the meaning (Christian contradictions aside for the moment) was: the pursuit by each man of his own happiness, to be gained by his own independent efforts—by self-reliance and self-development leading to self-respect and self-made worldly success.
The leaders of the American Enlightenment did not reject the idea of the supernatural completely. Characteristically, they were deists, who believed that God exists as nature’s remote, impersonal creator and as the original source of natural law. But, they held, having performed these functions, God thereafter retires into the role of a passive, disinterested spectator. This view (along with the continuing belief in an after-life) is a remnant of medievalism, in process of fading out. It is in the nature of a vestigial afterthought, whose actual influence on the period is minimal. The threat to “Divine religion,” observed one concerned preacher at the time, is the “indifference which prevails” and the “ridicule.” Mankind, he noted, is in “great danger of being laughed out of religion....” 4
The result of the Enlightenment ideas, from every branch of philosophy, was a surging sense of liberation. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” says Thomas Paine. “A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand. . . .”5
The father of this new world was a single philosopher: Aristotle. On countless issues Aristotle’s views differ from those of the Enlightenment. But, in terms of broad fundamentals, the philosophy of Aristotle is the philosophy of the Enlightenment. The primacy of this world; the lawfulness and intelligibility of nature; the reality of particulars and therefore of individuals; the sovereign power of man’s secular reason; the rejection of innate ideas; the nonsupernaturalist affirmation of certainty, objectivity, absolutes; the uplifted view of man and of the human potential; the value placed on intellectual development as a means to self-fulfillment and personal happiness on earth—the sum of it is Aristotelian, specifically Aristotelian, as against the mysticism of the Platonic tradition and the self-proclaimed bankruptcy of the skeptical tradition. If the key to the Enlightenment is secularism without skepticism, this means: the key is Aristotle.
In the deepest philosophic sense, it is Aristotle who laid the foundation of the United States of America. The nation of the Enlightenment is the nation of Aristotelianism.
Aristotle provided the foundation, but he did not know how to implement it politically. In the modem world, under the influence of the pervasive new climate, a succession of thinkers developed a new conception of the nature of government. The most important of these men and the one with the greatest influence on America was John Locke. The political philosophy Locke bequeathed to the Founding Fathers is what gave rise to the new nation’s distinctive institutions. That political philosophy is the social implementation of the Aristotelian spirit.
Throughout history the state had been regarded, implicitly or explicitly, as the ruler of the individual—as a sovereign authority (with or without supernatural mandate), an authority logically antecedent to the citizen and to which he must submit. The Founding Fathers challenged this primordial notion. They started with the premise of the primacy and sovereignty of the individual. The individual, they held, logically precedes the group or the institution of government. Whether or not any social organization exists, each man possesses certain individual rights. And “among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—or, in the words of a New Hampshire state document, “among which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.”6
These rights were regarded not as a disparate collection, but as a unity expressing a single fundamental right. Man’s rights, declares Samuel Adams, often termed the father of the American Revolution, “are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.” Man’s rights are natural, i.e., their warrant is the laws of reality, not any arbitrary human decision; and they are inalienable, i.e., absolutes not subject to renunciation, revocation, or infringement by any person or group. Rights, affirms John Dickinson, “are not annexed to us by parchments and seals.... They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power without taking our lives. In short, they are founded on the immutable maxims of reason and justice.”7
And “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....” The powers of government are
, therefore, limited, not merely de facto or by default, but on principle : government is forbidden to infringe man’s rights. It is forbidden because, in Adams’s words, “the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights....”8
In this view, the state is the servant of the individual. It is not a sovereign possessing primary authority, but an agent possessing only delegated authority, charged by men with a specific practical function, and subject to dissolution and reconstruction if it trespasses outside its assigned purview. Far from being the ruler of man, the state, in the American conception, exists to prevent the division of men into rulers and ruled, It exists to enable the individual, in Locke’s words, “to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.”9 “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Jefferson—and the other Founding Fathers—meant it. They did not confine their efforts to the battle against theocracy and monarchy. They fought, on the same grounds, invoking the same principle of individual rights, against democracy, i.e., the system of unlimited majority rule. They recognized that the cause of freedom is not advanced by the multiplication of despots, and they did not propose to substitute the tyranny of a mob for that of a handful of autocrats.
We must bear in mind, says Jefferson, that the will of the majority “to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.” In a pure democracy, writes Madison in a famous passage,
there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.10
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