Daniel Robinson - The Founders... Life (The American Founding)

Introduction

• Professor Daniel Robinson: Faculty at Trinity College, Oxford and emeritus professor at Georgetown University.
• Expert in history and theoretical issues in psychology with broad interests including American founding, philosophy, social sciences, and Shakespeare.

Jefferson's View on Education

• In 1786, Thomas Jefferson was in Paris, captivated by French architecture and culture but aware of its potential downsides.
• Jefferson's fondness for French culture noted even by John Adams: concern on how a nation of 20 million atheists could be governed.
• Correspondence with Abigail Adams: preferred the polite, hospitable French over the "rich, proud, hectoring" English.
• Education: Jefferson considered the bill for the diffusion of knowledge as the most important in their code.
  • Believed it was the surest foundation for freedom and happiness.
  • Tax for education is minimal compared to the cost of ignorance under kings, priests and nobles.

The Dignity of Man and Education

• Nathaniel Emmons (1787): celebrated patriot, praised Benjamin Franklin for donating books to the parish library.
• Sermon titled "The Dignity of Man": emphasized obligations arising from God-given powers.
• Connects government to human dignity: Learning flourished in free republican states like Greece and Rome.
• Parents as models of virtue are crucial: Children are "men in miniature."
• American child should receive the same care in character formation as a prince.
• Emphasizes the ties of nature, the authority of God: Bring up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
• John Adams: government will only work with a fundamentally Christian populace.
  • Not necessarily orthodox churchgoers.
  • A set of values from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Republic of the Israelites as an Example

• Samuel Langdon's sermon (1788) : "The Republic of the Israelites, an example to the American States."
• Israelites: oppressed people emerging from bondage needed stability and promise.
• Mosaic law provided moral fortitude and Moses provided leadership.
• People lacked a constitution: God sent 70 men to share governance, forming the first senate based on republican principles.
• Langdon's Call to Action:
  • Support schools in every town to prevent ignorance.
  • Preserve the knowledge of God, as neglecting religion jeopardizes freedom, peace, and happiness.

Modern Perspectives on Foundations of Liberty

• These exhortations provide context for modern observations by Jurgen Habermas and Evelyn Waugh.
• Jurgen Habermas (secular atheist): Christianity is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy.
  • Benchmarks of Western civilization.
  • Everything else is postmodern chatter.
• Evelyn Waugh (converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930): Essential issue is between Christianity and chaos in European history.
  • Civilization, the moral and artistic organization of Europe, lacks the power of survival without Christianity.

Christianity's Role in Shaping Civic Life

• Habermas and Waugh both conclude: Christianity greatly influenced the West.
• Christianity benefited from centuries of philosophical inquiry.
• Adapted philosophy to new conceptions of human nature and societal needs.
• Established universities, crucial institutions for civic life in Western democracies.

The American Experiment and Its Foundations

• Temporal boundaries: From revolutionary founders to the present, the US risks losing its moral and spiritual base.
• The American founding was unique: A nation created by known people, at a specified time and place.
• Founders understood failure meant being hanged for treason.

John Adams and Classical Education

• John Adams dissatisfied with his Harvard education, especially in classics.
• Sodalitas Club: Adams, Benjamin Gridley, and Samuel Fitch formed club to improve classical knowledge.
  • All attended James Otis's case against the king, denouncing writs of assistance as instruments of slavery.
• Adams's "August 1765": Argued for Puritan rejection of feudal law.
  • Settlement of America as a grand design in Providence to illuminate the ignorant and emancipate the enslaved.
    • Referring the bills passed in the Commonwealth Of Massachusetts in 1642 and 1647 where grammar schools had to be established and where the failure to educate children was a criminal act.
• Sodalitas Club: First classical treatise analyzed was Cicero's Pro Milone.

James Wilson and Natural Rights

• Cicero's Pro Milone: Defended Milo, who ordered the murder of Publius Clodius Pulcher.
  • Cicero sent Milo a copy of his composed (but undelivered) defense.
• James Wilson used Pro Milone in his lectures on law, focusing on natural rights.
• Cicero: "There exists judges, this law which is not written but inborn. We have not learned it, received it, or read it. But from nature nature herself, we have snatched, imbibed, and extorted it. A law to which we are not trained, but in which we are made. In which we are not instructed, but with which we are imbued."
• Wilson Appointed to the first Supreme Court by Washington.

Influence of Classical Thought on the Founders

• Founders derived conceptions of human rights from classical sources.
• Gilbert Chenard (1940): 18th-century philosophy is closely tied to us.
  • Tendency to attribute originality to liberals, deists, philosophes, and founders.
  • They would not have claimed originality, they knew the sources.
• Montesquieu is valued for his comprehensive summaries of classical thought.
• Jefferson: Anything stipulated by the founders can be found in Cicero or Aristotle.

Edmund Burke's View on Education in the Colonies

• Edmund Burke's Speech on Conciliation (1775): Colonial education contributes to an "untractable spirit."
  • Education makes men acute, inquisitive, prompt in attack, ready in defense, and full of resources.
  • Colonists anticipate evil and judge grievances by the badness of the principle.
  • Acknowledges connection between disciplined study and the ability to anticipate consequences and form action plans.
• Instructed minds see ahead, weigh alternatives, locate ruling principles, and forge predictions/plans.

John Adams on Liberal Education

• 1776: Adams advised on creating state constitutions.
• "Thoughts on Government": Laws for liberal education of youth, especially the lower class, are wise and useful.
• The beneficiaries of a humane and generous mind are the youth of the nation, those on whom its fortunes will soon depend.
• Education is crucial for citizens to embrace foundational principles and the right form of government.

Thomas Jefferson on Public Education

• Notes on Virginia (1782): Law covering public education aims at rendering the people the safe guardians of their liberty.
• Letter to John Tyler (1810): Two great measures at heart:
  • General education to every man.
  • Divide every county into hundreds with a central school.
• Epitaph: Founder of the University of Virginia.
• Letter to Adams (1813): Education would raise people to moral respectability necessary for their safety and orderly government.
• Letter to Correa de Serra: Universal education brings into action talents buried in poverty.

Influence of Scottish and French Thinkers

• Jefferson: Greatest metaphysicians - Dougal Stewart and Destut de Tracy.
• 1811: Destsut published a commentary and review of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws which Jefferson Translated.
• Destut criticized Montesquieu for promoting self-denial in republican governments.
• Destut: Government should aim for a unity of education from parents, teachers, and society.
  • $Pulis, Andra, Dodosca$: man is taught by the city.
• Jefferson: Public education should harmonize parental, educational, and social instruction.

Summary of Founders' Views on Education

• Founding a republic requires prepared minds conversant with history.
• Heavy burden on those without wealth, breeding, or rank.
• Without proper measures, a class system will assert itself.
• Education and a high form of discipline must be at the foundation of a republic of virtue.
• Adams: The American Revolution was effected before the war commenced.
  • A revolution in perspective, a religious transformation.
• Burke differentiated simple people acting on grievance from the founders who acted on principles.
• Good reasons must underpin the founding of a nation. If it had failed, the reasons would have remained good.

John Witherspoon on Educating the Privileged Elite

• Witherspoon: Pivotal in the revolutionary cause, signer of the declaration and of the constitution.
• President of the College of New Jersey (Princeton).
• Address on Education: Children of wealth and power need prudent education the most.
  • Wealth can be a dangerous temptation.
  • Liberal education inspires abhorrence of low riot and brutal conversation.

Contemporary Relevance of Founders' Views

• How do educational institutions instruct the young on rights, duties, sources, and limits?
• How do they distinguish between individuality and individualism?
• The founders may have regarded anachronistic criticisms as misplaced.
• The human condition shares commonalities across time and conditions.
• The repetition of serious blunders weakens the frame.
• The founders sought to create a new order: A realm of ordered liberty, respectful of the dignity of the individual whose fundamental rights were not the gift of government in the first instance.

The Great Seal of The United States

• Designed in 1782 by Charles Thompson, secretary to the Continental Congress, with the motto, Novus Orto Siclorum.
• Two people signed the declaration of independence. Charles Thompson and John Hancock.
• Irish orphan, master of Greek, known for integrity. The Indian tribe of the Delawares accepted him as a member and they gave him the name man of truth.
• 1808 He translated the oldest version of the Old Testament in four volumes.
• John Adams called Thompson the Sam Adams of Philadelphia.
• Thompson took the phrase Novus Ordo Cyclerum from Virgil's fourth Ecologue, that meant no longer accepting the past as prologue.
• The great seal is an echo of a classical vision that no longer accepted the past as prologue.
• Powers latent in humanity have been liberated from an oppressive past.

Cicero and the Pursuit of Truth

• Cicero was a source of ideas to the founders' thinking.
• Cicero in De Officiis: The search after truth and its eager pursuit are peculiar to man.
  • Hungering for independence with greatness of soul and sense of superiority to worldly conditions.

Tocqueville's Warning About Despotism

• Tocqueville foresaw an immense tutelary power overseeing men absorbed in petty pleasures.
  • A power that keeps them in childhood irrevocably.
• Educational institutions should correct these symptoms.
• A free people may reinvent themselves and rediscover a path long neglected.
• The age of prophetic song may yet come to its finality, and the great order of the ages may be born again.