Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?

James R. Stoner

Is There a Political Philosophy in the

Declaration of Independence?

Is there a political philosophy in the Dec-

laration of Independence? One step toward

answering this question—not the only

step,

but from the philosopher's point of view

the most fundamental—is to ask whether

the "self-evident truths" of the Declaration

are really true after all. Another way of

putting it, which I once saw in a conference

title,

is to ask whether the "self-evident

truths"

are fact or fiction.

I have to admit that "fact or fiction"

struck me at first

as

an odd

way

of question-

ing the authenticity of

truths,

but on reflec-

tion I decided it

was a

particularly felicitous

turn of phrase. Living in a pragmatic age,

we tend to equate fact with truth, and fic-

tion with falsehood. There is something

characteristically American about such a

way of thinking. Still, it is important at the

outset to recognize that this frame of mind

is not universal. No less an authority than

Aristotle writes that fiction (poetry) is

"more philosophic and more serious" than

fact (history), because it speaks of univer-

sals rather than particulars; there is more

truth in understanding the soul of a man

like Homer's Odysseus than in knowing, to

quote Aristotle, what "Alcibiades did or

had done to him"'—or even, did not do or

have done to him, as students of Plato's

Symposium

will understand.

I

will return to

the question of fact and its relation to truth.

but my point at the outset is that part of the

question of whether there is a political phi-

losophy in the Declaration is whether what

the Declaration proclaims as self-evident

truths really are true.

But that is not the whole of the question.

As others have pointed out, the Declara-

tion does not say, "These truths are

self-

evident...." It says, instead, that "we hold"

them to be so. If

we

understand "philoso-

phy" as it is often understood, in the sense

of a doctrine, and if we understand "politi-

cal philosophy" as political science depart-

ments often do, as a synonym for political

theory, then the question of whether there

is a political philosophy in the Declaration

is the question of whether the Declaration

binds us to a particular political creed.

I say "binds" because the Declaration is

treated, even today, as authoritative law in

one sense: It is printed at the head of the

United

States

Code,

where it is considered

the first of our organic laws. More to the

point, politically today the Declaration of

Independence has no open

enemies;

it

is

the

touchstone of our political arguments rather

than an object of advocacy any more. Even

James

R.

Stoner

is

Professor

of

Political

Science

at

Louisiana

State

University,

and he

serves

as a

member

of the

National Council

for the

Humanities.

His

most

recent

book

is

Common

Law

Liberty

(2003).

THE

INTERCOLLEGIATE

REVIEW—Fall/Winter2005

Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?

by James

R.

Stoner

those who dismiss the American founders

as racist or sexist want to keep the Declara-

tion. They accuse the founders of hypocrisy

rather than mistaken principle.

It is not

only that no one wants to be on the wrong

side

of

the Declaration,

but

that even

the

charges made against

the

Declaration's

authors seem

to be

anchored

in the

Declaration's

own

principle

of

equality.

V\^ether or not that principle and the other

purported truths that accompany

it are

true,

they would seem in fact to be the first

principles

of

our regime.

And this leads to my third concern. If the

"self-evident truths" of the Declaration are

either true

or

fundamentally ours,

how

should they affect our political life? While

loyalty to the original Constitution is often

dismissed

as

hopelessly anachronistic

or

conservative, loyalty

to the

Declaration

might seem

to

have

the

opposite conse-

quence:

to mandate support of those move-

ments that seek

to

extend the reach of equal-

ity in America. Abraham Lincoln seems

to

have thought so. He wrote that the asser-

tion

of

human equality

in

the Declaration

provides

"a

standard maxim

for

free soci-

ety, which should

be

familiar

to all, and

revered

by

all; constantly looked

to, con-

stantly labored for, and even though never

perfectly attained, constantly approxi-

mated,

and

thereby constantly spreading

and deepening its influence, and augment-

ing

the

happiness

and

value

of

life

to all

people

of all

colors everywhere."^

At the

very least, Lincoln's use of the Declaration's

principle

of

equality

in the

controversy

over slavery

set a

precedent

for its use to

reform the regime from within.

Still, however important Lincoln's

achievement

or

however appropriate

the

use

of the

Declaration

in its

support—

Jefferson himself understood

the

implica-

tions

of

his principles

for the

question

of

slavery,

as

evidenced

by the

clause

con-

demning the slave trade that he would have

included but that Congress cut out—it still

ought

to be

legitimate

to

ask whether

the

Declaration today commits Americans to

a

particular program

of

development.

These then are my questions.

I

want

to

ask whether the self-evident truths are true,

whether we believe they are,

and

how we

ought to act on them. First, however,

I

want

to

ask

what they mean

and to

answer

by

paying attention

to the

document

as a

whole.

The Short Version and the Long

buppose the Declaration had been vwitten

as

it

is usually read today. It would be only

about

a

page

in

length, edited down

to

the

first

two

paragraphs and then the

last,

where

the actual declaration

of

independence

is

made. No one would deny that these para-

graphs—especially the famous second one,

with its elegantly simple account of the first

principles

of

natural rights

and

just

gov-

ernment—contain

the

most memorable

phrases

in

the document, indeed precisely

the phrases that have fired the imagination

of generations of Americans and of reform-

ers

and

revolutionaries around

the

globe.

Nor is

it

only frequent repetition that gives

these phrases their ring

of

self-evidence,

even several centuries after they were

penned. Jefferson crafted them with care,

and he drew upon a rich tradition of politi-

cal theory that had developed in the previ-

ous century

or so in

England, most espe-

cially

as

conveyed

in the

Two

Treatises

of

Government

by John Locke.

Though echoes

of

Locke's phraseology

can

be

heard

in

Jefferson's language,

Jefferson claimed that the Declaration

did

not reflect any single man's ideas but rather

"the harmonizing sentiments

of

the

day,

whether expressed

in

conversation,

in let-

ters,

printed essays,

or in the

elementary

books

of

public right, as Aristotle, Cicero,

Locke, Sidney, etc."' Insisting that political

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE

REVIEW—Fall/Winter2005

Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?

by James

R.

Stoner

reflection must begin with equal natural

rights,

that government

is

itself not natu-

rally given but rather

is

formed through the

consent

of

those who acknowledge

it,

that

government has the limited purpose of

se-

curing rights,

and

that abusive govern-

ment can be cashiered, the theoretical para-

graph

of

the Declaration sketches

a

politi-

cal doctrine that today

we

recognize

as

classically liberal—in contradistinction,

I

might

add,

despite Jefferson's claim,

to

Aristotle's teaching that the polis exists by

nature and has the promotion of virtue

as

its highest end. Whether

out of

personal

conviction

or

because liberty cannot

be

secure unless the people believe—remem-

ber his famous remark

a

decade later, "can

the liberties

of

a nation

be

thought secure

when we have removed their only firm ba-

sis,

a

conviction in the minds of the people

that these liberties

are

of

the

gift of

God?""—

Jefferson states more clearly than Locke

that what

I

have called equal natural rights

are an endowment of the Creator, presum-

ably the same "Nature's God" mentioned

in the Declaration's first sentence. But that

government itself has

a

human rather than

a divine origin

is

clear. Indeed,

in a

sense,

that

is the

whole point—for

the

Declara-

tion

is

written

to

justify^ political change.

Still, the famous paragraphs of the Dec-

laration are but a part of the

whole.

Looked

at

by an

age enamored

of

political theory

and ideology, they appear

to be its

most

important passages; but at the center of the

document is a list of grievances against the

king and Parliament that make the case

for

independence there

and

then. These

are,

the Declaration says, "Facts...submitted

to

a candid World" to "prove" that the British

are intent upon "the Establishment

of

an

absolute Tyranny over these States."

These central passages

of the

Declaration's bill of indictment are conve-

niently grouped in three divisions. The first

is concerned with constitutional violations

and abuses of constitutional powers by the

king. Here, twelve different complaints are

lodged, accusing the king of threatening the

public good by the use of

his

veto, dissolv-

ing colonial assemblies, obstructing

jus-

tice,

keeping standing armies among them

in peacetime, and the like. The thirteenth

grievance introduces the second division,

the "Acts of pretended legislation" that the

king has passed by "combin[ing] with oth-

ers to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to

our Constitution,

and

unacknowledged

by

our

Laws." Referred

to

here

are

nine

acts of Parliament, described not by name

but by their effects—imposing taxes with-

out consent, suspending trial by jury, abol-

ishing colonial charters, and

so

forth.

Fi-

nally, there are five statements introduced

by an implicit reference to the King's Proc-

lamation

of

Rebellion of August 23, 1775,

under which

"He has

abdicated Govern-

ment here, by declaring us out of

his

Pro-

tection and waging War against us." Here,

his acts

of

war

are

summarized

and de-

nounced.

From the point of view of the theoretical

paragraphs with their "self-evident truths,"

these many statements in the middle of the

Declaration

are the

"facts" which prove

that the king has in mind

a

despotism over

America and that

the

colonists

had

better

act

now.

As a reading of the middle section,

this is sound, but not sufficient. To be sure,

if revolution has

to be

made

for a

reason,

then there has

to

be

a

way of proving that

the king

is

becoming tyrannical; this is pre-

cisely what the various facts

are

meant

to

show. But unlike the first principles of

poli-

tics,

the

tyranny

in

these rather general

facts—which never name names or dates or

places—is

not

immediately self-evident.

The outrage comes from a hidden premise:

the English constitutional tradition,

or at

least the common law rights and liberties of

that tradition, which the Americans claim

as their rightfiil heritage.

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE

REVIEW—Fall/Winter2005

Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?

by James

R.

Stoner

What

is

Not Self-Evident

about the Self-Evident Truths

Here is the source of

the

principle of no

taxation without representation, the inde-

pendence of the judiciary, trial by jury, the

priority

of

civil

to

military authority,

and i

he self-evident truths of the Declaration,

much else. That scholars today

no

longer

tend to read these parts of the Declaration

h

CONGRESS,

Jctrj.

is some measure

of

how

far

we

have lost touch v«th

that tradition,

but

that

does

not

mean

the

com-

plaints were not taken se-

riously

by our

founding

generation. To speak only

of

the

federal level, nearly

every grievance detailed in

the Declaration

is ad-

dressed and prevented by

a specific provision of the

Constitution and the Bill

of

Rights.

The bill

of griev-

ances,

in

other

words,

adds

gravity

and

substance

to

the abstract principles formulated

in the

"self-evident truths,"

and

thus guards

against arbitrary recourse

to

rebellion.

The Declaration justifies

a

political revo-

lution,

to be

sure,

but the

constitutional

dispute with England gave

our

revolution

its distinctive form

and

contributed

to its

success. That revolution was

not

without

its lawless moments,

but on the

whole

its

spirit was to reinvigorate old forms of

self-

governance and to reinforce protection

for

property and social order.

Its

self-evident

first principles were soon to challenge some

of

these

forms—restrictions on the suffrage,

for example,

and in

some

of the

states,

slavery, itself unknown

at

common law—

but

it is no

more

an

accident that these

challenges were approached

in a

spirit

of

constitutional compromise than that

the

revolution culminated

in a

Constitution.

There, after

all,

in the middle division of the

middle part of the Declaration, is mention

of an unwritten "Constitution" which

the

Americans

already

assert

to be

their own.

then, garner much of their specific political

significance

for the

American Revolution

from the evidence offered

by

the

facts

of

Anglo-

American constitutional-

ism; these measure the

vio-

lations (and later

the

rem-

edies)

as

well as moderate

the radical potential in the

revolutionary language

taken

by

itself.

Stripped

of this context,

the

first

principles enunciated

by

Jefferson are not self-evi-

dent

at

all—at least,

not

to anyone raised

in the

tradition

of

Western vir-

tue

or in a

world formed

by Judeo-Christian

belief.

Let

me

give

an

example. The "self-evi-

dent truths," it seems to me, do not give an

adequate account of

the

family, the funda-

mental institution of social life. First, what-

ever might

be

said

of

the relation

of

hus-

band and

wife,

the family

is

built not around

equality, but around the inequality of par-

ent and

child.

Precisely the most basic mean-

ing

of

Jefferson's statement

of

equality—

that

no man is the

natural ruler

or the

natural subject

of

another—is not true

of

this relation,

for

the parents are surely the

natural rulers of their dependent children.

Second, the family

is

first and foremost not

about rights,

but

about duties; even

the

right

of

children

to

care

and

education

is

abstract and vague compared to the duty of

parents

to

provide

and

instruct

and the

duty

of

children

to

obey and learn. Third,

the origin

of

the family is not exactly con-

sent.

In

some cultures, including our own,

spouses choose

for

themselves whom

to

marry, but even then the roles they assume

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE

REVIEW—Fa/Z/Mnter2005

Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?

by James

R.

Stoner

are largely socially defined. Except

in

cases

of adoption, and very rarely then, children

do

not

choose their parents,

and

(leaving

aside brave, new technologies and, again,

adoption) parents do not choose their chil-

dren. Fourth, the end of the family is only

incidentally the security of

rights;

it is prin-

cipally provision

and

nurture

in an

envi-

ronment formed by love. And fifth, when

family becomes destructive

of

its ends,

it

cannot be altered and abolished without in

most instances inflicting further wounds

that never heal.

Now about this counter-example

to the

self-evident truths

of

the Declaration,

al-

low me to make two points. First, Jefferson

and his fellows were altogether aware that

families were not formed upon their prin-

ciples.

Precisely what they objected

to in

Tory political theory

was

political

patriarchalism, the effort

to

form the state

on analogy to the family. Natural equality

meant that the king was not to act as father

in relation

to

his people—not that fathers

were not

kings

in their own

homes.

Govern-

ment by consent meant that the command-

ment

to

honor one's father

and

mother

could not be invoked by a political nobility

demanding homage. That abusive govern-

ment can

be

changed

was

not seen to under-

mine

the

indissolubility

of

marriage

nor

the lifelong attachment between parent and

child.

But secondly, there

is no

denying that,

since as long

ago

as John Locke's Two

Trea-

tises

and even Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan,

liberal philosophers have sought

to

recon-

ceive

the

family

on

liberal terms,

and of

course

in

our own day a vast social experi-

ment has been undertaken

to

remodel

the

family

on

egalitarian principles and

to re-

orient authority vwthin

it on the

basis

of

consent. Though opinions about

the

suc-

cess of this effort are bound to differ, allow

me to say for my own part that

I

am more

impressed by the resilience of old patterns

against

all the

force

of

dominant opinion

than

I

am by evidence that abuses

have

been

diminished

and

familial happiness more

commonly achieved.

The

fundamental

equality

of

the sexes may

be

self-evident,

but their equality in the sense of their hav-

ing

no

relevant differences even from

the

point of view of the family

is

not.

And unless

one

is

driven

by a

personal

or

ideological

commitment

to

non-traditional family

forms,

I

do not see how one can argue that

the current regime vnth regard to the fam-

ily

in

W^estern society

is

self-evidently

the

best,

at

least with respect

to

children. One

might note that almost nowhere

in the

West today

are

native populations even

reproducing their numbers,

and in

some

countries those populations

are

on the verge

of precipitous

decline.

It

is a

matter in which

we certainly need,

and all

have difficulty

sorting through,

the

facts.

What, Then,

Is

Self-Evidently True?

iVLy point

in

raising the counter-example

of the family is

not to

deny that what

the

Declaration calls self-evident truths are

true,

but

to

show, first, the grounds that might

be raised

in

objection

to

them (and so,

I

concede,

to caU

into question their

self-

evidence), and second, to suggest how they

need

to be

understood

so as not to

place

their authors under the charge of hopeless

contradiction.

Of course

a

contradiction between

our

founders' words

and

practices was much

noted and commented on

in

the country's

first four-score years and seven in regard to

the institution of slavery. Justice can hardly

be done to this topic in

a

brief mention, but

I would say that on the whole the founders

recognized

the

contradiction

and

hoped,

in Lincoln's terms, that they

had

placed

slavery on a course of ultimate extinction—

even though they excised

the

condemna-

tion of slavery from Jefferson's draft. W^hen

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE

REVIEW—Fall/Winter2005

Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration

of

Independence?

by James

R,

Stoner

a generation came along that defended sla-

very

as a

positive good, that generation

either denounced the Declaration or inter-

preted

its

universal language

in

narrow

ways.

With regard to the family, however, I see

no contradiction within

the

Declaration's

theory, though perhaps there

is a

certain

ambiguity.

It

is easy enough to understand

the pressure

of

analogy that would make

the hierarchical family entail

an

authori-

tarian state,

or

make

an

egalitarian state

demand

an

egalitarian family.

But it

also

makes sense

to

see the relation as,

I

would

argue, our founding fathers did: The patri-

archal state

had to go

because

it

makes

children

of

real fathers, refusing

to

allow

them the manly responsibility of governing

themselves and those with whose care they

are charged. In this

way,

the issue resembles

the related theological question

of

God's

kingship. On the one hand, divine kingship

might seem

to

entail

by

analogy

a

divine

right

to

rule

in a

human, hereditary king.

On the other hand, if God

is

king,

then every

human king

is a

usurper. Would

not the

true believer say: "We have

no

other king

but God"?

What

the

Declaration

and the

revolu-

tion it articulated did establish was

political

liberty. So wrote John Marshall

to a

corre-

spondent in his later

years;

in fact, his letter

was

to the

redoubtable Edward Everett,

Unitarian minister. Harvard Professor

of

Greek literature, then

a

U.S. Representa-

tive,

later President

of

Harvard, Governor

of Massachusetts, U.S. Senator from

the

same,

and the man

who shared

the

plat-

form with Lincoln

at

Gettysburg

in

1863.

Wrote Marshall to Everett: "Our resistance

was not made to actual oppression. Ameri-

cans were not pressed down to the earth by

the weight

of

their chains

nor

goaded

to

resistance

by

actual suffering....

The war

was

a war of

principle against

a

system

hostile

to

political liberty, from which op-

pression

was to be

dreaded,

not

against

actual oppression."'

In other words, Americans already knew

political liberty,

or

at least had tasted some

part

of

self-government, through their ex-

perience with the practices and rights,

the

privileges

and

immunities,

of

England's

common law constitution. And they could

see that Parliament and the king were com-

mitted

to a

colonial policy that would

henceforth keep them subordinate.

The

relation

of

mother country

to

dependent

colonies, however appropriate

in

the early

years,

was fast becoming a fiction as a rising

generation

of

Americans learned they had

the wisdom, the skills, the confidence, and

the solidarity

to

govern themselves.

The British ministry understood this

development, too, and when they moved to

foreclose

it, the

colonists struck back.

Be-

cause the Americans soon realized that the

confiict

was

irreversible, they could

not

merely invoke traditional liberties. Besides,

they had learned over the course of

a

decade

of constitutional dispute that their ability

to resist Britain depended

on

their concert

of action,

and

there

was no

established

continent-spanning government

to

whose

traditional authority they could make

ap-

peal. Thus

it is not

quite true,

as

Lincoln

later said, that "the assertion that 'aU men

are created equal' was of no practical use in

effecting

our

separation from Great Brit-

ain"; it was necessary to make intellectually

coherent the appeal

to

traditional

liberties

that would now have

to be

embodied

in

innovative forms—a federal government

that spanned

the

length

of the

Atlantic

coast

and

reconstituted governments

in

"free and independent states."

In asserting

a

right

of

self-government,

the Americans

in

the Declaration appealed

to

a

universal principle, political liberty,

which against the fictions of the time had a

radical meaning, but which they themselves

knew from actual experience, as Marshall's

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE

REVIEW—Fall/Winter2005

Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?

by James

R,

Stoner

letter makes plain. Even when Lincoln sug-

gests

its

radical potential,

in the

passage

I

quoted above,

he

implicitly clings

to its

specifically political connotation.

The

founders, he adds, "knew the propensity of

prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant

that when such should reappear in this fair

land

and

commence their vocation, they

should have at least one hard nut to crack."*

At least in the nineteenth and early twenti-

eth centuries, every extension

of

the prin-

ciple of equality in American constitution-

alism—from the extension of the franchise

coupled with

an

attack

on

politically

en-

trenched economic privilege

in

Jacksonian

times,

to the

extension

of

basic economic

and then political rights

to

blacks

and to

women—involved an expansion of the class

who could claim political liberty,

not its

replacement with

a

contrary ideal.

Read

in the

light

of

the document

as a

whole, then,

the

self-evident truths

of

the

Declaration of Independence constitute an

understanding

of

political liberty that

is

the basis

of

our constitutional order. Pre-

cisely because they commit us to liberty on

political questions, they swear

us to no

allegiance

to a

political creed beyond

a

willingness

to

support

the

Constitution.

Because

the

political things

are not the

whole of things, or even the noblest things,

the truths about the political things cannot

pretend

to

capture the whole of

truth:

politi-

cal liberty can be a good, even a noble good,

without being

the

comprehensive good.

But

the

whole truth

is

more complex

than these Aristotelian propositions alone

would indicate. Under

the

theory

of the

Declaration, politics

is

instrumental

in its

origin

and

limited

in its

ends,

but

this

is

precisely what makes it possible for

us

to act

freely in political life,

to

bring truth as we

understand it and goods and interests

as

we

experience them into the public square.

In

other words, political liberty

is

good

be-

cause

it is not the

comprehensive good.

Since human beings are limited beings, we

can only be just

if

we

are also moderate.

Liberalism and Republicanism

It was fashionable

a

couple decades ago

to

debate the revolution and the founding

in

terms

of a

dichotomy between liberalism

and republicanism. Since my foregoing re-

marks might seem

to

align

me

with

the

republican camp, let me clarify the dispute

as

I

understand it and explain where

I

mean

to

be.

On this dichotomy, liberalism describes

a political philosophy, traceable to Hobbes

and Locke, that makes individual rights

fundamental

and

government derivative

and instrumental to their security. Despite

their differences, both Hobbes

and

Locke

thought men equal

in a

pre-political state

of nature, and both thought that equality

was necessarily compromised when society

was formed.

Men are

equally subject

to

government, according

to

Hobbes,

or to

"settled, standing rules," according

to

Locke, but substantial inequalities in prop-

erty

and in all the

other rewards

of

civil

society are allowed—indeed, through com-

merce they would

be

encouraged

to de-

velop.

Hobbes made the sovereign the judge

of what religion would

be

publicly taught

in

the

commonwealth, while Locke

fa-

mously argued that all tolerant sects ought

themselves to be tolerated, but both agreed

that religion could raise no claim to politi-

cal authority.

In

almost

no

other respect

could Hobbes

be

thought

a

champion

of

political liberty. Locke could,

but

political

life was narrowly circumscribed by making

its end the preservation

of

property; there

is a place

for great politics in

Locke,

but only

at

the

moment

of

an "appeal

to

heaven,"

when the people need

to

call their govern-

ment

to

account

for

having changed

its

form illegitimately

or for

having trans-

gressed its end.

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE

REVIEW—Fall/Winter2005

Is There

a

Political Philosophy in the Declaration

of

Independence?

by James

R.

Stoner

The republican alternative

to

liberalism

sketched

by

historians

is

variously attrib-

uted

to

Aristotle, Machiavelli,

and

Harrington, and ought perhaps

to

refer

as

well

to the

early books

of

Montesquieu's

Spirit

of

the Laws

or even to the

Social

Con-

tract

of

Rousseau.

Here, the emphasis is on

selfless devotion

to

the common good, mili-

tary service, education

in

citizenship,

and

the active exercise

of

virtue

in the

public

realm. Property is not ignored, but

it

is the

precondition

of

citizenship:

one

needs

to

own to have the independence to act freely,

and perhaps

one

needs

to own

much

to

know

how to

command.

The

republican

tradition is less philosophical than the lib-

eral,

for the

latter was theoretical

in na-

ture—it was, after

all,

imagining some-

thing new—^while the former generally had

its

eyes

on Rome. While liberalism made its

peace

with human

vices,

such

as

avarice and

ambition, republicanism stressed the dan-

ger of corruption and the need for vigilance

and renewal.

As for

religion, republican-

ism prudently retired

it to a

subordinate

theater

or

boldly made

it

civic, consecrat-

ing

the

republic.

If

the proof texts

of

this

civic republicanism

are

elusive,

its

monu-

ments

are

unmistakable. Most obviously,

they define the architecture of W^ashington,

D.C., and the capitols of many of the states.

In recent years,

the

liberal-republican

dichotomy has been challenged

in

several

ways.

First, scholars such

as

Paul Rahe,

Thomas Pangle,

and

others have argued

that there is

a

distinctively modern repub-

licanism that bridges

the

gap between

the

two schools

of

thought.'

In

Michael

Zuckert's formulation, liberalism dictates

that the end of the polity is the security of

rights,

while republicanism designs

the

political science

by

which

a

government

might

be

constructed to keep rights secure.*

Second, historian Gordon Wood

has ar-

gued that

the

true alternative

to

republi-

canism

is not

liberalism

but

democracy;

republicanism was simply an ideology that

facilitated the transition between two rela-

tively stable,

if

not natural, social and po-

litical regimes, monarchy and democracy.'

The republican founders meant

to

reject

monarchy,

in

which they had been raised,

but they did not intend to establish democ-

racy; despite their intention,

the

changes

they initiated

in

their revolution necessar-

ily entailed democracy, once

men

bred

under monarchy passed from the scene.

While I find some cogency

to

both of the

critiques just outlined,

I do not

think that

they show

the

Declaration

to be

either

staunchly liberal or increasingly democratic

in its implications. Instead,

it

seems

to me

that

the

common

law

constitutionalism

sketched

at the

center

of

the Declaration

defines the form and the limits of political

liberty as

it

was understood by those who

made the revolution and preserves an influ-

ence in the American regime that should be

called Aristotelian.

The

form

of

govern-

ment it supposes has a mixed character; the

goods it

secures

are multiple and not readily

commensurable;

its

adversarial process

invites rhetorical dispute;

its

attitude

to-

ward change is wary, but not dismissive;

it

makes room for equity, without surrender-

ing government by law to rule of the wise.

Common law

is

unwritten law—like that

unwritten "Constitution" mentioned in the

middle of the Declaration—and the friends

of common law would hold with Aristotle

that "[ljaws based

on

unwritten customs

are more sovereign,

and

deal with more

sovereign matters, than written laws."'"

Moreover,

it is

the unwrittenness

of

com-

mon

law and its

consequent openness

to

truth that made possible its concurrence or

coexistence with the Christian religion, and

later with different varieties of that religion

and with Judaism

and

even with other

faiths—and this, without

the

dogmatism

of liberalism's separation

of

church

and

state.

10

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE

REVIEW—Fall/Winter2005

Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?

by

James

R. Stoner

My point is not to deny classical repub-

lican influences in the American founding

or in the subsequent history of the regime

or especially in its military traditions; nor

to deny that liberalism laid the basis for our

dynamic economy and

its

engine of techno-

logical development and change, nor that

liberalism has influenced the course of our

political development, especially in over-

coming racial slavery. But I think that our

constitutionalism and the spirited political

liberty that gives it shape depend, if they are

to be fully understood historically and ana-

lytically, on other things.

Conclusion

In looking at the Declaration of Indepen-

dence, then, I am saying that we can accept

a few basic political principles that

undergird our constitutional order with-

out having to insist on an orthodoxy of first

principles. We can hold the self-evident

truths to be self-evidently true precisely

because the principles they articulate do

not offer a comprehensive account of hu-

man life. Perhaps no one would disagree if

the issue is put in this way, but it entails, to

my mind, an agreement not to press the

argument of the Declaration beyond its

proper bounds. When the Declaration is

stretched, it becomes a partisan tool, not an

anchor of consensus.

As

there

is

room in the

American polity for one who believes in

rights but not in the Creator who endows us

with them, so there ought to be room for

one who thinks that rights derive from

duties to just such a Creator, or even to a

nature that distinguishes better from worse.

To be true to the spirit of the Declaration

means, from my perspective, not that we

are bound to the most radical reading of its

most abstract truth, but that we ought to

recover the spirited aspiration to self-gov-

ernment that gave the American Revolu-

tion its force and its justification. Rather

than look to an unelected judiciary for the

formulation of our ideals—or to the liberal

philosophers who want to rule through

them—we should neither shy away from

free debate on important social questions

nor demand that every consensus work out

its derivation from first things in order to

count. Let us hold, then, to the principles of

the Declaration as constitutive of our fun-

damental law, but let us not mistake them

as adequate to every exigency in our per-

sonal, our religious, or even our political

lives.

Political philosophy of different sorts

influenced the Declaration, but the Decla-

ration itself

is

not, nor was it meant to be,

a philosophical text. That by its terms it

points us beyond

itself,

to political philoso-

phy and to other

things,

is

no small measure

of its greatness and no little element of its

success.

1.

Poetics,

1451bl ff.

2.

Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, in

Abraham Lincoln, Selected

Speeches,

Messages,

and

Letters, ed. T. Harry Williams (New

York:

Holt,

Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1957), 72-73.

3.

"Letter to Henry Lee," in

Jefferson:

Writings, ed.

Merrill Peterson (New

York:

Library of America,

1984), 1501.

4.

Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia," Query

XVIII, in

Writings,

289. The passage continues: "That

they are not to be violated but with his wrath?"

5.

Letter to Edward Everett, August 2,1826, quoted in

R. Kent Newmyer, John Marshall and the

Heroic

Age

of the Supreme Court (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 2001), 1.

6. Op. dt, 73.

7. Paul Rahe,

Republics

Ancient and Modern (Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), and

Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

8. Michael Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic

(Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1997).

9. Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American

Revolution (New

York:

Knopf,

1993).

10. Aristotle,

Politics

III, 1287bl.

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INTERCOLLEGL\TE

REVIEW—Fall/Win

ter

2005

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