Volume 54 No. 3 (Autumn 1987)
Arien Mack, Editor
|
BICENTENNIAL
OF THE CONSTITUTION
Volume 54 No. 3 (Autumn 1987) Arien Mack, Editor |
Table of Contents Notes on Contributors Ordering information
The articles collected in this issue of Social Research were originally presented in three Bicentennial Conferences sponsored by the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science during the academic year 1986-87.
The New School's commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution, which has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the New York State Commission for the Bicentennial, has had as its theme "Constituting and Reconstituting America: Two Hundred Years of American-European Dialogue." It is not without interest that this dialogue is concretely reflected in the origins of the Graduate Faculty, originally established in 1933 as a University in Exile for scholars fleeing European totalitarianism.
We take this opportunity to thank all those who have contributed to the Graduate Faculty's bicentennial commemoration; and in particular, we express our appreciation to the scholars whose reflections are contained herein. Their seriousness of thought is testimony to the fact that the American Mind is not yet "closed" but is open still to remembrance, judgment, and faith.
MAURICE AUERBACH
LEONARD LAMM
Bicentennial Program Coordinators
Editor's Introduction
The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.
-Thomas Paine
The following are selected papers from a series of conferences which celebrated the Bicentennial of the Constitution at The New School. The focus of the divergent perspectives represented by the papers is the American experience in light of the continuing dialogue between America and Europe. The topics covered are civil religion and constitutionalism, equality of rights, and the interchange between emigre scholarship and American self-understanding.
Classicism, biblical faith, and rationalism constitute the common heritage of America and Europe. In our time European intellectual developments-historicism, for example-challenge that heritage. How must we understand America in light of these developments?
In terms of the founding, America is the unique embodiment of
the universal principles of Western civilization. Thomas Jefferson
considered the principles of the Declaration of Independence-"the laws
of nature and of Nature's God"-as the articulation of the "American mind."
Alexander Hamilton maintained that the American people had the task of
demonstrating that a nation may establish good government from "reflection
and choice" and is not destined to depend on "accident and force." In short,
the American founding was understood as a new beginning in the sense that
it was the first conscious attempt to establish a government in light of
first principles.
Civil Religion and Constitutionalism
Wilson Carey McWilliams addresses the problem which faced the Founders as a result of their appeal to first principles-the tension between biblical religion and secular rationalism. According to McWilliams, the Enlightenment offered two solutions, two kinds of civil religion. Both solutions were directed by the principle of modern society: "self-interest rightly understood." The American Founders borrowed from Locke a liberalized Christianity which would offer the moral support to the laws of a modern commercial republic. But liberal civil religion would not depend on an established church but on the effect of traditional Christianity on mores and on the operation of the laws.
By way of contrast with the Founders' solution, McWilliams concentrates on the more radical civil religion offered by Thomas Paine. In his work The Age of Reason, Paine undertook the thoroughly rationalistic reinterpretation of Christian theology. For McWilliams, Paine's Deism, as animated by the faith in the benevolence of modern science, is really a mask for atheism. From this view, man is the creator of morality. Enlightened self-interest and the mastery over nature constitute a new manliness-man makes himself in defiance of the indifference of soulless nature. Christian love and forgiveness can lead only to effeminacy and slavishness, which have generally led to despotism. Thus, for McWilliams, Paine rejected the compromise with Christianity advocated by the Founders.
McWilliams concludes that history has demonstrated that Paine underestimated
the effectiveness of the liberal civil religion in transforming or transcending
Christianity. Notwithstanding the clamor of the fundamentalists, "the cosmopolitan,
universal theology of the republic" remains triumphant. Likewise, McWilliams,
in vindication of his thesis, cites President Reagan as quoting Paine to
defend conservatism. "The laws are shaping the habits of the heart," and
love survives only in "a maimed form."
In her commentary, Eva Brann, who mostly agrees with McWilliams's
interpretation of Paine, offers two reservations as to his view of America.
At the present time the laws are not shaping the habits of the heart, for
"compassion, our most pathetic public word, is supposed to inform the judiciary."
But what is most encouraging, few Americans have subscribed to Paine's
loveless rationalism-"no one can accuse Americans of underrating the power
of love."
The greatest European commentator on America, Alexis de Tocqueville, presented an original interpretation of the civil religion favored by the Founders. William Galston discusses Tocqueville's commentary with reference to contemporary America.
Galston shows that for Tocqueville democratic republics require religion, whereas despotisms or monarchies depend on the will of the rulers. Freedom weakens the political ties and thus necessitates the tightening of the moral ties in order to preserve society. And moral conduct depends largely on religious faith, which is natural to man. In Tocqueville's time, America exhibited the harmony of liberty and religion. Unlike Paine, and to a greater extent than Locke, Tocqueville considered the Christian ethic as integral to representative democracy. In particular, Christianity supports the principle of equality. Further, Christianity is the complement to a society based on what Tocqueville termed "self-interest rightly understood." Christianity mitigates the greed associated with commercialism.
Galston, however, raises the question whether Tocqueville's analysis is still relevant. In the past, the harmony of liberty and religion depended on "profound religious uniformity." But the increasing diversity of non-Christian and nonbiblical religions in America seems to be an obstacle to that harmony. Likewise, for Galston, one of the ill effects of the "partial Europeanization" of America in our time has been the increasing gulf between liberalism and religion. The rise of fundamentalism is the reaction to this situation.
Galston suggests that a study of Tocqueville will help us devise a new
solution, a middle way between the indifferent relativism of secularism
and the intolerance of fundamentalism. Totalitarianism is perhaps the response
to the radical secularization of European liberalism. A restoration of
the harmony of liberalism and religion is the urgent task of democracy.
Equality of Rights
Related to his view on the effect of religion on American democracy, Tocqueville offered an interpretation of the unique status of American women. Leslie Friedman Goldstein compares and contrasts Tocqueville's position with that of the leading feminist writers of the early nineteenth century.
Goldstein quotes Tocqueville, "[Religion] reigns supreme in the souls of women, and it is women who shape mores." From McWilliams we learn that Paine rejected Christianity precisely because of its effeminacy. But for Tocqueville women are essential in a democracy in order to shape moral character, which comprises what Tocqueville termed "the habits of the heart."
According to Goldstein, in the nineteenth century American women were granted great freedom and equality in the domestic sphere but were isolated from the public arena. This situation tended to reinforce the responsibility of women in the family and protect their chastity. Sexual morality instills in turn a sense of self-restraint in men. The control of lust corresponds to the principle of self-government. The freedom of the American woman was thus contrasted with the subservience of the traditional European woman and with the feminist vision of political and social emancipation.
Goldstein concludes by suggesting that progress in the extension of women's rights has been accompanied by the lessening of the role of women in the moral education of society. An increase of rape, wife battering, and child abuse may suggest a need to reconsider Tocqueville's view of the role of women in fostering self-restraint in American society.
Whereas the founding offered the opportunity for greater freedom and equality for women, albeit in the private sphere, the compromise with slavery appeared to sanction the reduction of a particular race to the status of property. How can a Constitution founded on the appeal to the universal principles of freedom and equality tolerate, if not justify, the dehumanization of a segment of the population? Only after the greatest catastrophe in American history was this tragic defect in the Constitution corrected.
Orlando Patterson offers an unusual explanation of the paradoxical relationship of freedom and slavery. Freedom, slavery, and the Constitution compose for him an "unholy trinity." He thus departs from the philosophical traditions of the Founders. From Patterson's perspective, the nature of man is not the measure of freedom. On the contrary, throughout the history of the West there is an unconscious dialectic between freedom and slavery. To paraphrase Hamilton, for Patterson freedom does not depend on "reflection and choice" but on "accident and force."
Patterson borrows elements from Hegel and Marx for his theoretical framework. The process of history is characterized by the struggle for recognition and domination which eventuates in the master-slave relationship. However, Patterson departs from Hegel and Marx by rejecting the inevitable process of liberation. In antiquity freedom is characterized by the civic participation of the free citizen who owns slaves. In modern commercial society the individual seeks to pursue his interests at the expense of others. The Enlightenment did not give rise to a new spirit of freedom but was "atavistic."
Ironically, Patterson enlists the thought of the apologists for slavery, Calhoun and Fitzhugh, for his critique of the Constitution. The principles of the founding were not meant to apply to all men. The doctrine of natural rights is a myth. Racism affected the Founders. The defenders of slavery were consistent and honest, while the opponents were either inconsistent or hypocritical. Finally, the enslavement to the impersonal power of capital is (on Patterson's interpretation) worse than the enslavement to the personal power of a human master. The American constitutional system cannot, therefore, be understood in terms of its consciously stated principles. Rather, it is the unintended result of historical circumstances.
William B. Allen, presently a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, commented on Patterson's thesis.' Allen offered the interpretation
of the Constitution that has been associated with Abraham Lincoln and in
our time developed by his teacher, Harry V. Jaffa. The Constitution must
be understood in light of the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
Freedom basically means self-government, and the ground of self-government
is the central proposition of natural rights or natural law-"that all men
are created equal." On this foundation rests the principle that rule is
justly derived from the consent of the governed. For Jaffa and Allen, this
argument remains the best refutation of the case for slavery. Allen suggested
that for Patterson the measure of freedom is some abstract model, "the
invisible human being," which lurks behind the relativism of history. Such
a nebulous concept is not sustainable.
Emigre Scholarship and American Self-Understanding
Harry V. Jaffa devotes his paper to an examination of the contribution of his teacher, Leo Strauss, to the philosophical interpretation of the founding. Strauss, a German Jew, was one of the refugee scholars who constituted the University in Exile from which emerged the Graduate Faculty of the New School. Under the influence of Strauss, Jaffa was inspired to reconsider the philosophical sources of the Constitution. Specifically Jaffa examined Lincoln's interpretation of the Constitution in his book Crisis of the House Divided.
On the present occasion, Jaffa addresses another but related crisis. There is a dispute as to the proper "Straussian" interpretation of the American mind, "the crisis of the Strauss divided." This controversy goes to the root of Strauss's understanding of the opposition between ancient and modern philosophy, on the one hand, and the tension between philosophic reason and biblical revelation, on the other.
Jaffa claims that the founding was the adaptation of Lockean liberalism to the principles of two traditions-classical virtue and biblical religion. Other "Straussians" such as Walter Berns agree with McWilliams that the Founders were almost exclusively disciples of Locke and the Enlightenment. As shown above, Jaffa also understands the Constitution in light of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. For those like Berns, the doctrine of natural rights is neutral as to forms of government.
Jaffa cites Strauss's reference to "the theological-political predicament" as the central theme of his investigations. And for Jaffa the American founding offers the best response to that problem. Strauss's concern for the theological-political problem in part explains his preference for the ancients to the moderns. Reason cannot refute the claims of revelation. Socratic philosophy, as the love of wisdom, is skeptical of attaining the final truth of all things. Thus such a philosophy remains open to the possible truth of revelation. But modern philosophy began as the attempt to overcome doubt with certainty. From this view, the tension between reason and revelation must be resolved or transcended. Positivism and historicism have proposed solutions which have 'denied the truths of both philosophy and religious faith. And finally, the attempt to resolve the tension between reason and revelation poses the greatest threat to human freedom-totalitarianism. In order to preserve Strauss's Socratic skepticism, Jaffa attacks those "Straussians" who identify philosophy, both ancient and modern, with atheism.
As a German Jew, Strauss reflected on the intractability of the theological-political problem in Europe. The highest tradition in Germany was exemplified by Christianity and monarchy. Bismarck became the symbol of that tradition. The emancipation of the Jews was associated with the secular liberal democracy which opposed that tradition. Secular liberalism was in fact followed by the reaction of Nazism.
For Jaffa, the American founding presented the best possible "solution" to the theological-political problem. It preserved the creative tension between reason and revelation. Galston points to the harmony of freedom and religion. Jaffa elaborates on this theme by a reference to George Washington.
In his letter to the Newport synagogue, Washington considered the Jews as citizens by right of nature and thus equal to Christians in terms of their humanity. According to Jaffa, Washington possessed the highest virtue, greatness of soul, and thereby defended civil and religious liberty by an appeal to divine providence. Bismarck was the symbol of the German tradition. But Washington was the symbol of the entire Western heritage as embodied in the founding.
In the discussion at the end of the concluding bicentennial conference, Jaffa referred specifically to Strauss's view of the unfortunate contribution of German thought to Western civilization. By rejecting the idea of natural right, German thought created the doctrine of historical relativism. And while the German nation was defeated on the battlefield, it has in fact imposed the yoke of its thought on the conquerors. Jaffa considers the proper understanding of the founding as essential to the recovery of natural right and thus the preservation of the West from the onslaught of nihilism.
Another German refugee, Hannah Arendt, attempted on the basis of German thought, in particular that of Kant and of Heidegger, to recover the idea of politics as found in the ancient city, the Greek polis. For Arendt, the active or political life is essential to safeguard freedom in face of totalitarianism.
George Kateb presents a controversial account of Arendt's interpretation of the Constitution in light of the influence of Heidegger on her concept of political action. According to Kateb, Arendt's view of the Constitution developed in two stages. Originally she thought that the principle of representation had closed off participatory political action. Then through the '60s Arendt reconsidered her analysis as a result of the many expressions of civil disobedience. She concluded that the Constitution is indeed a horizontal contract-a mutual agreement of the citizens among themselves. Dissent and civil disobedience constitute an outlet for participatory politics. Because of the legitimation of a plurality of different groups, "the mutuality and solidarity" of the citizens as found in a polis may have a place in the American polity.
Notwithstanding Arendt's final acceptance of the Constitution, Kateb maintains that her basic position opposes the major thrust of the American polity. For Arendt never accepted the fundamental principle of American government, the principle of representation. The chief aims of such a government are self-preservation and the protection of individual rights.
According to Kateb, by rejecting the modern concern for life as such and concomitantly of labor, Arendt considered the true character of political action as self-sacrifice. Facing death gives politics its seriousness. In this sense Arendt adapted the Heideggerian concept of authentic existence in the face of death to the arena of political action. In conclusion, Kateb claims that the Constitution is "not a pact for death, any more than it is a pact for the good life."
Fred Dallmayr, in his critical commentary on Kateb's thesis, focuses on Arendt's dichotomy between public and private. According to Dallmayr, for Arendt life and death constitute a natural process, relegated to the private sphere. Political action, which characterizes the public sphere, transcends life and death. Politics aims at immortality. Fame and glory in the public sphere liberates the individual from the natural necessities of private existence. In terms of the search for immortality, Arendt understood politics from the horizon of the ancient polis. She adopted Aristotle's view of the good life.
Thus Arendt's contempt for the modern concentration on self-preservation, in Dallmayr's view, is not tantamount to the glorification of death.
Dallmayr cites John Stuart Mill to show that Arendt's recognition of the limits of representative government was justified. Mill, a strong defender of representative government, also argued for some provision of political participation for ordinary citizens as essential to their moral education. A free society cannot survive unless the citizens rise above the selfishness of their private lives. Thus, for Dallmayr, Kateb wrongly conceives of representative democracy, in particular the Constitution, within the narrow limits of Lockean concepts.
Dallmayr's own criticism of Arendt involves the dichotomy of nature and freedom which she borrowed from Kant. Arendt's attempt to relate political action exclusively to the "noumenal" world of the freedom of will is, for Dallmayr, an erroneous adaptation of Kant. Political action is enmeshed in the world of appearances, of phenomena, not directly dependent on intentionality.
In short, for Dallmayr, Arendt is not an enemy of representative government, of the Constitution. She is a proponent of that corrective of Lockean liberalism as advocated variously by Kant and Mill, both basically defenders of the modern, representative republic. Finally Dallmayr claims she advances a "high" interpretation of the Constitution from which all Americans may learn.
Hans Jonas, professor emeritus of philosophy at the Graduate Faculty, offered some general remarks on Strauss and Arendt.2 The papers on their work brought home to Jonas the distinctiveness or "un-American" character of German scholarship, the "sweepingness of large categories" and "the nostalgic note" (particularly true of Arendt). Their thought serves the function of liberating us from the "compulsions" of modern life, so we come to see things from the comprehensive perspective of our "eternal origins" and to reflect on what we have lost. But representative government, "the ingenious modern answer" to the problems of ancient republicanism, is the only acceptable political option open to us. In particular, the Constitution has its peculiar beginnings in the development of the British parliament. Jonas, a German Jewish immigrant, draws our attention to the uniqueness of America, which defies the sweeping categories of German scholarship.
In conclusion, the central theme which pervades all these bicentennial presentations is the American-European dialogue as an ongoing meditation on the constitutive principles of the founding. The discussion has led to the fundamental questions: How may a particular people establish a form of government which in principle is universal? How are the "unique" and the "universal" articulated in America's political heritage?
MAURICE AUERBACH
1 My summary is based on Allen's informal remarks.
2 This is a summary of an informal presentation.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
(at time of publication)
Maurice Auerbach teaches Liberal Studies in the Graduate Faculty of the New School. He is associate editor of Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy.
Eva Brann is Addison E. Millikin Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. She wrote Paradoxes of Eduction in a Republic (1979).
Fred Dallmayr is Packey Dee Professor of Government at the University of Notre Dame. His most recent book is Critical Encounters (1987).
William A. Galston Director of Economic and Social Programs at the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies in Washington D.C., wrote Justice and the Human Good (1980).
Leslie Friedman Goldstein is Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware and the author of The Constitutional Rights of Women: Cases in Law and Social Change (1979).
Harry V. Jaffa is Henry Salvatori Research Professor in Political Philosophy at Claremont Graduate School. His most recent book is American Conservatism and the American Founding (1984).
George Kateb Professor of Politics at Princeton University, wrote Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil (1984).
Wilson Carey McWilliams Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, is the author of The Idea of Fraternity in America (1973).
Orlando Patterson is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. His most recent book is Slavery and Social Death (1982).
