Pun Salad

Gee, it only seems to have been a couple months since I read America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson, another effort to examine where the Founders' heads were at when they decided to split up with Britain, even at the risk of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Ah. That's because it has only been a couple months since I read that book.

I liked Thompson's book quite a bit, and I liked this one, by Jeffrey Rosen, quite a bit too. You might expect (given the titles and subtitles) there to be a lot of overlap, with both authors covering pretty much the same ground. Instead, the books are complementary, with each author emphasizing things the other didn't discuss much. That's the way it seemed to me, anyway. History professors: if you're teaching a course on the guiding philosophies of the American Revolution, you won't go far wrong in assigning both these as texts. (Probably also Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution; although I haven't read that, it got the Pulitzer.) (I really should read it, I own a copy.)

This book was inspired, more or less, when Rosen noticed that Cicero's Tusculan Disputations appeared on the "goodreads" recommendations of the American thinkers of the day, including Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. After some more research, he came up with a "top ten" authors of works that inspired the founders, with particular emphasis on that mysterious "pursuit of happiness" phrase that Jefferson worked into the Declaration.

Without further ado: (1) Cicero, Tusculan Disputations and On Duties; (2) Marcus Aurelius, Meditations; (3) Seneca, Essays; (4) Epictetus, Enchiridion; (5) Plutarch, Lives; (6) Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates; (7) David Hume, Essays; (8) Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws; (9) John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Treatises on Government; and (10) Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Even a dilettante like me recognizes this list as pretty Stoic-heavy.

And I can't help but think: can you imagine Donald Trump or Kamala Harris reading any of these works? Let alone discussing them knowledgeably?

Anyway: Rosen examines the lives of the Founders (and some post-Founders), showing their philosophical underpinnings: Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley (!), Louis Brandeis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, … And a lot of Adamses: John, John Quincy, and Abigail weighs in thoughtfully too. It's "warts and all" coverage. Jefferson, Mr. All-Men-Created-Equal, is specifically excoriated for his slaveholding ways, and occasional racist remarks. In a memorable section, it's noted that James Wilson lived a profligate lifestyle, and died "as he railed against his creditors." Tsk.

And, as a bit of red meat thrown to us anti-Progressives, Rosen bemoans the transformation of the Presidency by Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson "in precisely the direction the Founders hoped to avoid". (Wilson was pretty upfront about this, demanding that the government move away from its clunky "Newtonian" machinery of the Founders, and into a "Darwinian" conception of a "living Constitution".)

Rosen convincingly argues that the "pursuit of happiness" was viewed as seeking eudaimonia, the life lived in virtue, moderation, peaceableness, and reason. He distinguishes that from hedonia, or base pleasure. He contends that's Where It All Went Wrong for America, when the latter pursuit shouldered out the former. Certainly, as a sometimes-conservative, I'm open and sympathetic to that argument. (But as a sometimes-libertarian, I wonder if there isn't room for both.)

A style note I found interesting: Rosen often refers to "enslavers" instead of "slave owners"; "enslaved people" instead of "slaves". This seemed clunky to me, maybe a tad "woke", but I (eventually) got it: a small linguistic nod to the reality of the relationship between those in bondage and those that held them in bondage. It's not a dry pigeonholing of people into two states; it emphasizes the ongoing oppressive action of enslavement. So I'm all for it, despite (and maybe because of) the clunkiness: it reminds the reader of the evil reality.

It's why I often say "baby killing" instead of "abortion".