Consensual Government, Intellectual History, Liberal Arts, Uncategorized

On Democracy, an Index

by Dave Seng

The democracy series was a large project, so I decided to collect all the links and post them here in a kind of index. The hope is to organize the entire series and allow easier discovery of the posts. I also posted the works cited here as a helpful resource.

A final thought. I hope the series has been helpful in coming to terms with what a democracy actually is and why America is no longer one. It has become fashionable in some circles to claim that there is an inherent extreme individualism in the Western definition of democracy that is to blame for the decline of democratic societies in the West. Although it is true that many such as Locke did emphasize a kind of individualism, an unbridled or unrestricted individualism was never part of the Western idea of democracy. This should be clear from reading the Greeks and Roman (primarily Stoic) presentations of consensual representation. When things go bad (and they certainly are today) often it is because the fundamentals have been forgotten or rejected.

The posts:

On Democracy, Part One can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Two can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Three can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Four can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Five can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Six can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Seven can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Eight can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Nine can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Ten can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Eleven can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Twelve can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Thirteen can be found here.

On Democracy, Part Fourteen can be found here.

Works cited:

Adler, Mortimer. Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Great Books Of The Western World, Vol. 9, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

— Politics, Great Books Of The Western World, Vol. 9, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes., Great Books Of The Western World, Vol. 5, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

Goodwin, Gerald, Richard Current, Paula A. Franklin. A History of the United States. 2nd ed. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1985.

Herodotus, The History of Herodotus, Great Books Of The Western World, Vol. 6, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

Homer. Iliad. Trans. by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Hutchins, Robert. The Great Conversation: A Reader’s Guide to Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1994.

Kagan, Donald. Pericles of Athens And The Birth of Democracy, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.

Lukacs, John. Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed.

Miller, Ed. Questions That Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy. 4th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 1996.

Pascal, The Provincial Letters, Pensees, Scientific Treatises, Great Books Of The Western World, Vol. 33, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

Plato, The Republic,tr. Francis MacDonald Cornford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1945.

“Stoicism.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD 5 July 2006.

The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Ed. Hammond, N.G. L. and H.H. Scullard. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. Ed. by Hornblower, Simon and Anthony Spawforth. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998.

Thucydides. The History of The Peloponnesian War, Great Books Of The Western World, Vol. 6, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

Woodruff, Paul. First Democracy: The Challenge of An Ancient Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.

Consensual Government, Liberal Arts

Democracy: What Have We Learned?

by Dave Seng

The roots of our being reach further and deeper into history than we are usually aware. – William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique.

I am going to take a quick break from our series on democracy to try to summarize what we have learned so far regarding a properly understood conception of democracy. I will return to our discussion of the American founding and develop more recent historical concerns soon.

So … what have we learned so far about genuine collective self-government? The ancient idea of government by the consent of citizens has been scorned, cheered, ridiculed, debated, and argued for and against by most of the greatest minds in the Western intellectual tradition. Within the idea of democracy, we see many of the virtues and vices of Western civilization itself. This should not be surprising because as human beings we carry over into our institutions, technology, and the societies we build, the deepest and most perplexing trait of human nature itself—that our efforts are always ineradicably a mixture of good and evil. This is the human paradox. Nonetheless, due to these seemingly contradictory qualities in human nature, history has shown that for a democracy to exist at all, important characteristics need to be in place such as the free exchange of ideas, the rule of law, public audit and accountability, discussion, debate, economic and individual freedom, dissent, and a constructive consensus among people for the purpose of building a government which serves the people. These ideals are central and inherent to the classical and Western idea of democracy. On the other hand, democracy can easily devolve into mob rule, partisan politics, and a mere clash of wills—the most illiberal aspects of our current political climate. Hopefully, this series has helped us understand human nature, our inherent need to understand why something is the way its, and a respect for our shared cultural heritage.

What else have we learned? History provides a helpful guide for understanding human nature. In fact, history is all we have to go on since it is impossible to study the future. More importantly, we study history because it gives us deeper insight into who we are as human beings and civilization generally. In a very real sense, it is memory that makes us who we are. Memories shape us—and our families, communities, and culture. This is why our cultural institutions preserve our history, learning, and collective memory. And this is true on the individual level. Anyone who has seen a loved one decline due to dementia, Alzheimer’s, or amnesia knows that the loss of memory is a loss of something deeply human and valuable. Without memory, an individual is a ruined imitation of what they once where. And the same is true for societies. Cultural amnesia can be devastating to a society. I believe this was one reason Pericles delivered his funeral oration. The historian Wilfred McClay put it this way, “Historical consciousness is to civilized society what memory is to individual identity. Without memory, and the stories within which memories are held suspended, one cannot say who or what one is; one cannot learn to use language, pass on knowledge, raise children, establish rules of conduct, or even dwell in society, let alone engage in science” (12).

We study history because it is fundamental to our nature as human beings and through such a study we realize the greatness and wretchedness of the human paradox. At the same time we have a drive for understanding and learning. We seem to have a natural tendency and desire to know why something is the case. We also seem to have an intrinsic desire to tell stories, pass down traditions, and to explore why or how something came to be.

History can be instructive if we choose to listen to it. Memory can be a powerful teacher. I believe that telling the story of the intellectual development of democracy will benefit everyone. Thucydides reminds his readers of the Athenian delegation that tried to resolve tensions between the Corinthians, Spartans, and Athenians prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. The Athenians desired to “call attention to the great power of Athens, and to refresh the memory of the old and enlighten the ignorance of the young, from a notion that their words might have the effect of inducing them to prefer tranquility to war” (367). Words and stories have a powerful impact on a society. When memory fades or cultural Alzheimer’s sets in, a civilization becomes empty and incapacitated. History is much more than dates and events, it is about the narratives and ideas that men and women have struggled with in an existential attempt to understand the human paradox.

Works Cited:

McClay, Wilfred. A Student’s Guide to U.S. History. ISI Books, 2000.

Thucydides. The History of The Peloponnesian War, Great Books Of The Western World, Vol. 5, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996.

Here are a few other helpful guides on this topic:

Kagan, Donald. Pericles of Athens And The Birth of Democracy, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.

Lukacs, John. Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Richard, Carl. The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment. Harvard University Press, 1995.

Woodruff, Paul. First Democracy: The Challenge of An Ancient Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.

Consensual Government, Intellectual History, Liberal Arts

On Democracy, Part Eleven

by Dave Seng

Part ten can be found here.

In this post I examine the classical influence on the founding of America and the vision of James Madison.

Now we must jump many years to the founding of the American republic. It is not surprising to find that the founders of America were influenced by classical thought – and all the values of the Western intellectual and political tradition can be seen in the American State Papers and Federalist Papers, including debate, dissent, civic virtue, and the free exchange of ideas. The classical influence of early America can be discovered from the works they read, the architecture they built, and the documents they wrote. One obvious piece of evidence rests in the fact that the authors of the Federalist Papers wrote under the names of significant Roman leaders. Furthermore, many of the founders such as John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, were well versed in the classics and read Latin.

In America, constitutional government evolved from the idea of constitutional monarchy found in Europe. Although the founders envisioned a republic and not a democracy (they were very cautious of an extreme democracy), America finally became a popular democracy in 1828 with the election of Andrew Jackson. Nonetheless, at the beginning of American Republicanism was the conviction that consensual rule was possible and that governments existed to protect citizen’s natural rights and to promote the common good of all people.1 This is the idea of classical liberalism and has become the social-political theory that stresses freedom from undue governmental interference and views the state as the guarantor of the basic liberties and rights of the individual. This is basically a classical idea; however, a thinker like Aristotle would see a closer relationship between the individual and the state.

In the early days of the American republic, there was much debate about the constitution itself. The parties were divided between those who wanted a stronger national government, the federalists, and those who wanted more sovereignty among the individual states – the antifederalists. The friends of the Constitution (the federalists) had the advantage of superior intellectual firepower. Among the federalists were the two most eminent men in America at the time, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.2 Washington himself declared that the choice lay between the Constitution and disunion. Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay, under the joint pseudonym “Publius,” wrote a long series of newspaper essays explaining and extolling the new document.3 These essays were later published in book form and are considered the greatest intellectual defense of the Constitution by some of the early Republic’s greatest thinkers.

For example, James Madison, one of the writers of the Federalist Papers, was very concerned about the role of human nature and the propensity for people to divide into factions. For Madison, factions are different than regular political parties. He defines a faction as, “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”4 In other words, factions are those groups which will seek there own power illegitimately and disregard the rights of others in the process. Factions do not regard the democratic principle of equality as an important ideal nor understand or value the idea that in a democracy harmony is essential. People have to be united – a government for the people and by the people must first of all be supported by the people and truly believed in if it is going to work. Madison understands the corrosive effects of factions on a consensual government. Nonetheless, it seems to be part of human nature to divide into factions as soon as individuals are given the freedom to do so. Madison was concerned about how to keep a faction from becoming a tyranny on one hand and how to maintain fair representation on the other. But Madison understood that factions would be a problem to any liberal republic because it is so basic to the human instinct,

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions and many other points as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment of different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have in turn divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their most violent conflicts.5

Madison understands that factions are a part of any liberal society. He is also aware that there are only two solutions to the problem of factions. The first is to eliminate the cause of factions. But this would require the elimination of liberty, an unacceptable option. The other is to give every citizen the same interests, passions, and opinions – and this option is clearly impossible. Madison knows there will always be independent thinkers. So the third option for Madison is to control the effects of factions. Madison believes the best possibility for this rests in the rule of law and to allow factions a voice in their own government.6 He explains, “The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.”7 Much like Aristotle, Madison understands the value of allowing differing parties a voice in their own government functioning under legitimate legal protection and constraints (consensual government always seeks a check on majority rule to ensure the rights of the minority). Of course, when factions are in the minority they are less likely to prevail in their evil intentions. Madison’s concern rests in what could happen if a faction became a majority. Madison concludes that a pure democracy can not protect itself from this phenomenon. “From this view of the subject it may be concluded that pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.”8 He goes on to explain,

A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and 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.9

For Madison then, a pure democracy is a government in which every citizen participates, is small in size, and contains no check on majority rule. It is unclear, however, if any such government has existed because the ancient Athenians functioned under the rule of law, and was regulated by assembly, councils, and archons. Rome itself transformed from a republic (also under the rule of law) to an empire without becoming a direct democracy. Nonetheless, Athens was close to being a direct democracy and Thucydides does point out the mob mentality of the Athenians after the death of Pericles. But the point that a democracy can become a tyranny is a legitimate concern, the French revolution being the primary example. The ancient Greek political thinkers were all aware of the tyranny of the majority. And there was nothing more they hated than tyranny.

Next time, I will examine the particular definition of republic held by Madison.

1 Goodwin, Gerald, Richard Current, Paula A. Franklin. A History of the United States. 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1985), 119.

2 Ibid., 131.

3 Ibid.

4 The Federalist, Great Books Of The Western World, Vol. 43, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 50.

5 Ibid.

6 Hamilton believes most factions arise from differences between the propertied and non-propertied classes.

7 Ibid., 50.

8 Ibid. 51.

9 Ibid.