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The Philosophical Background of the American Constitution(s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Andrew J. Reck
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Extract

The Constitution of the United States was constructed by men influenced by fundamental ideas of what a republic should be. These ideas hark back to the ancient philosophers and historians, and were further articulated and developed in modern times. From time to time scholars have sought to collect and reprint selections from the classical, biblical, and modern sources upon which the Founding Fathers fed. Remarkably, however, the best anthology of these sources to understand the republican idea that undergirds the Federal Constitution was prepared on the eve of the Constitutional Convention by John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, then in London as American envoy to Great Britain and eventually the second President of the United States. I refer to Adams' A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, against the attack of M. Turgot, in his letter to Dr. Price, 22 March, 1778.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 19: American Philosophy , March 1985 , pp. 273 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1985

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References

1 In 1794 Adams published a revised edition of A Defence, and Charles Francis Adams, with even more radical revision, republished it as volumes IV, V, and VI in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, edited by Charles Francis Adams, 1850–56 (reprinted Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969). Subsequent references to The Works of John Adams are to the 1969 reprint of the Charles Francis Adams' edition.

2 The edition cited in the present paper is Adams, John, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (New York: H. Gaine, 1787)Google Scholar. All page references given in the text are to this edition.

3 The Works of John Adams, Vol. IV, 276.Google Scholar

4 See ‘Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 as reported by James Madison’, Documents illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1927), 109–745.Google Scholar

5 4 July 1787, in the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, quoted in Smith, Page, John Adams, Vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1962), 699.Google Scholar

6 Smith, Page, op. cit., Vol. 2, 700.Google Scholar

7 On Shays' rebellion and its role in the movement toward a federal constitution stronger than the Articles of Confederation, see Encyclopedia of American History, Morris, R. B. (ed.) (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 137–138.Google Scholar

8 Cicero, , The Republic I, xxvGoogle Scholar, in De Re Publica, De Legibus, trans, by Keyes, C. W. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 65.Google Scholar

9 In The Works of John Adams, Adams, Charles Francis (ed.), Vol. V (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 454ff.Google Scholar

10 Pocock, J. G. A., The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 15.Google Scholar

11 The appreciation of Locke's influence on the Declaration of Independence has altered in the past decade. The classic study is, of course, Becker, Carl's The Declaration of Independence (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922)Google Scholar. This study in the history of political ideas stressed the role of Locke in the formation of Jefferson's thought and expression. However, in the aftermath of the celebration of the bicentennial of American independence two books have appeared which have suggested that other thinkers were more influential than Locke. White, Morton, The Philosophy of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, resurrects Jean Jacques Burlamaqui as the primary influence, and Wills, Garry, Inventing America, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1978)Google Scholar, points to Francis Hutcheson.

12 The Works of John Adams, IV, 219–259.Google Scholar

13 The Political Writings of John Adams, ed. with introduction, by Peek, George A. Jr, (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1954), 93.Google Scholar

14 ‘On Self-Delusion’, The Works of John Adams, III, 433.Google Scholar

15 Lovejoy, A. O., Reflections on Human Nature (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1961), 33–34.Google Scholar

16 ‘Discourses on Davila’, The Works of John Adams, VI, 234.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., VI, 246.

18 Ibid., VI, 234.

19 Lovejoy, A. O., op. cit., 39.Google Scholar

20 The Federalist, Beloff, Max (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1948), 51, p. 265.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 55, p. 287.

22 The phrase is from Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 562, 606–615Google Scholar. It has been adopted also by Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 523ff.Google Scholar

23 Pocock, , The Machiavellian Moment, 526Google Scholar. For a rival position, supporting Adams' viewpoint, see Eidelberg, Paul, The Philosophy of the American Constitution (New York: The Free Press, 1968).Google Scholar