Here in the fifth week of our course in American Philosophy, we are just entering the 19th century, and so far all that we have encountered in the way of intellectually rich philosophizing in America can be categorized either as political theory or philosophical Christian theology.
Philosophical theology, or theological philosophizing, proceeds in the same manner as all philosophy: it attempts to follow a logical path of argument using rationalization and reflection on experience. What differentiates it from “pure” philosophy is its relationship to structures of authority. Christian theological philosophy often uses Biblical scripture as its chief touchstone of authority, even as it also appeals to traditional formulations of doctrine and practice (the examples we have considered appeal to orthodox Calvinist Protestantism; Arminian and even Deist examples could also be adduced). Finally, such philosophizing has as its motive not so much a natural curiosity about “enduring questions” but a practical interest in improving the lives of living communities; this motive explains the popularity of the genre “sermon” in such literature (and this also applies to those close relatives of the sermon, the “speech,” “lecture,” “tract,” and “pamphlet”).
The prominence of Christian religious ideology in early American thought is remarkable; it colors even political theory. This is easily enough explained by the facts of history peculiar to the American experience. The most prominent colonies were established as havens for dissenting Christian sectarians. These sectarians sought to establish ideal communities on the basis of what they understood to be pure doctrine, where dissenters would have the freedom to be (their own brand of) dissenters. Where Puritans (or Pilgrims, or Quakers, etc.) would have religious liberty, which for most of the theorists was termed “liberty of conscience,” i.e. the freedom to believe that which one’s own conscience judged to be true without persecution by an outside authority.
However, from the earliest period, and especially among the Puritans, the political structures that were established to safeguard Puritan society in its “liberties” came into conflict with the consciences of the individuals who made up those communities. American thought, from the time of the antinomian crisis, has been repeatedly drawn to the perennial tensions between the ideal of liberty and the realities of community life.
By the mid 18th century, we note the absolute demise of the Puritan ideal of society as a community of saints who would conform to a consensus of shared conscience. The economic and martial interdependence of the politically independent colonies, each with its own ecclesiastical structures, governments, colleges, etc., meant that no single political, religious, or intellectual authority could prevail in any dispute that arose over matters of conscience. There was also a proliferation of competing protestant religious doctrines; the confusion of this situation was aggravated rather than ameliorated by the Great Awakening. And doubtless, underneath the surface lurked other, future disputes that would awaken in the turbulent period between the late 19th to 20th centuries (over slavery, gender, immigration, alcohol, race, etc.). Already by the revolutionary era, disagreement is visible over practices such as slavery and over the rights of women; such disagreement deepened divisions and differences among the populace. For evidence of the 18th century American debate on slavery, consider, for example, Tom Paine’s 1775 editorial on the practice; not to mention the late 17th century writings of John Locke on slavery, from the same writings On Civil Government that so deeply influenced the Founding Fathers. For evidence of debate on the rights of women, see the letters of Abigail Adams to her husband, John, the second president of the United States (especially #102).
In the perennial tension between conformity and liberty, American political theorists chose liberty. Whatever economic and social reasons may be cited by modern historians, the ideological foundation of the American Revolution can still be said to have been a call to liberty. So Thomas Paine (in Common Sense) calls Americans to fight for their natural right of liberty and to express a new compact in a republican form of government. Were society small enough, Paine argues, it would have no need of government, since conformity and mutual striving towards shared goals would be the natural course of things. But we have no one society, but many societies, and so, collective representation is the only way to ensure that government works with the consent of the governed. So Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States (in the Declaration of Independence) appeals to a concept of the natural right of humans to liberty. Both men assert the natural rights of humans to resist all political tyranny.
After the conclusion of the war, as the Founders were trying to persuade the states to adopt the proposed constitution of the Republic of the United States, the Federalist and future fourth president, James Madison, discussed the advantages of the proposed union (in The Federalist #10) in a way that plainly appeals to a concept of of human nature which emphasizes our natural tendency to pursue our own interests, or our own happiness. Differences in interest are traced to our inherent individuality; we each consider the world from our own vantage points, and each of us has a separate consciousness (or understanding) of that world and conscience judging our actions in that world. This tendency leads to the formation of factions of competing shared interests (and one is here reminded of how the first charge leveled against Anne Hutchinson was that she had joined a “faction” against the Company). Madison argues that, when a country is large enough, and if legislative authority is vested in representatives who must each answer to regionally and socially separate constituencies, the power of factions to infringe on the rights of their fellow citizens is restricted.
If revolution was fought to secure liberty for the American people against the interests of the British, the republican constitution was meant to secure liberty for the people from themselves.
Thus, American society chose liberty, not community or conformity.
This liberty was fully secured in law by the Bill of Rights, which placed, in its first article, “the establishment clause” which prohibited the legislature of representatives from interfering with religion in any way. Jefferson argued that this article built a “wall of separation” between Church and State (see his Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association for the phrase). And while several states hung on to a State-level establishment of religion for a few decades (notably, Connecticut and Massachusetts), the same spirit of fighting for liberty that prevailed in the revolutionary war was now directed against these pockets of society where some kind of religious conformity was still held up as the ideal. Echoing both Paine’s Common Sense, Williams’ Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, and the ideas expressed in Jefferson’s 1785 Bill for Establishing Religious Liberty in Virginia, the Baptist agitator John Leland’s 1791 sermon The Rights of Conscience Inalienable appeals to the people of Connecticut to recognize the inherent natural right of the conscience to be free (as indeed it cannot be compelled by force, it is free); and so, he says, they must embrace religious liberty as the only sure way to defend themselves against “Yahoo” Churchmen in legal robes.
The consequences of this decision in favor of religious liberty in America are far reaching. Shortly after the start of the 19th century, a new revival, called the Second Great Awakening, was kicked off, and the membership of churches in all the newly established “Mainline” denominations started growing rapidly. It was the start of the century of “evangelical consensus” in America. But in a climate of legally established religious liberty, there was also room (if not hospitality) for the emergence of a remarkable diversity of opinion in religious matters. The center of Christian philosophizing in America remained Puritan in roots and Calvinist in commitment. But liberal Christian thought emerged on the left (influenced by Deism and Arminianism) led to the birth of Unitarian theology and ultimately Transcendentalism, and reactionary Old Calvinist strands developed on the right. On the fringe, new religious movements appeared: Millerite Seventh Day Adventism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Theosophy, etc. And immigrants brought old religious movements with them: Judaism, Catholicism, Islam… even, ultimately, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc.
Furthermore, the legal structure of American religious liberty secured as well a place for dissenters, doubters, agnostics, and atheists. And along with these, the scientists and philosophers whose ideas had such deep consequences for our understanding of the world, and indeed, for the shape of our consciences. In the American system of government, to borrow Paine’s distinction, hated ideas might be opposed by society, but they could not be stopped with government. That’s the true meaning of the liberty of conscience (as Leland conceives of it).
It is interesting to me, then, to look at the 1815 sermon of Nathanael Emmons, On Conscience, which is assigned for class on Wednesday of week five. Here is a thinker in the centrist stream of Christian philosophizing in America, known as a representative of the “New Divinity.” He is heir to the ideals of conformist Puritan thought and the Calvinism of Edwards. And he is a political enemy of the Deist founding father Jefferson. His concept of “conscience” is decidedly conservative, and yet something about it remains fresh and current. He doesn’t argue for liberty of conscience. He argues for the free exercise of it. He believes that conscience is something like a muscle of the heart; if allowed to atrophy from lack of use or from being starved for the oxygen of self-reflection, it will not judge rightly. But if properly exercised, he thinks, it will ultimately lead all people towards the same sort of righteous loving behavior. It’s a subtle concept; he does not directly equate conscience with the knowledge of good and evil. Rather he regards it as a power of judgment that needs to be used to be effective. It’s hard to know, at first, how to fit his use of the term into the previous tradition of its use as found in Jefferson, Williams and Leland. As I understand it, his clunky model of mind (involving Perception, Reason, Memory, and Conscience) seems to be not as supple as Edwards’ (which involves fewer moving parts, just Understanding and the Affections). Yet it has a certain appeal to our intuitions about the minds of other people. We may all differ in our “consciences” (in the older sense of the term, i.e. in what we believe to be the Truth and our Duty towards it), yet we are all the same in possessing a faculty that passes harsh judgment on our behavior when we act against its dictates. The internal censor morum as Leland calls it. Emmons appeals to a popular conception that in spite of differences we are all somehow the same, and that, accordingly, if only we would exercise our faculties rightly, we would somehow all arrive at that originally sought concord of unity in ethical society with one another. Emmons clearly thinks that ethical society will be Calvinist Christian; today a more universalist spirit prevails, and people will often assert, mutatis mutandis, that all religions and ethical systems teach essentially the same thing.
But there is something awry in Emmons’ account of conscience. He tries to make room for the idea of a corrupt conscience, and to acknowledge that some people do act in conformity with their conscience although their acts would be criminal in the eyes of the law or other people. But these people, Emmons thinks, have simply not given full liberty to their conscience to examine their own behavior. And here he stands the idea of liberty of conscience on its head; or perhaps he merely sets it on its side. He seems to be saying: the government gave you freedom of conscience, yet you yourself put it under bondage by restricting its scope of self-examination. Use your conscience, for God’s sake, and be a Christian!
If I were a Calvinist, I would criticize Emmons for Arminianism. Edwards tried to make room for the Calvinist notion of total depravity with his idea that, in their natural state, human beings posses an understanding (and hence, a will) that is always subjective and selfish. The will is always determined by this natural understanding. Hence, there is no free will, per se, to choose a better will. There is only freedom of the soul to do as it will (and it always wills evil). Thus Edwards made room for the transformation wrought in a believer by supernatural grace. The only possible way to expand the understanding to encompass interests beyond the felicity of the self is such a supernatural transformation. But Emmons seems to be arguing that we already possess something which could transform our will, namely, a power for judging our desires and actions. That power might be given by God for Emmons. But, in that case, whereas a Calvinist might suggest that such power comes only from supernatural grace given to the elect, Emmons seems to be saying that the power is already in the possession of every person, and that it can in fact be resisted with our “free will.” In that sense it sounds Arminian, or even Universalist, to me. But it also sounds extraordinarily American.
Afterthought on Native American Philosophy
Please note: I mean no offense when, in this essay I use the term “American” in a way that refers only to the heirs of the European colonial states; so far we have left out of account native American thought in this period for the simple reason that it is too difficult to do it justice; during the early 17th–19th centuries native peoples in “America” were not abstractly reflecting on their moral agency and liberties in the context of an increasingly industrialized “Western economy;” they were engaged in a far more practical struggle for liberty as they fought many losing battles for their lives and property.
