INFLUENCES ON THE CONSTITUTION

Which Came First? The Chicken or the Egg?

Calvinist and Enlightenment Thought

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbg6d7EsAs4

Peasant community

Lords

King

Lords

Peasant community

New Concepts from the Enlightenment

The idea of individual rights• First raised in 1215 in the Magna Carta• Prior feudal societies operated under the idea of

collective rights

Governments are made and empowered by human beings• Not divine right or tradition• It is necessary to have the consent of the governed

in order to rule

Counter-Enlightenment Concepts

No tabula rasa (“blank slate”)• All people are born with sin and impurity• Government is necessary to keep sinful human

nature in line (not to protect freedoms)• And yet government itself must be watched• Separation of powers

John Calvin, 1506-1564

This meme pops up every now and again sparking debate amongst the public about the possible relevance of the claim

I proposed a cultural argument -- that the well-known democratic spirit had much to do with colonial contact

with the Indians of the eastern seaboard, including and especially the Iroquois. In other words, I was saying (as Prof. Rakove puts it in his piece)"that prolonged contact between the aboriginal and

colonizing populations were important elements [sic] in the shaping of colonial society and culture.”

-Charles C. Mann

John Calvin, 1506-1564

Counter-Enlightenment Concepts

No tabula rasa (“blank slate”)• All people are born with sin and impurity

• While they are capable of good it is only by the grace of god, not reason• Government is necessary to keep sinful human nature in line (not to protect

freedoms)• And yet government itself must be watched

• Separation of powers

No equality is possible or desirable• The mob is inherently unfit to rule. This task/privilege must always fall on the elite men

in society

Were we like angels, blameless and freely able to exercise perfect self-control, we would not need rules or regulations. Why, then, do we have so many laws and statutes? Because of man’s

wickedness, for he is constantly overflowing with evil; this is why a remedy is required. -John Calvin

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. -James Madison, Federalist #51

You ought to know how to be royalists. Before, this was an instinct,

but today it is a science. You must love the sovereign as you love order,

with all the forces of intelligence.

We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing

is in its proper place.

Joseph De Maistre, 1753-1821

The English Peasant’s Revolt of 1381

In the late spring of 1381 peasants from all around London marched on the city. When they reached the gates of the city they were opened from the inside.

Grievances• Too great a tax burden, anger over the use of

collective rights to burden peasant communes• Anger over corrupt leadership, stirrings of

desire to have some say in those appointed at the local level

• Oppressive labor contracts• Society in transition from feudal to market• Peasants and laborers caught in the worst

place in this

These dudes made this guy sign a document protecting their right to fair taxation, protection from illegal imprisonment, the right to dissent to

unfair government

These people expanded the understanding and meanings of ideas first written down in the Magna Carta

Dialectics is a philosophical concept that looks at the interconnection of seemingly opposite ideas and how their unity and contradiction create a new synthesis (Hegel formulated it as Thesis--Antithesis--Synthesis). For instance you cannot have slaves without the slave master. Each defines the other while at the same time their relationship is inherently contradictory. The tension between the two shapes the history of the relationship. If slavery is abolished so is the master and the slave and human relationships take on a new dialectical character.

According to this method of thought it is impossible to argue for something without arguing against something else

Enlightenment ideas cannot exist without counter-

Enlightenment ideas (both in society and within the

individual)

So when the Enlightenment challenged the social/political/economic order…

There was push back

Since my death Calvinism has developed a new

obsession with wealth as a marker of election and

God’s grace

And yet with Enlightenment ideas out of the bag, new explanations for hierarchy must be developed

John Locke as an example of the dialectic at work in life• A Christian and

former Calvinist• Developer of the

tabula rasa argument• Yet believed

man still capable of great evil

• Critiques hierarchy• Desires equality

But within what context?

John Locke, 1632-1704

What men are created equal?

These men?

Conditions under which the US Constitution was written:

in secret

Checks and balances• Separation of

powers• The Senate• Supreme Court• Electoral College

A check on what?

We need to remember the historical context of “the people”• Calvinists and Enlightenment thinkers both feared

“the mob”• When men like Locke aspired to challenge

hierarchy and build equality they weren’t thinking of this:

And our modern world shows many of the old Enlightenment/Calvinist/hierarchical fears of “the mob”