I will be tomorrow (Thursday) at Notre Dame. The time is 7:30 p.m. and the place is Debartolo 129.
And I’ll be speaking in Dallas at the Adolphus Hotel on Saturday afternoon. (For more details, go to the ISI website).
YOU are invited to both events free of charge.
The topic in both cases will be the contribution of the neglected American Catholic thinker Orestes Brownson to the “building better than they knew” approach to gratefully but critically venerating the great political accomplishments of the American Founders. According to Brownson (and later John Courtney Murray), the best contribution the American Catholic realist can make to his country is to articulate the theory that corresponds adequately to our free political institutions. As I’ve said many times before, we can see that our Declaration was a statesmanlike legislative compromise between Lockeans and Calvinists, and the result was a kind of accidental Thomism. Something similar can be said about the actual language of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, which point in the direction, contrary to Madison’s theoretical anti-ecclesiasticism, of freedom of the church.
To prepare for for listening to ME, you might review my 40,000 word introduction to the ISI edition of Brownson’s THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, which is one of the most ingenious and original things I’ve written. But I can see now that I didn’t manage to present Brownson’s thought properly as a whole.
So come out and hear how Brownson’s quite distinctive appreciation of America as a catholic nation, his misunderstood (actually mangled by Russell Kirk) idea of territorial democracy, his criticism of our Founders’ theory based on “the right of succession,” and his explanation of how our providential constitution is prior to our written constituion all fit together in terms of the whole truth of the human being as an economic, political, and religious (or created) being.
In Dallas on Saturday afternoon, you’ll also be able to hear the sage of Latrobe Brad Watson and Dr. Pat Deneen. It goes without saying that I’ll be the sensible mean between two extremes: The Claremonster view that our political Fathers taught the truth and nothing but and the Porcher dismissal of the dominant currents of our Founding as most deeply an atheistic project for the imperial mastery of nature.
March 17th, 2010 | 8:55 am
Not quite an “accidental Thomism,” but rather an inherited Thomism. The reconciliation of reason and faith is at the foundation of the modern West. Those first vital lines of the Declaration of Independence — “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” — can be footnoted to Aquinas.
“[C]reated equal…endowed by their Creator…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The lineage back to Thomas is straight and clean, just like the line from Thomas to revelation in Scripture. Take out the centuries on both sides of Thomas and you have a country unmistakably founded on reason and faith and first principles.
“Why America?” is the mystery. But the fight to maintain her is duty, and maintaining her requires the restoration of the Church.
March 17th, 2010 | 11:12 am
Curious to hear back on Watson’s reply to your “truth and nothing but” line on Jaffa and his students. Jaffa does say on p. 121 of New Birth that the Declaration has given pol. philosophy the regime it has been searching for since Plato. What he doesn’t say is that the Declaration’s truths are the comprehensive truth about human nature and human being and “nothing but”. The Declaration’s Lockeanism does not signal the end of philosophy and, it goes without saying, the ongoing need for statesmanship.
March 17th, 2010 | 11:20 am
So what are we to think about the new curriculum in Texas, which adds Calvin and Aquinas to the list of thinkers who inspired the American revolution, but cuts Jefferson? I hope you’ll raise this in Dallas.
March 17th, 2010 | 11:34 am
I think I said the truth and nothing but, but not the whole or comprehensive truth and nothing but. So I agree with you, Brad, on Jaffa. I’m not in favor of Texas cutting Jefferson, of course. Aquinas didn’t inspire the Founders, except negatively in a hearsay kind of way. And of course I’m just as opposed to Christian conservative political correctness as to any other. Someone might actually say that Brownson actually makes the Founders more Lockean than they actually were, and Orestes had no use for Calvin and almost none for the Puritans. There’s obviously a lot good about Jefferson, although not so much when it comes to slavery and race relations.
March 17th, 2010 | 12:19 pm
One might argue that Jefferson’s miscegenational activities indicated a “progressive” political philosophy.
March 17th, 2010 | 12:58 pm
Bob, Now you’re forcing me to say for the record that’s not at all what I meant.
March 17th, 2010 | 3:03 pm
Perhaps you’d agree already, but the Thomistic element wouldn’t be purely accidental in some forms of Calvinism. It might be more obscure in certain New England Puritans, but the Scottish Calvinist tradition and Reformed scholastics in general operate within that Thomistic context to some degree. Plus, the humanistic aspects of American Puritanism (which can be traced back circuitously to Thomas) also feed into the republicanism of the Revolution.
Although I won’t have time to prep with your 40k intro, I’m looking forward to the lecture at DeBartolo tomorrow.
Best wishes.
March 17th, 2010 | 4:47 pm
Though i get the point, I should think that Thomas Aquinas himself would chafe a bit over any idea that his thoughts can be arrived at accidentally. His work was that of the barrister-at-law, patiently and comprehensively assembling a virtually lock-tight case. This of course, requires forbearance and deliberation and, in particular, no small amount of past experience and precedent to arrive at. Aint no accident to it, author or simulator.
Jefferson , on the other hand, bless his lil ole 17 car pile-up heart, he was a man driven by pathos. Commenting upon Descarte’s “Je pense, donc j’existe”, he thought it better revised to “Je sens, donc j’existe”. Sensations were beyond mere thought and so one might classify his recreational activities as being under the category of aporia , the catch-all of paradox. How could a man of such penetrating intellect surrender to the often tawdry precincts of the Senses? Well, one supposes it can be summed up by the fact that his creditors were the first to mourn his passing.
Still, a little logic, a dash of sensations and a whole lot of Madison’s love of “prudence” through the separation of powers. A banquet is born. To bad the current participants are a bit drunk
March 17th, 2010 | 5:08 pm
Well, I do hate when that happens. Have a good trip and I hope you have some good discussions….looking forward to your comments on the Texans. My daughter and her family reside there.
March 17th, 2010 | 11:25 pm
Peter, sounds like an interesting Spring Break. Thanks for the Claremonster term. I will use it sparingly–only where it applies.
On Texas historical standards, remember that they apply to the rest of the nation too, and that other views had and did have opportunity to contribute their words to the BOOK. A good history teacher could navigate between the political winds of the day as shown in the current text books. The sad thing is when when this historical knowledge becomes a question on a standardized test determined by the state governments–let alone in terms of the party federal, partly national government. In that case, that teacher would be bad if he emphasized what he or she knew best, and thereby the students would lose out to whatever real teaching can provide.
March 18th, 2010 | 1:32 pm
Of course Thomas Aquinas would chafe. He was a big guy. But seriously, that’s why we need the Thomistic American Catholic “input” to turn accident into intention.
March 26th, 2010 | 8:49 am
[...] Peter Lawler and James Poulos offer indirect contributions to the discussion as well; Lawler on Orestes Brownson and the American constitution is provocative [...]
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