The Founders and the Classics by Carl J. Richard (Review)
I’ll add a caveat to my five-star rating and do so with an anecdote. I placed this book in the backseat of my car one weekend, and my 8-year old started reading it. She then asked a number of questions, which prompted a welcome conversation on what transpired as American transformed from a colony to a country. It then culminated with me suggesting that a reader needs to have a foundational knowledge of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers to fully appreciate this book. It also led to me purchasing a new book for her, which brought us both a great deal of joy.
As for The Founders and the Classics, I found its subject engaging and insightful, but it would not be the book I recommend to someone making an early exploration of the American Revolution. A brief look at the other books I’ve recorded on this site reveals a sampling of the books I’ve enjoyed on the subject, and The Founder and the Classics is a critical connection between each of them. Despite my great enjoyment of the book, I would recommend this book to enthusiasts of the American Revolution, though it is material that lends insight for anyone wanting to better understand how the United States came to exist.
One other note before I record my observations from the book. The reason the Founding Fathers’ knowledge of classical philosophy has interested me for so long is simply because it has always struck me as remarkable that the colonists chose to launch a revolution in the first place. Not only was there a great deal of chutzpah in mounting a rebellion against the mighty English but there was a similar brashness in concluding, “yeah, there hasn’t been a successful republic in 2,000 years, but we think we can make it work.” The Grand Experiment—and the ideas that made it happen—are certainly curious, and Dr. Carl Richard’s book was excellent in describing the underpinnings on how it came to be. Here are some of the thoughts I gleaned:
Richard distinguishing classical republicanism (emphasizing civic duty and social cohesion) versus modern republicanism (emphasizing individual rights). He notes that the founding fathers did not take a hard line between one philosophy or the other. Instead, they were connected ideas that evolved over time.
The founders viewed classical texts as entertainment—the history and stories of Greece and Rome. There was a sense of tradition that bound them to previous generations. The ideas “supplied them [the founders] with intellectual tools necessary to face a violent and uncertain world with some degree of confidence.”
Jefferson’s grandchildren described him as follows: “If he had to decide between the pleasure derived from the classical education which his father had given him, and the estate left him, he would decide in favor of the former.” To illustrate, in 1819, Jefferson noted, “I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has happened two or three thousand years ago than in what is now passing.” This idea is one I increasingly share as I watch the world around me. The past offers much to inform the present. As Richards noted with this quote from Patrick Henry: “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.”
Part of the reason Jefferson held architecture in high regard is due to his limited interest in painting and sculpture, which he found “too expensive for the state of wealth among us.” Architecture had practicality and thus aligned with Jefferson’s republican ideals. Similarly, Jefferson sought a balance to show Europe that republicanism did not mean primitive. He wanted simplicity but not barbarism. He wanted respect without monarchical opulence. A classical knowledge gave the Founders tools to attempt besting Europe.
John Adams has deep affinity for “Judgment of Hercules,” a painting that shows Hercules choosing between a life of virtue and a life of sloth. Adams describes how affecting this image was whenever he heard the siren’s call of slothful pleasures.
Revolutionary leaders looked to replace the aristocracy with a meritocracy. In the eighteenth century, “‘merit’ meant ‘learning.’”
One difference between the Roman heroes of the past and the Founders is the effect of Christian influences. “Classical heroes were hardly known for their modesty.” They found no shame in vanity. One wonders if this was a factor in the downfall of Rome. If so, it should serve as a warning to our modern political leaders.
“According to classical doctrine, membership in a political party inevitably involved defending the indefensible vices of one’s allies.” Thus, the historians who recorded the happenings of Rome despised factions. Few observations are timelier.
It is apparent that the founding fathers viewed the ancient heroes of Rome and Greece as heroes and more than just historical figures. I wonder if our lack of noble and commonly appreciated heroes limits our capacity to collectively strive for societal betterment.
Hamilton and other Founders were concerned about being too democratic. In Federalist 55, Madison concluded “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” The founders feared too big of assembly would include too many feeble-minded men.
Richards noted that “Whatever his faults, George III was hardly Caligula or Nero; however illegitimate, the moderate British taxes were hardly equivalent to the mass executions of the emperors. But since the founders believed that the central lesson of the classics was that every illegitimate power, however small, ended in slavery, they were determined to resist every such power.” Similarly, history “taught the Antifederalists that tyrants generally proceeded by small degrees.” The Federalists, however, read the same history and concluded marginal increases in federal power was necessary to avoid anarchy. “If federal power were insufficient to maintain law and order, disintegration must lead to interstate warfare, which must eventuate in the dictatorship of a Caesar or Catiline.”
Plato classified government into three categories: (1) monarchy, (2) aristocracy, and (3) democracy. He claimed that each deteriorated into a debased form: (1) tyranny, (2) oligarchy, and (3) ochlocracy/mob rule. This observation led to the conclusion that a mixed government—one that balances the power of the three orders of society—would be the ideal form of government. Plato’s conclusion came a decade after he wrote “The Republic.” The mixed government that the Founders produced—a bit of democracy (House), a bit of aristocracy (Senate), and a bit of monarchy (Presidency) was in the words of Hamilton, “neither Greek nor Trojan, but purely American.” The system of government sought to balance the powers that compose this country. As he described how the Founders wrestled with the nation’s form of government and transitioned from a mixed government to a more representative republic, Richards drew from Aristotle: “Humans are, at least in part, social animals, who crave a sense of participation in something larger than themselves—though not because they are defined by reason, as Aristotle alleged, but because they are defined by powerful emotional needs.”
Richards recorded that “Americans had decided that since education and talent often accompanied wealth, and since wealth (unlike other talent or virtue) could be easily quantified, property was the most appropriate criterion for identifying the ‘natural aristocracy’ which will provide their governments with the necessary senatorial stability.”
It was not of mere interest that the Founders studied Roman and Greek philosophers; it was practical. They studied the ancient republics like coroners to search for a cure and avoid the previous governments’ cause of death.
Richard also spent time analyzing the rise of individualism in America. Even the Bill of Rights was more focused on protecting states’ rights to avoid federal power rather than individual rights.
Jefferson followed Cicero who observed, “For the man who is afraid of the inevitable cannot live with a soul at peace; but the man who is without fear of death, not simply because it is unavoidable, but also because it has no terrors for him, secures a valuable aid toward rendering life happy.
The Founders saw virtue as profitable and vice as folly. Yet they valued fame and the prospect of posterity: “Like Cicero at Lilybaeum, the Founders considered themselves always onstage, subject to the scrutiny of their peers and successors. The did not, however, see the incompatibility of desiring fame and the Christian value of humility.
Richard provides a good summary of the Founder’s philosophy by noting that “both modern scientists and ancient philosophers guided the Founders.“ It may have taken some heretical philosophies to merge Christianity with classical philosophies, but it allowed the Founders to forge ahead without abandoning the religion of their ancestors.
Benjamin Rush compared pressing our brains into the study of Latin and Greek to the Chinese pressing and deforming their feet into bound, small shoes. He wanted a more pragmatic education. He preferred knowing just enough to access the great texts. Rush came at the languages from a physician’s vantage; he feared locking away the sciences kept the benefits of medicine away from those who didn’t know the language. Rush wanted freedom from the time learning the language in order to devote more time studying the content of the classics.
Thomas Paine was similarly ambivalent regarding classical models. In the third “American Crisis” essay (1776) he declared: “The wisdom, civil government, and sense of honor of the states of Greece and Rome are frequently held up as objects of excellence and imitation. But why do we need to go back two or 3,000 years for lessons and examples? Clear away the mists of antiquity!” His quote, however, illustrates how ambitious and audacious the goal of representative government was. It hadn’t occurred successfully in many years. Despite his critique, Paine also recognized that heroes from bygone eras like, “Aristides, Epaminondas, Pericles, Scipio, [and] Camillus, would have been nobodies if they had lived under royal governments.”
Richard highlighted a section where Thomas Paine seemingly contradicted himself on the law of the Old and New Testament. The contradiction, however, reflects the refining nature of reading and thinking. What we read and the time we read it affects how we think about ideas.
“What should we make of the few remarks which appear to reject all classical models, deluged, as they are, in a sea of statements which clearly embrace them?” Richard noted that sometimes it was a rhetorical device, sometimes it was national pride—hope that the U.S. could create a better system—yet often it came back to the foundation that the Founders saw flaws in even their most cherished leaders. Though Richard did not make the following observation, it seems worth noting the Tim Keller observation that humans are not rational but rationalizing. Our philosophical systems are not as consistent as we may hope or believe them to be.
One of Richard‘s key observations is that the classics helped provide an illusion of precedent during the Revolutionary War. This belief enabled even conservative individuals to “argue they were preserving past liberties rather than presumptively tinkering with the natural order.” Thus “the American Revolution was a paradox: a revolution fueled by tradition.”
Richards made the final observation on the benefits the Founders gleaned from the classics: [They] “taught a love of liberty, and understanding of human motivation, an appreciation for the written and spoken word, a respect for order, symmetry, and harmony, and a sense of belonging to an ancient and noble tradition. The latter feeling brought a purpose to the Founders’ lives and gave them a sense of kinship with the world.
