Citizenship, Seminars, and the Declaration of Independence - Liberty Fund

Citizenship, Seminars, and the Declaration of Independence

For a citizen to take the Declaration seriously, she would have to be educated in the foundational ideas of the Declaration, but she would also have to become capable of moral and political action through practice.

Citizenship, Seminars, and the Declaration of Independence

Charlotte Thomas

July 23, 2024

Both as a professor at Mercer University and as the Executive Director of the Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC), I am a professional advocate for the use of primary texts and seminar pedagogies in undergraduate classrooms, and I am a believer. When students sit around a table with an open text, an open question, and someone to help them stay on track, they have an opportunity to practice citizenship while at the same time confronting ideas and models of citizenship in the texts that orient their discussions. This is true whether the text for the seminar is the Declaration of Independence or Homer’s Iliad or the Mahabharata or Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Women or Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” etc. 

The texts matter, of course, but perhaps not in the ways that are often associated with, so called, “Great Books” programs. A text that is to sustain the collective scrutiny of a focused group of careful readers must at least be pretty good, if not great. Its arguments, ideas, narratives, language, and images must have enough integrity not to collapse under the weight of close reading. The concerns of the text must also be of interest to the members of the seminar, and the closer the text’s concerns are to common human concerns, the better.  The text must also be able to sustain fruitful interrogation of whether what it presents as “interesting” or “of common concern” really is or should be. That is, its own commitments must be accessible to scrutiny, directly or indirectly. Beauty is a bonus. 

To see how core text seminars educate citizens to take the Declaration of Independence seriously, one must understand that such an education has two different and essential modes: intellectual and moral. If one does not understand the meaning of terms like “laws of nature,” “self-evidence,” “unalienable rights,” and “just powers,” one cannot even get past the opening of the preamble to the Declaration without profound confusion. It is important that anyone living under the authority of a government have some understanding of the workings, principles, and history of that government, but such an understanding is essential to citizens, whose role it is to participate in that government.

The ambition to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the foundational ideas of the Declaration could constitute a robust framework for curricular design. A student of such a curriculum would have to learn what nature is and what it might mean to say that nature has laws. She would have to be taught enough logic to understand what evidence is and what it means for something to be self-evident. She would have to understand what rights were, where they come from, how they can be limited. She would have to have at least a basic understanding of justice. And, as a frame for understanding all the above, it would be essential to have some sense of the history and politics of the Declaration — the context in which it was written and the role it played and plays in the Constitution of the United States. 

In the United States, civics education is sometimes done well and sometimes done poorly, but it is generally done. Every school child learns some version of the basics of American history and government, and most encounter some of those topics repeatedly throughout their primary and secondary education. Every college and university has a political science or government department or at least offers courses that touch on these essentials as electives or a part of general education. One can and should debate what should be emphasized in civics curricula because it is important to prepare American students to become American citizens, but even the best civics curriculum will likely be insufficient to prepare someone to take the Declaration of Independence, or any of the founding documents of the United States, seriously. For that, one needs a moral as well as an intellectual education.

The lines between the intellectual and moral education necessary for a citizen to take the Declaration seriously can’t help but be blurred from the start because a full understanding of some of the concepts foundational to the Declaration, justice for example, would demand that one practice them. There are certain vocabularies, ideas, and ways of thinking that are essential to making sense of a document like the Declaration, however, and these are the products of what I’m thinking of here as an intellectual education.  If, to use one of my examples from the preamble, one has no idea what is meant by “natural law,” then the moral foundation of the argument of the Declaration will be indiscernible, so in order to take the Declaration seriously, one would have to understand that term. But coming to an  understanding of “natural law” is an intellectual challenge, not a moral one. 

The moral education required of a citizen to take the Declaration of Independence seriously is a different matter, and what it is depends on what we mean by “seriously.” If by “seriously,” all we mean is that we approach the writings of the American founders with a hermeneutic of sympathy, then the moral education required to take the Declaration seriously is straightforward. One would have to have a sense that a precondition for understanding a new argument is opening oneself to the possibility that one has something to learn, and that the likeliest way to make progress in understanding is to approach such a new argument with an attempt to see what is best or most interesting about it. Criticism is essential, too, and skepticism is important, but it is often helpful to set them both aside temporarily to give a new idea a chance. 

The ability to set aside one’s own point of view to take “seriously” something new or apparently contrary to one’s settled opinions is a moral achievement, not just an intellectual one, and it can be taught – or, at least, modeled – so it is the product of moral, and not just intellectual education. We all are terrible judges of the things that are closest to us, and it takes practice and guidance to remember that our perspectives may be, probably are, distorted. It is rare to find an undergraduate student who has heard the term “hermeneutics of sympathy,” much less learned to practice it, but it is a small step away from an approach to ideas that just about everyone takes. If one has ever trusted someone or something “for the sake of argument,” then one is almost there. All that is left is for one to see that such an approach isn’t simply a matter of politeness, but also a path towards understanding that can be blocked by skepticism that is applied too soon to a new idea. 

Taking the Declaration “seriously” might mean far more than opening oneself to the possibility that it is presenting a point of view worth considering, though. It might mean in some way making the ideas of the Declaration the foundation for moral, social, or political action. In that case, the moral education required to take the Declaration seriously would have to be far more robust. 

History is filled with stories of horrifically oppressed people. People whose daily lives were torturous and without hope. Countless people have been born and died in such circumstances, and still are. Someone in such circumstances might identify strongly with the Declaration’s litany of complaints against a grossly negligent  government, and the claims that such shortcomings warrant action, but, to present the Declaration to such an oppressed person, regardless of their intellectual capacity or literacy, is unlikely to work as a call to action. They are unlikely to take it seriously as a document that might guide their own ambitions for moral development, their sense of what their social responsibilities are, or their ideas about political action. In Aristotelian ethics, which elides seamlessly into Aristotelian politics, self-direction is necessary for moral education, and there are basic external goods necessary for self-direction. I believe Aristotle is right about this (among many other things). Taking the Declaration seriously as a guide for moral, social, and political action requires the precondition that one’s actions could make a difference to oneself and others. If this isn’t the case, then one will not be able to take the Declaration or anything else seriously in this sense. 

Backing away from examples of extreme disempowerment, the contemporary world continues to be filled with people who have political standing and a sense of agency when it comes to their own moral development, but do not believe they have substantial political responsibilities. Some of these disengaged citizens may believe that their only proper concerns are their private affairs because they think that political engagement, although possible for them, is less worthy of their efforts. Others may think it is useless because it is hopeless — that if one were capable of meaningful political action, it would be worth doing, but that it just isn’t possible for an individual citizen to make a difference, so it is better to focus one’s energies elsewhere. 

Moral education, in the Aristotelian sense, requires action and habituation. Its goal is the formation of one’s character, and that work cannot be outsourced. One must have a sense of what should be done, do that thing deliberately, reflect on what one learns by having done it, and then fold those reflections into one’s deliberations next time one is interested in acting in a similar way or in reaction to similar circumstances. Deliberation and reflection are essential, but so is action. If one doesn’t act, the whole process of moral education never gets off the ground. 

I believe that for a citizen to take the Declaration seriously, she would need both forms of education: intellectual and moral. She would have to be educated in the foundational ideas of the Declaration, but she would also have to become capable of moral and political action through practice. She would have to have an intellectual understanding of the ideas and institutions of the American constitution, and she would also have to have a moral understanding, based on practice, of how her actions constitute, at least in part, her own personal, social, and political situation. If this is right, then the question then becomes what kinds of education would put someone in that position. 

Technical and professional training, as valuable as it is, cannot do the job. It is not even worth enumerating the reasons that it is important for people to learn how to do things like perform surgery, argue a case in court, or build a bridge. But such training, regardless of how important it is, will not begin to help citizens take themselves seriously as citizens. For that, one needs to see the relationships between ideas and actions and character and society, and one needs practice acting with them in mind. 

Here is where we return to the seminar table. When people gather around a table to try to understand a text and each other, they are practicing some of the most important activities of citizenship. They must come to the table prepared, and if they don’t, they have let themselves and their colleagues down. Not only have they lessened the likelihood that they will understand the text and develop as a reader and discussant, but they have also lessened the likelihood that their colleagues will do so. They must share their opinions, and the more informed and well-thought those opinions, the more meaningful their participation will be to themselves and their colleagues. They must give reasons for their opinions about the text, and they must point to evidence in the text for why they believe those opinions to be well-founded; that is, they must formulate and present well-formed arguments. They must listen to the opinions of others and consider where they agree and disagree, on what basis, and why. They must learn to disagree productively. They must learn to change their minds. 

To take the Declaration seriously in the sense of engaging it as an informed, empowered, and effective citizen, one needs to understand the ideas, institutions, and historical context that make it intelligible. But one must also understand from the inside what it means to be an American citizen-what it means to engage in productive, potentially transformative, political conversation and action as a responsible agent. For the intellectual part of this education, there are many effective approaches. For the moral education required of a citizen to take the Declaration of Independence seriously, there is no substitute for gathering around a table with a group of committed readers, a leader skilled in keeping the conversation on track, and a book that will sustain serious conversation. 

Charlotte Thomas

Dr. Charlotte Thomas specializes in the philosophy and culture of ancient Greece with an interest in other ancient cultures. She is a Professor of Philosophy at Mercer University and the Executive Director of the Association for Core Texts and Courses.

The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776, selected by Jack Greene, makes available in modern digitized form a trove of eighteenth-century books and pamphlets that directly addressed what became known in metropolitan Britain as the American Question.

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