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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY |
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Select: John Adams - Thomas Jefferson - Benjamin Rush |
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John Adams (picture) was born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, on October 30, 1735, in a small saltbox house still standing and open to visitors. His father, John Adams, a deacon and a fifth-generation Massachusetts farmer, and his mother, the former Suzanna Boylston, were, their son wrote, "both fond of reading"; so they resolved to give bookishly inclined John a good education. He became the first of his family to go to college when he entered Harvard in 1751. There, and in six further years of intensive reading while he taught school and studied law in Worcester and Boston, he mastered the technicalities of his profession and the literature and learning of his day. By 1762, when he began 14 years of increasingly successful legal practice, he was well informed, ambitious, and public spirited. His most notable good fortune, however, occurred in 1764 when he married Abigail Smith. John Adams's marriage of 54 years to this wise, learned, strong-willed, passionate, and patriotic woman began the brilliant phase of Adams family history that produced their son John Quincy, his son Charles Francis, his sons Henry and Brooks, and numerous other distinguished progeny. The second president of the United States regarded himself as "one of those Protestants who do not believe in anything." He repudiated Platonism, the doctrines of the Christian churches, deism, materialism, and scoffed at the belief in the perfectibility of human nature and the progressive development of the human intellect. An austere, cynical, selfless, and stubborn man, he opposed democracy because he distrusted the people, yet he devoted himself to the welfare of the entire nation. He maintained that an aristocratic class could provide for the interests of the poor more adequately than the masses of plain people whose very interests might be at stake. Adams was a political philosopher despite his contemptuous attitude toward philosophy. His concepts of government were based upon the arguments of Aristotle and Montesquieu. He admired the ideas of these men, even though they were philosophers, and in the same way, he revered Bolingbroke, Hume and Voltaire as "comets" of thought. He staunchly defended the governmental system of checks and balances against the demands for centralized power or an extension of democracy. Adams played a leading part in the opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765 and in the organization of the War of Independence; but he remained a Tory in his persistent sympathy for the British form of government. Thus the constitution for the State of Massachusetts, written by him, was very conservative. As President, Adams resisted Alexander Hamilton's requests for a declaration of war against France and the negation of the lower-class demands. Adam's domestic policy of taking the middle course was a failure; his Presidential experiences reinforced his feelings of detached cynicism. Although his presidency (1797-1801) was a troubled one, Adams made uniquely important contributions during his term as chief executive. He managed orderly transitions of power at both the beginning and the end of his administration, and he gave the government stability by continuing most of the practices established under Washington. The major crisis he faced, however, arose from strained relations with revolutionary France. When, in the so-called XYZ Affair (1797-98), American peace commissioners returned from Paris with lurid stories of deceit and bribery, Adams called for an assertion of national pride, built up the armed forces, and even accepted the Alien and Sedition Acts as emergency national security measures. With his opponents (led by Jefferson) charging oppression and some of his own Federalist party (led by Hamilton) urging war and conquest, Adams kept his nerve and, when the opportunity arose, dispatched another peace commission to France. This defused the crisis and led in 1800 to an agreement with France that ended the so-called Quasi-War. Nonetheless, deserted by Hamilton and other Federalists who disapproved of his independent course, and attacked by the Jeffersonian Republicans as a vain monarchist, Adams was forced out of office after one term. After he left the Capitol, he declared that "a fine load of manure was a fair exchange for the honors and virtues of the world." When he and Abigail returned to Massachusetts, they moved into a comfortable but unpretentious house in Quincy (it is known today and open to visitors as the Adams National Historic Site) they had bought 12 years before. There, tending to his fields, visiting with neighbors, and enjoying his family, John Adams lived for 25 years as a sage and national patriarch. Of his numerous correspondences, the cherished 14-year (1812-26) one with Jefferson became a literary legacy to the nation. Although the debilitations of old age and the death of his beloved Abigail in 1818 troubled his last years, his mind remained sharp and his spirit buoyant until the end. Like Jefferson, he died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Ninety years old at his death, Adams was revered by his countrymen not only as one of the founding fathers but also as a plain, honest man who personified the best of what the nation could hope of its citizens and leaders. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet
Thomas Jefferson (picture) was born at Shadwell in what is now Albemarle County, Virginia., on April 13, 1743. His mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, came from one of the first families of Virginia; his father, Peter, was a well-to-do landowner, though not in the class of the wealthiest planters. Jefferson attended (1760-62) the College of William and Mary and then studied law with George Wythe. In 1769 he began six years as a representative in the Virginia House of Burgesses. In 1770 he began building Monticello on land inherited from his father. The mansion, which he designed in every detail, took years to complete, but part of it was ready for occupancy when he married Martha Wayles Skelton on Jan. 1, 1772. The couple had six children, two of whom survived into adulthood. Jefferson's reputation began to reach beyond Virginia in 1774, when he wrote a political pamphlet, A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Arguing on the basis of natural rights theory, Jefferson claimed that colonial allegiance to the king was voluntary. "The God who gave us life," he wrote, "gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." Elected to the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, Jefferson was appointed on June 11, 1776, to head a committee of five in preparing the Declaration of Independence. He was its primary author, although his initial draft was amended after consultation with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams and altered both stylistically and substantively by Congress. Jefferson's reference to the voluntary allegiance of colonists to the crown was struck; also deleted was a clause that censured the monarchy for imposing slavery upon America. Based upon the same natural rights theory contained in A Summary View, to which it bears a strong resemblance, the Declaration of Independence made Jefferson internationally famous. Years later that fame evoked the jealousy of John Adams, who complained that the declaration's ideas were "hackneyed." Jefferson agreed; he wrote of the declaration, "Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind." In accordance with Jefferson's own will, his tombstone reads: Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom And Father of the University of Virginia. Jefferson did not want to have mentioned that he had been Governor of Virginia, member of Congress, Minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice-President and third President of the United States. Jefferson often protested that he disliked politics and preferred the peaceful life on his farm and among his books. Undoubtedly these declarations were sincere. His was a meditative mind. He was not a man of action. But for decades he was involved in political struggles because they concerned not so much his material interests as his philosophy, and it was his philosophy, at least its broad outline, which caused a great political upheaval, resulting in Jefferson's victory over men of action, and his election to the Presidency. Jefferson's political philosophy was founded upon his ideas on human nature. His motto was, "I cannot act as if all men were unfaithful because some are so...I had rather be the victim of occasional infidelities than relinquish my general confidence in the honesty of man." His confidence disregarded differences of education, wealth, social position. The aim of his political activity was a life of freedom in which every individual would be able to develop his moral and intellectual nature and pursue his happiness. He was also confident that the common man would give authority to good and wise leaders. He firmly believed that Providence created man for society and endowed him with a sense of right and wrong so that an orderly society could subsist. Jefferson, who in his youth had been engaged in "dancing, junketing and high jinks," was a man of solid studies in various fields. He was a profound jurist, versed in mathematics, botany and meteorology, interested in zoology, astronomy and ethnology, mechanics and architecture, well-read in classical and modern literature, a talented musician and a model farmer. He was opposed to Calvinist orthodoxy, advocated religious tolerance, emancipation of slaves and public education. Among modern political economists there are some who it fashionable to deride Jefferson as "a petty bourgeois liberal." It is true, Jefferson, the leader of small farmers, shopkeepers and artisans, disliked big business and large-scale industrialization. But his philosophy was anything but the expression of his material interests or of his prejudices. Jefferson's place among American thinkers has been perfectly described this way: "He was not a philosopher because he wrote about his philosophy in orderly, systematic fashion, but rather because the ideas he expressed and his life he led were testimony to his essentially philosophic mind." His ideas, namely, concerned some of the most important problems of life: that the only justifiable purpose of government is to make people happy, that every generation of men has a right to formulate its way of life, that freedom is humanly beneficial whether in politics, education or science, and that morality is determined by conditions of actual life. For the last seventeen years of his life, Jefferson remained politically inactive and confined his literary activities to vast personal correspondence. But he devoted much of his time to education and scientific pursuits. These consisted in planning, founding (1819) and developing the University of Virginia and in presiding over the American Philosophical Society for many years (1797-1815). He died on the day with which his name is so closely associated, Independence Day, 1826. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On the Internet
Benjamin Rush (picture), an American physician and political and social reformer, was born in Philadelphia on January 4, 1746 and died on April 19, 1813. He challenged many established theories and sought new ways of combating illness. He pioneered in military hygiene and the treatment of mental illness, writing the first American text on the subject: Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812). As a social reformer, he fought for better education for women and the abolition of slavery and capital punishment. A political activist, he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and served on the ratifying convention in Pennsylvania for the new federal constitution. From 1797 on, Rush was treasurer of the U.S. Mint. Rush Medical College, now affiliated with the University of Chicago, was so named in honor of Benjamin Rush, one of the most successful physicians of 18th century America. His approach to philosophy was determined by his medical profession, especially his experiences in psychiatry. He was mainly interested in investigating the effects of physical causes on the mind and the effects of psychic changes in the body. His Inquiry Upon Physical Causes Upon the Moral Faculty (1786) and Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind, mentioned above, were for a long time considered standard works on psychiatry. Rush energetically advocated human understanding of mentally ill people and he also advocated humane treatment of criminals. However, his philanthropy did not imply any laxity in moral principles. Rush was firmly convinced that science and religion are in harmony, that ethics is founded upon the Christian faith, and he untiringly protested against any materialistic interpretation of the results of his psychological research. It was on religious grounds that Rush became an ardent American patriot, a revolutionary fighter, and a defender of popular government. He was an intimate friend of Thomas Paine who owed the title of his pamphlet Common Sense to Rush's suggestion. Rush was no deist but a Christian who was politically closely allied with Paine, together with whom he even challenged the authority of George Washington. His religious and political ideas made Rush a supporter of the advancement of learning and the improvement of public education. He actively participated in the foundation of colleges and elementary schools, always confident that the increase of knowledge would strengthen democracy and religious belief. A member of the American Philosophical Society, Rush manifested varied interests in science, philosophy and religion, expressing them in his Essays, Literary, Medical and Philosophical (1798). As to the role of religion in human affairs, Rush's profundity can best be conveyed by a direct quote from his Three Lectures upon Animal Life (1799): "Man is as naturally a religious, as he is a social and domestic animal; and the same violence is done to his mental faculties, by robbing him of a belief in God, that is done by dooming him to live in a cell, deprived of the objects and pleasures of social and domestic life." In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet To Page 1 of The Founding Fathers Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Magazine...
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