Thoughts on a Declaration
By THE EDITORSThe Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.
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The Pursuit of Happiness, Then and Now
By Arthur C. Danto
Philosophers are especially sensitive to the way that Thomas Jefferson cuts and pastes the words of previous philosophers to make their meanings come out somewhat differently in the Declaration of Independence. This is particularly true of the trio of fundamental human rights famously identified by John Locke. Locke specified that humans enjoyed three basic rights: life, liberty, and property. Jefferson replaces property with “the pursuit of happiness,” which is a borrowing from Aristotle’s ethical writings. Aristotle takes it for granted that humans in general aspire to happiness, but does not consider it a right. The shift from property to happiness seems crucial to a Declaration of Independence, since it is the pattern of thwarting the pursuit of happiness that goes against our humanity, and brings into play the right to revolution. The Americans were not concerned with revolution in the sense of overthrowing the British monarchy but “to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
The term happiness in current usage does not go nearly as deep as Jefferson’s Aristotelian usage. There would be something frivolous in getting rid of a government on the grounds that it makes us unhappy. In a two party system, it must generally be true that there will be an unhappy minority. The remedy is to vote the ruling party out since their power explains our unhappiness. But the Greek word for happiness is eudemonia, which refers to what is fitting for us as humans — it rests on our essential qualities. The list of injuries Jefferson establishes rests upon a claim that the pattern of conduct laid at the feet of the monarch amount to violations of our humanity.
It is this then that validates the Declaration. July 4 radically changes the nature of the conflict. England had been at war with the American colonies for over a year by that point. Until then it was not a war of independence. It was a revolt against the ruling power, which might end in amnesty, leaving the colonial status intact. But changing the war into a fight for independence required a philosophical transformation of its character. It would sound in today’s terms ridiculous to say that the Americans were fighting for happiness. But they were fighting for philosophical recognition of what it meant to be treated as human. They were fighting for human dignity.
So Jefferson’s emendation was fundamental to the moral character of his cause. Violating property rights would in effect have meant robbing them of the fruits of their labor, in Locke’s view. Putting aside the concept of property enabled Jefferson to table the problem of slavery. The classical tradition gave Jefferson a different basis, mainly because it allowed him to stress the philosophical character of being human. Today the pursuit of happiness sounds poetic; it gives us license to take up painting and the like. It is a lesser right than it was in Jefferson’s time, and is no longer the battle cry that it was to the classically trained.
Arthur C. Danto is Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University, and was the art critic for The Nation from 1984 to 2009. He is the author of several books on analytical philosophy and the philosophy of art; and winner of the the National Book Critics Prize for Criticism in 1990, as well as Le Prix Philosophie for “The Madonna of the Future.”
CloseIt is this then that validates the Declaration. July 4 radically changes the nature of the conflict. England had been at war with the American colonies for over a year by that point. Until then it was not a war of independence. It was a revolt against the ruling power, which might end in amnesty, leaving the colonial status intact. But changing the war into a fight for independence required a philosophical transformation of its character. It would sound in today’s terms ridiculous to say that the Americans were fighting for happiness. But they were fighting for philosophical recognition of what it meant to be treated as human. They were fighting for human dignity.
So Jefferson’s emendation was fundamental to the moral character of his cause. Violating property rights would in effect have meant robbing them of the fruits of their labor, in Locke’s view. Putting aside the concept of property enabled Jefferson to table the problem of slavery. The classical tradition gave Jefferson a different basis, mainly because it allowed him to stress the philosophical character of being human. Today the pursuit of happiness sounds poetic; it gives us license to take up painting and the like. It is a lesser right than it was in Jefferson’s time, and is no longer the battle cry that it was to the classically trained.
Arthur C. Danto is Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University, and was the art critic for The Nation from 1984 to 2009. He is the author of several books on analytical philosophy and the philosophy of art; and winner of the the National Book Critics Prize for Criticism in 1990, as well as Le Prix Philosophie for “The Madonna of the Future.”
Extending Equality
By Todd May
What might it mean to say, in our time, that “all men are created equal”? For many living during the late 1700s and 1800s, it meant that all white males possessed certain natural rights, although the content of those rights was subject to some dispute. Not in dispute, however, were two assumptions: the limited subject of those rights and their natural character, the latter of which was marked in the Declaration by the phrase “endowed by their Creator.”
For those of us in the early 21st century, the limitation on the subject of those rights has been expanded: in particular, women and people of color are treated as more nearly (although not entirely) equal. In addition, doubt has been cast on the naturalness of what were considered natural rights. Most philosophers now agree that the rights we have are not rooted in nature or in a divine being but in our social practices, our ways of living together.
However, there is one group in particular that, here in the United States, seems to remain markedly less equal than others: undocumented workers.(There is also the situation of gays and lesbians, which, fortunately, seems to be improving.)
When I say that they are treated as markedly less than equal, I do not mean simply that they are refused the rights of citizens. What rights they should have is something I would like to address another time. What I mean is that they are often treated as less than fully human.
The public picture routinely painted of undocumented workers is not one of people who have left their country in search of employment. It is instead one of criminals or even monsters intent on gaming the system and terrorizing the population. Accusations of free-riding, although of questionable accuracy (consider, for instance, that an undocumented worker with false papers will pay Social Security taxes but never receive Social Security) are accepted without debate. Other, more heinous insinuations of stealing, rape, and other crimes are part of the daily fare of immigration discussion.
In response to this picture, legislation is being proposed that treats undocumented workers (and worse, their children) as beneath the reach of basic human rights. Denial of non-emergency public health care and education are either enacted or on the table in several state legislatures (not to mention the draconian laws recently passed in Arizona). There may be vigorous debate regarding the rights of undocumented workers to vote or run for office. But when we say that they cannot receive public health care or have their children educated in our schools because it is a waste of taxpayer money, it is hard to argue that we really believe that all people are created equal.
On this July 4, in particular, we could do worse than to reflect on the most commonly quoted phrase in the Declaration. We could do worse than ask what it might mean for us and for our attitudes. After all, by learning to treat others as equal to us, do we not in turn elevate our own humanity?
Todd May is a professor of philosophy at Clemson University. He is the author 10 books, including “The Philosophy of Foucault” and “Death,” and is at work on a book about friendship in the contemporary period.
CloseThe public picture routinely painted of undocumented workers is not one of people who have left their country in search of employment. It is instead one of criminals or even monsters intent on gaming the system and terrorizing the population. Accusations of free-riding, although of questionable accuracy (consider, for instance, that an undocumented worker with false papers will pay Social Security taxes but never receive Social Security) are accepted without debate. Other, more heinous insinuations of stealing, rape, and other crimes are part of the daily fare of immigration discussion.
In response to this picture, legislation is being proposed that treats undocumented workers (and worse, their children) as beneath the reach of basic human rights. Denial of non-emergency public health care and education are either enacted or on the table in several state legislatures (not to mention the draconian laws recently passed in Arizona). There may be vigorous debate regarding the rights of undocumented workers to vote or run for office. But when we say that they cannot receive public health care or have their children educated in our schools because it is a waste of taxpayer money, it is hard to argue that we really believe that all people are created equal.
On this July 4, in particular, we could do worse than to reflect on the most commonly quoted phrase in the Declaration. We could do worse than ask what it might mean for us and for our attitudes. After all, by learning to treat others as equal to us, do we not in turn elevate our own humanity?
Todd May is a professor of philosophy at Clemson University. He is the author 10 books, including “The Philosophy of Foucault” and “Death,” and is at work on a book about friendship in the contemporary period.
Song of Freedom
By J.M. Bernstein
When Janis Joplin achingly sang that “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” she (or the song’s composer, Kris Kristofferson) was critiquing a widely held ideal of independence: namely, the aspiration toward maximum liberty from all binding attachments and obligations. Isn’t it obvious, the argument goes, that each promise, and each unbreakable emotional bond, entails a loss of true freedom, an abrogation of true independence? Joplin’s refutation is simple and elegant: in actuality, absolute freedom is a picture of perfect emptiness, since if you have nothing left to lose, you have nothing.
However much the ideal of unencumbered freedom has become associated with the Declaration of Independence, freedom from binding attachments is no part of its philosophical underpinnings. In protesting against British tyranny, the American colonists were not proclaiming an ideal of individual freedom from government. On the contrary, they were pleading the cause for a vital conception of political community.
No words are more redolent of this ambition than the concluding sentence of the Declaration: “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” What stands behind “The Declaration,” providing it with all the support it can possibly have, is the “mutual pledge” of its signatories. Their pledging to one another everything — not just their fortunes and honor as individuals, but their very lives — is the ethical substance of the document. It is how the American “we” steps onto the world stage.
Too often in the reading of “The Declaration” its background assumptions — the resounding words of its preamble — are unduly privileged. What we take to be self-evident, that all men are equal and endowed with unalienable rights, is intended to be explanatory about why we have systems of government and what they are meant to do — protect those rights.
However, it is neither the rights themselves nor their self-evidence that the preamble is emphasizing — they were commonplace notions of the time; and, even if they were not, a list of self-evident moral truths would still be idle in practice if no one paid attention to them.
As a posse of philosophers has argued, following the lead of Hannah Arendt’s “On Revolution,” the ground note of the preamble is Jefferson’s “incongruous phrase” “We hold,” with its implication that the self-evident truths that follow were somehow lacking in authority despite their divine sanction. It is that “we” taking those truths as definitive of the human condition that made them the very “we” that founded this nation. Holding, pledging, and binding themselves to those truths gave them a political identity, a political “we,” and gave those truths political authority and significance.
Ever since Lincoln revived the Declaration to provide a corrective to the Constitution, it has been easy to forget what a work of collective self-making the Declaration is. And while the words of the preamble were indeed fateful in the overthrow of slavery, the remainder of the document does not mention individual liberty or individual rights; rather, it is concerned with who “we” Americans already are as a political community, and how the British king and Parliament have committed “repeated injuries and usurpations” that violently attack the integrity of our political community.
At present, we hear much talk of how government is failing, how it, that “thing,” the government is betraying the people, as if there were some absolute divide between the people and government, as if there were some notion of absolute freedom that was compromised by its attachments to political community. There is, finally, no “people” apart from the government, and no government apart from the people, there is no “I” without this “we,” and no “we” without each “I.” When the founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to each other, thus creating the “we” of America, they understood that such a pledge was the condition under which life, liberty, and happiness could be pursued; without that pledge, there would be nothing left to lose. Janis and the founders are here in profound agreement.
J.M. Bernstein is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the author of five books. He is now completing a book entitled “Torture and Dignity.”
CloseToo often in the reading of “The Declaration” its background assumptions — the resounding words of its preamble — are unduly privileged. What we take to be self-evident, that all men are equal and endowed with unalienable rights, is intended to be explanatory about why we have systems of government and what they are meant to do — protect those rights.
However, it is neither the rights themselves nor their self-evidence that the preamble is emphasizing — they were commonplace notions of the time; and, even if they were not, a list of self-evident moral truths would still be idle in practice if no one paid attention to them.
As a posse of philosophers has argued, following the lead of Hannah Arendt’s “On Revolution,” the ground note of the preamble is Jefferson’s “incongruous phrase” “We hold,” with its implication that the self-evident truths that follow were somehow lacking in authority despite their divine sanction. It is that “we” taking those truths as definitive of the human condition that made them the very “we” that founded this nation. Holding, pledging, and binding themselves to those truths gave them a political identity, a political “we,” and gave those truths political authority and significance.
Ever since Lincoln revived the Declaration to provide a corrective to the Constitution, it has been easy to forget what a work of collective self-making the Declaration is. And while the words of the preamble were indeed fateful in the overthrow of slavery, the remainder of the document does not mention individual liberty or individual rights; rather, it is concerned with who “we” Americans already are as a political community, and how the British king and Parliament have committed “repeated injuries and usurpations” that violently attack the integrity of our political community.
At present, we hear much talk of how government is failing, how it, that “thing,” the government is betraying the people, as if there were some absolute divide between the people and government, as if there were some notion of absolute freedom that was compromised by its attachments to political community. There is, finally, no “people” apart from the government, and no government apart from the people, there is no “I” without this “we,” and no “we” without each “I.” When the founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to each other, thus creating the “we” of America, they understood that such a pledge was the condition under which life, liberty, and happiness could be pursued; without that pledge, there would be nothing left to lose. Janis and the founders are here in profound agreement.
J.M. Bernstein is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the author of five books. He is now completing a book entitled “Torture and Dignity.”
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