The View From 1776

Exceptional America
By Robert Curry

“There is no country in the world in which the boldest political theories of the eighteenth-century philosophers are put so effectively into practice as in America.  Only their anti-religious doctrines have never made any headway in that country.”

Alexis de Tocqueville

This remarkable pair of lucid sentences is frequently quoted today by those who attempt to explain America’s uniqueness—and for good reason.  De Tocqueville in a few words gives us a vivid picture of America.  In a few words he shows us what could not be shown so well with a thousand pictures. 

That first sentence gets so much so right.  The Founders had indeed acted on the boldest of political theories, and the boldest theory of all was that the people are sovereign.  That theory was perhaps even bolder than bold.  In that era wasn’t it actually a contradiction in terms?  After all, a sovereign was a king or queen; it was the role of the people to be ruled and the role of the sovereign to rule. 

The Founders had staked everything on the theory that the people could rule themselves.  Looking back from the present we can fail to understand what a radical departure their experiment was, can fail to appreciate how boldly the Founders gambled on the theories of the eighteenth-century philosophers they had studied so closely.  We can also fail to appreciate how carefully the Founders proceeded.  Putting those bold theories “effectively into practice” was itself a work of collective genius, something even rarer and more precious than great philosophy. 

The second sentence correctly points toward America’s other way of being unique. It is certainly true that “anti-religious doctrines had never made any headway” in America.  De Tocqueville reports that “[Americans] always answered, without a moment’s hesitation, that a civilized community, especially one that enjoys the benefit of freedom, cannot exist without religion.” The contrast with his native France was stark.  The philosophers of the French Enlightenment had been fiercely anti-clerical, and the French revolution had resulted in the murder of priests and the confiscation of Church property.

However, de Tocqueville makes a significant error here, an error that nearly always escapes notice today.  For de Tocqueville, quite naturally, “the eighteenth century philosophers” are the Enlightenment philosophers of his native France.  That is also the reason his error nearly always goes unnoticed today.  Today the French Enlightenment has eclipsed all other developments during the Age of Enlightenment.  Consequently, writers today who use the de Tocqueville quote share with him the assumption that the French Enlightenment essentially was the Enlightenment.
The Founders had a very different perspective.  The anti-religious doctrines of the French Enlightenment had never made any headway in America because the Founders were not relying on the philosophes of the French Enlightenment for their theories. The Founders relied on an entirely different set of eighteenth century philosophers, the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment.  Those Enlightenment philosophers shared neither the anti-religious views nor the political theories of their French counterparts.

John Witherspoon, James Madison’s teacher and mentor, is a perfect example of the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment on the Founding.  Before coming to America from Scotland, Witherspoon had been a student of Adam Smith and of Thomas Reid, giants of the Scottish Enlightenment.  As the president of Princeton, he trained a large cohort of Americans of the Founders’ generation, and was himself a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  He was also a Presbyterian minister. 

Witherspoon certainly earned the right to be counted as a member in good standing of both the Scottish and the American Enlightenments, and like his colleagues in Scotland and in America, he was not a foe of religion but instead a champion of religion and of religious liberty. 

Nor did he and his colleagues subscribe to the political theories of the French Enlightenment.  For Voltaire and Diderot the political ideal was the enlightened despotism of a reforming monarch, like Frederick in Prussia or Catherine in Russia.  Not for them the boldest theory of all, the theory that the people are sovereign.  (Is it any wonder then that the French Revolution was to give rise to the despotism of Napoleon?)

If we are to understand the astonishing boldness of the Founders we must look to the eighteenth century philosophers they actually relied on—for example, to Thomas Reid whose philosophy of common sense undergirded the Founders’ boldest theory that the people are sovereign, and to Adam Smith whose analysis of a free market showed that it worked so well because it was largely a self-governing system.

What then of the de Tocqueville quote?  Properly understood, the first sentence can stand as is.  The second sentence would benefit from a bit of editing:

“There is no country in the world in which the boldest political theories of the eighteenth-century philosophers are put so effectively into practice as in America.  And because those philosophers were also strong champions of religion and of religious liberty, anti-religious doctrines have never made any headway in that country.”