Divine Experience

The public debate about the true religious beliefs of anybody who is no longer around to explain themselves is necessarily messy. As we've learned with Washington et alii, what people have written about their personal beliefs and faith is not enough, nor is a study of life behavior. It's never a "slam dunk," in religion--just as any other thing, knowing what was actually going on in a person's head.
But that is, of course, the most fascinating aspect of a person, really: their inner lives. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, yet when I compare my sort of internal monologue (and the fruits thereof) to the way I present to the external world, I am surprised by the difference.
How thrilling, then, would it be if the historian could obtain a transcript of the inner monologue of his subject? We could know how the subject really felt about everything. Mysteries would dissolve before our eyes. And while a transcript of this sort is, alas, impossible, I would like to consider a closely similar "transcript" of a subject's inner life, viz. his or her reading and study habits. I have no direct evidence for it, but I have a (half-baked at best) hypothesis that the "founding generation" had a "spiritual imperative" to be studious, and that for many of our erudite founders and influential citizens, engaging in a life of study brought them closer to God, experientially, than, say, going to church.
In a very small nutshell, Aristotle's ethics espouse a complete life of activity in accord with virtue. In the closing chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle puts forward his belief that a life of study is essential for a most complete happiness. Such a complete happiness makes a life

"superior to the human level. For someone will live it not insofar as he is a human being, but insofar as he has some divine element in him. And the activity of this divine element is as much superior to the activity in accord with the rest of the virtue as this element is to the compound. Hence, if understanding is something divine in comparison with a human being, so also will the life in accord with understanding be divine in comparison with human life. We ought not to follow the makers of proverbs and 'Think Human, since you are human', or 'Think Mortal, because you are mortal'. Rather, as far as we can, we ought to be pro-immortal and go to all lengths to live a life in accord with our supreme element." (Book X, Ch. VII)

Starting with the most obvious case, Jefferson, we know that he was well-versed in Aristotle's Ethics, and he took most of it to heart. And so I wonder, when Jefferson famously wrote that he "cannot live without books," was he saying it in the same sense that a teenager today might say "I cannot live without a cellphone"? Or, was he being almost more literal, saying that, deprived of books, he would not be able to live a virtuous life? I suspect that is closer to what he meant. I am, shamefully, unaware of how widely read Aristotle's Ethics were among the founders. While I'm sure many were familiar with the general idea, I don't know how many really engaged with the text. But even if they had not read that text, I believe that many had developed similar ideas about learning and study. The connection is obvious, I think. These great men and women grew up in a culture of learning, and discovered early that study made them happy. And my hypothesis is that, in study, some of them consequently felt closer to God. Jefferson does seem to be exhibit A, a man whose appetite for study is legendary. To stand among is books in the Library of Congress was a religious experience for me, as I suspect it was for him standing among them at Monticello. For him, reading was piety and contemplation was ever devout. He could not live without books.

Washington's Sacred Fire: A Surprise Hit?

I work at a bookstore, and yesterday learned that the book "George Washington's Sacred Fire" was being asked for from an abnormally high amount of customers. It turns out that Glenn Beck told his followers it was a must read.

The book is now the #2 Bestseller at Amazon.com. You can read a little about what Mr. Beck said about the book here.

It will be interesting to see what sort of impact this might have on the cultural discourse. The book has been discussed on the blog before, (here, among other places) and certainly the premise has been disagreed with. While I'm thrilled that thousands of Americans are running out to their local independent bookstores (or their giant corporate ones) and buying a history book, I'm curious if this will cloud the debate over the founders' religion.

I brought this up mainly to make everybody aware that a book on a Founder's religion was, apparently, at one time the best selling book in the country. It is interesting to note that the book was borderline out-of-print, this push from Beck will revive it from that status for sure.

So be prepared to see some follow-up on this in the media, as the public continues to investigate and debate the religious-ness of the greats.

Finals Week

I've just emerged from somewhat of a media-blackout, surrounding the flurry of academic activity that surrounds the end of a university semester. It is always around this time that I start to reflect on the nature of the American College or University. What would the founders of our great academic institutions think of how things go today? Surely, the founders of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, William & Mary, et al could not have foreseen the changing nature of education. When designing the curriculum of the University of Virginia, Jefferson didn't know that what he knew as "philosophy" or "natural philosophy," at least, would end up splintering into dozens of different fields. Perhaps they could see the day where Latin and Greek would less useful than the modern languages; there is evidence of that.

But in general, I truly wonder what our founders would think about the modern university, where most students don't know who Tully is, let alone can they parse him. And most students would politely decline to decline the Greek paradigms.

Aside from that, how has the purpose of the university changed? I suspect Jefferson or Adams would feel the same way I do when I hear students discussing the mad rush to sell their textbooks after the semester is over: why would you want to sell back a textbook? If the information contained therein is of no interest to you, why did you take the class?

We know the answer to that, of course, but the larger question is still: what is the purpose of the university? I doubt many of our founders went to university simply to go through the motions to get a degree so they could get a job. But perhaps I'm mistaken about this, maybe the university has always been that place you go to make yourself more hire-able--and if you learn something or better yourself in the process, fine.

Perhaps I'm rambling, which is not to be unexpected after a busy time, but I would be interested if anybody has any insight into this. Did any of the founders discuss all-night cram-sessions before an exam? Did any of them complain in their diaries about getting a pittance for their used textbooks? Somebody should write a book about the founders as students.

Do you think students have always been, for the most part, short sighted, not concerned so much about their long term enlightenment and the pleasure of learning, but only concerned about getting the best grade for minimal effort?

Xenophanes and Madison

We know, certainly, how much the Greeks influenced the thinkers of the Revolutionary Era. The founders were perhaps among the last generations of the inheritors of the Renaissance of Greek knowledge that emerged after the "Dark Ages" and blossomed fully during the Humanism fostered by Erasmus, who taught himself Greek that he might go back to the Septuagint, or men like Thomas More who learned Greek partly to understand the Greek influence on Cicero. Erasmus was actually worried that concentrating on Greek culture too much would result in some kind of neo-pagan undercurrent to Orthodox Roman Catholicism.

Our founders, of course, we past all that--but with such a debt to the Greeks (even if it was by way of the Roman Greco-philes) is it possible that some of the founders may have been attracted to paganism? I don't mean to say that any of them actually worshiped Zeus or Mithras, but it is easy to suspect that some of the more tight-lipped Founders secretly modeled themselves after the Greek philosophers who payed lip service to the state religion, revered the mythology, and yet maintained a certain agnosticism.

One small example of this comes from James Madison. The quote I'm about to pull has been discussed here before, but in a different context.

Madison:

"The finiteness of the human understanding betrays itself on all subjects, but more especially when it contemplates such as involve infinity....The infinity of time and space forces itself on our conception, a limitation of either being inconceivable; that the mind prefers at once the idea of a self-existing cause to that of an infinite series of cause and effect, which arguments, instead of avoiding the difficulty; and that it finds more facility in assenting to the self-existence of the universe, visibly destitute of those attributes, and which may be the effect of them. In this comparative facility of conception and belief, all philosophical Reasoning on the subject must terminate."

This seems to be a more eloquent echo of something the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes said many, many years earlier:

"The certain truth there is no man who knows, nor ever shall be, about the Gods and [other theological matters]. Yea, even if a man should chance to say something utterly right, still he himself knows it not--there is nowhere anything but guessing."

I'd like to explore the pre-Christian influences on the Founders a lot more.


Sources: The Madisons at Montpelier by Ketcham, The History of Western Philosophy by Russell, Ad Infinitum by Ostler.

Revisiting Charles Carroll

The most recent of the ISI Books "Lives of the Founders" series is a biography of Charles Carroll, the lone Catholic signer of the declaration of Independence. Written by Bradley Birzer, who is Catholic himself, the book really focuses on the impact of Carroll's religion on his political thought.

I hope to share several little excerpts over time, but I'll start with the following. While He may have been the only Catholic signer of the Declaration, his intentions and hopes for the document sound familiar. Carroll writes:

"To obtain religious, as well as civil liberty, I entered zealously into the revolution and observing the Christian religion divided into many sects, I founded the hope that no one [denomination] would be so predominant as to become the religion of the state."

What is most interesting about his point of view is that, of course, unlike the rest of the signers, Carroll's religion was essentially banned in his State, and indeed he had to go abroad to get a Jesuit education. He couldn't practice law in Maryland at times. His orthodoxy and genuine piety made religious liberty that much more urgent--not that it wasn't important to others, but Jefferson, for instance, would not have been too bothered in practice if his religion, whatever it was, was banned.

More about Charles Carroll later, the book is a good read.