For 2,500 years, in the West, the world’s greatest philosophers and theologians have stretched and strained to discover and to describe the ideal human government.
Four centuries before the First Coming of Christ, the Greek philosopher Plato (c.427-348 BC) wrote the most famous philosophical work ever, the Republic, whose virtually unknown alternate title, significantly, was On the Good.
It was Plato, in his dialogical works, with his master Socrates at the fore, who defined philosophy and exhibited the full range of its topics — including metaphysics, epistemology, logic, rhetoric, esthetics, morals, and politics. A century ago, the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, noting the unprecedented systematic and foundational nature of Plato's thought, referred to all philosophizing after Plato as mere footnotes to Plato. In his dialogues on politics, including the Republic, the Laws, the Statesman, and Sophist, Plato gave definitive statement to the basic topics and problems compassed by the philosophical science and art of politics.
Eight centuries later, in the Christian era, Augustine of Hippo (354-420 AD), arguably the greatest theologian ever, became the world’s greatest political philosopher when he identified LOVE as the core principle of all historical and theoretical forms of social, economic, and governmental organization. (See my “Christian Love and Church Over State.”)
In his City of God, Augustine praised the Platonists as that school of philosophy whose thinkers, in their conceptions, most closely approached a right and full understanding of God. In the thought of Plato and Augustine, the close and necessary phenomenal and conceptual connections between true religion and sound piety and good government and true philosophy are emergent and central. The good and the true for man in earthly politics, the good and the true for man in religion; these are rightly seen by the Platonists as intimately connected and on a continuum. This is why true Platonists, distinctive among the schools or sects of philosophy, both ancient and modern, speak simply and often and reverently of the Good, the ideal source of all particular goods, both Form and Agent, which is God.
Building on Plato and Augustine, three centuries ago, the Christian philosopher John-the-Baptist (Giambattista) Vico (1688-1744) identified the foundational anthropological principle of true political philosophy. In his great work, The New Science (1725), Vico explained why Plato’s Republic, for all of its truly wondrous depth and breadth of profound insight -- though a brilliant start -- was not, and could not have been, the last and definitive word on the foundation of political philosophy and science.
Vico was himself a foundational thinker who pioneered philosophical reflection on the nature of history, which, as a Christian, he viewed correctly as God’s Plan or Providence. And while certain post-Enlightenment Vico scholars have downplayed or even dismissed the Christian elements that pervade all of Vico's writings, including his autobiography, an honest and competent reading of Vico belies these corrupt secularist and anti-Christian scholars. Exposing this corruption, and re-affirming Vico's genuine and all-pervading Christian faith, is critically important because of Vico's friendly but profound and pivotal criticism of Plato, which we will hear below.
Significantly, in The New Science, in the section "Establishment of Principles", Vico measures time and dates historical events beginning from creation, using the expression “year of the world.” This contrasts, of course, with our practice of dating using B.C and A.D., referencing from the birth of Christ, a practice established by the influence of two Christian monks, Dionysius Exiguus (c.470-544) and Bede The Venerable (673-735).
So, according to Vico's system of dating from creation: the universal flood occurred in the year of the world (YOW) 1656 (2,351BC); God gave the written Law to Moses in YOW 2,491(1,516 BC) ; Rome was founded YOW 3,254 (753BC); the Tarquin tyrants were driven from Rome YOW 3,499 (508 BC); and Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian monarchy and subjected Persia to Macedonian rule YOW 3,663 (331BC). So the world, according to Vico, dated from its creation, is around 6032 years old. And, significantly, Vico's calculations on the age of the world are in approximate agreement with others, including the man most famous for such calculations, Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656) (6029 years old), as well as with the calculations of Johannes Kepler (6017) and Isaac Newton (6025).
Vico, the Christian philosopher of history, dated history from creation and not from the incarnation to reaffirm that history, all of it, is the one and only (Triune) God's Providence: and that Christ Himself was the Creator Who appeared later, by His own Plan, as the central Agent in His own creation. In this way, Vico preemptively refutes, as if having foreseen, later un-substantiable atheist-evolutionist old-earth claims.
Vico's concerns with the age of the world and with the manner in which we date and reference history are central elements of his magnum opus, New Science. Scholars who minimize or dismiss these elements in Vico undermine their own credibility and obstruct and impede deeper philosophical understanding for others. Identifying and fully registering the more expressly Christian elements in Vico's thought is necessary to fully appreciating the profundity and weight of his watershed criticism of Plato that we will now consider.
As a master philosophical student of history, Vico explains how the great Gentile pagan philosopher Plato, coming four centuries before the Incarnation, lacked, in his understanding, the benefit of Christian revelation. As Vico said in his autobiography: ". . . the ideal republic that Plato should have contemplated as a result of his metaphysics . . . he was shut off from . . . by [his] ignorance of the fall of the first man." Specifically, Plato, though famed as "prince of divine philosophers", lacked a definitive understanding, from first to final causes, of the Fall of Man, of the Fall’s fracturing of the Divine image in man, of man’s resultant sinful nature, and of man’s consequent radical depravity and helplessness and desperate need of spiritual regeneration by God’s salvific grace.
In the coming sections, the manifold import of this deficiency or lacuna in Plato's thought will become clearer.
-----------------------------
The great classical-republican tradition of political thought — with "republican" understood etymologically and literally, and not in the modern partisan sense, as from res publica, meaning, "public thing" or "public good" — began with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This tradition taught that politics, rightly understood, is the ruling or architectonic science and art that rules over all other sciences and arts, for the sake of the human good.
This mighty philosophical triumvir recognized politics as the ruling art and science because it is about the human good, about what is necessary for human survival and for human flourishing. Politics is the science and art of the human Good. It is a science because it can be reduced, up to a point, to laws of human nature. It is an art, because the statesman and the political philosopher, in their respective vocations, go beyond identifying and upholding laws of nature. In their respective ways, they virtuously and artfully love their fellow human beneficiaries, by the institution and preservation of good laws, across posterity and the generations.
In the Christian era, it was recognized that the beginning and center of the virtuous loving of their fellows and posterity by true philosophers and statesmen is their love of God the Truth, a love planted in them by His salvific and sanctifying grace.
Stating the Christian political ideal for created but fallen man, Augustine says: "No State is more perfectly established and preserved than on the foundation, and by the bond, of faith and of firm accord, when the highest and truest good, namely God, is loved by all and men love each other in Him without dissimulation because they love one another for His sake." But the State, when left to unregenerate humanity, made quarrelsome by the Fall, and when not informed by higher, Christian understanding and infused and animated by Christian love for God and neighbor, is instead mis-informed and mis-actuated by love of self and love of the world. And this State, run by sinful and unregenerate men, tends ever to be increased in size and power by injustice, oppression, violence, and rapine, even as it also tends, simultaneously, to anarchy, lawlessness, and dissolution.
While Augustine the theologian identified the core principle of all government, both human and Divine, as LOVE, it remained for another man, a mighty American statesman and philosopher, to identify the specific political-scientific forms that love could take. Philosophizing in the tradition of Plato and Augustine, and leveraging the hands-on knowledge and experience of a seasoned statesman, it was John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) of South Carolina – a Christian and Southerner -- who discovered and then described, in truly definitive fashion, both the ideal forms of human government and their opposites, as well as their fundamental operating principles.
-----------------------------
Unlike most political thinkers, Calhoun was also a statesman of broad and deep hands-on political experience. After training in law and serving as representative in the South Carolina General Assembly as a very young man, Calhoun rose to national prominence in the early 1800s, and served as U.S. congressman, Secretary of War, Vice-president under two presidents, U.S. senator of many years, and Secretary of State.
Calhoun's political-philosophical ideas were forged in a crucible of intense political struggles on vexing issues both foreign and domestic. A man of towering moral and intellectual stature, Calhoun was a constant and major force in American politics in the period from 1811 until his death in 1850. Following his death, Calhoun's writings, personal example, and spirit played a central role in forging a new nation — the Confederate States of America — and his influence, through the doctrines he articulated and espoused, continues to our day.
In the halls of government, and during debates, Calhoun, a mighty intellect, was sometimes chided and mocked by lesser-light fellows for his "metaphysical" turn of mind, a mental power and habit that reached down to fundamental causes and often issued in stunningly accurate predictions about the moral and social effects of proposed and enacted laws.
Calhoun the philosopher-statesman understood that all sound politics, whether as theory or as practice, is rooted in a sound prior understanding of human nature. A political theory, or better, a political philosophy — which implies more depth and breadth and systematicity of insight -- is only as good or as solid as the thinker's or philosopher’s grasp of human nature. Regarding political practice, all sound political recommendation or prescription can proceed only after the statesman’s careful study of the moral and physical circumstances, the internal and external circumstances as it were, of the particular people in question. The former was Calhoun’s approach as a philosopher, and the latter was his approach as a statesman. The common denominator was Calhoun’s rivetted but circumspect focus on human nature, in all its strengths and weaknesses.
-----------------------------
Historically, political thinkers tend to divide between advocates of top-down government and advocates of bottom-up or popular government. Plato's philosopher-king, of course, has been the famous exemplar of the former. Historically, because of its relative simplicity and ease of formation and of preservation as compared with other forms of government, kingship or chieftainship or monarchy has been by far the most common form of human government worldwide.
The ideal of a Christian king was developed in the famous relationship between the Anglo-Saxon scholar and deacon Alcuin (735-784) and the Emperor Charlemagne (742-814). Struck by Charlemagne's deep piety and obvious talent as a ruler, Alcuin joined the Frankish court and counseled the king to rule as rector et praedicator, a combination of ruler and preacher, who spreads Christianity. To encourage such rulership, Alcuin addressed the Carolingian monarch as "Lord David" and "King David." And so the later legend of Camelot, with the magician Merlin as wise tutor to young Arthur, was in somewise inspired by an Alcuin-counseled Charlemagne who would guide and rule his realm, ensure justice, renew the church, make laws, defend against oppression, care for strangers and pilgrims, and spread the Word of Christ everywhere.
Significantly, Alcuin viewed his king as the only person, by God's grace, who decides in a just way, and he advised his lord to resist all calls to share governing power with other agents or interests in the realm. According to Alcuin's "Davidic" ideal, the king exercised exclusive control over the powers of government. But this ideal conception was in tension with widespread political reality, where a king emerged from among a group of powerful warlords or nobles, as the most powerful lord among lords. Jealous of their positions and rights, the other lords allowed and supported the chief lord or king on conditions that preserved their own perceived interests.
The balance between king and nobles, when upset, will move in the direction of the eclipse from power of one or the other; and other, emergent interests in society, including the church and the merchant or middle-class, would, in time, join the fray in bids for their own share of power. And such, of course, is the historical warp and woof of what would later be called "class struggle." The Great Charter or Magna Carta (1215), of course, is the best-known historical instance of compromise, adjustment, and accommodation between conflicting interests -- where a king, surrounded by powerful barons, was obliged by power considerations to share in governing power and to limit his own prerogatives.
At the deepest causal level, the tension between monarchical and popular forms of government is, as Plato noted 2,400 years ago in the Republic, rooted in the seeming randomness of human genetic output. Common-grace powers like native or innate intelligence and other qualities befitting competent rulers do not, because of the deep complexities and mysteries of genetic causes, reliably and predictably issue from ostensibly (but perhaps not actually) able and mated parents. And when, from ignorance, "grooms . . . live with brides out of season", and "beget children when they should not", suitable genetic results are even more elusive. (Republic, Bk. VIII, section 546). And unsuitable offspring lead eventually and inevitably to political decline.
But then, even if matings were always the best possible and all breeding was in season, and the human issue the best possible, and even if all this could be mapped and tracked and exploited politically for the best in perpetuity, per the Platonic ideal, there would remain the added enormous complexity of the nature and amount or degree of salvific and sanctifying grace dispensed into individuals by the Lord. This grace was predetermined by Him before the beginning of the world and is dispensed by Him in time at His pleasure, all unbeknownst to us, and all, by God's perfect wisdom, infinitely beyond our powers to alter either in quality or in quantity, or to abolish. Indeed, how many times in history has a bad king succeeded a good king and vice versa, and all of the same bloodline. A quick review of the Roman emperors, from Marcus Aurelius to Commodus, or from Caligula to Claudius, confirms the point.
In his dialogue Phaedrus, Plato taught that every man is a combination of rationality, spiritedness, and appetite, or that all individuals are, in varying degrees, wisdom-loving, victory-loving, and money-loving. And, moreover, this universal, internal constitution of man is reflected externally as the universal nature of social classes. So social classes, in any given society, stem from natural classes according as individuals are ruled internally by one or other of these three characteristics — reason, spiritedness, and appetite. And so, in some men, appetite predominates or rules in their souls over reason and spiritedness. In others, reason rules over the other two elements; and in others, spiritedness. So tripartite persons issue in tripartite societies. And this momentous moral and political discovery by Plato led him to call the state, with its disparate natural classes, the human soul writ large.
To better communicate this insight, Plato symbolized these moral qualities of man as familiar metals and as a charioteer with his equine team. Hence the gold man is rational, the silver, spirited, and the bronze man, appetitive or lustful. And the ideal relation between these three elements, both in the individual soul and in the polity, was conveyed by the image of a racing charioteer. In this metaphorical image, REASON (as charioteer) successfully directs the two mighty and powerful black horses (SPIRITEDNESS and APPETITE) along a race course that is the life of a person or of a nation. Without reason as charioteer, the chariot is wrecked and all is lost by unruly steeds run amuck -- ending in anarchy and tyranny and perhaps foreign conquest for the state, and in vice and spiritual disorder and personal destruction for the individual.
But how may the wise rule of REASON-the-charioteer be perpetuated, assuming it is, by fortuitous circumstances, once established. The central problem here, as Plato discovered, is that gold, silver, and bronze children do not issue in predictable manner from selected parents. The children of gold parents can be gold or bronze or silver, or a mix; and bronze parents can issue in gold or silver or bronze children, or a mix. And this is why Thomas Jefferson would later speak of a natural aristocracy, with "aristocracy" meaning "rule of the best." By that he meant that certain individuals are more gifted to lead and to rule than others, and that it is in the best interest of all that deference and enabling assistance be given to those most fit intellectually and morally to rule, regardless of the social class of their origin.
So, by Plato's own wise admission, his ideal republic foundered on such unfathomable and divinely-ordained mysteries as eugenics. Indeed, it must have seemed to Plato as if God , by the sheer complexity of HIs creation, was thwarting and even mocking human efforts to master good government by the more direct and simple course of breeding and educating philosopher-kings.
We look around us and we see each other and ourselves all differently and unequally gifted by the Lord, and we reflect that the Lord intends these differences for the good of His elect and for His own glory. And then we consider that, as Calhoun says, society and government are ordained by the Lord, and issue, in every age and land, automatically from the internal constitution of man. And then we consider our own God-given role in improving the society and government God gave us by CONSTITUTION, or that device that counteracts the tendency of the sinful and finite human agents of governments and of interests to sacrifice the interests or good of others to their own interests.
Plato's conception of the tripartite nature of man and society was the most sophisticated and accurate conception of human nature and society prior to the Christian revelation of man as created in God's image, yet fallen. Plato, by the natural light of his own natural reason, did more than any other man, with that natural faculty, to explain the human condition. But without Christian revelation and Christian faith, Plato did not know, and could not have known, that all in human life, including man's existence itself, is reducible to God's grace: to common grace only for the reprobate; and to common grace combined with salvific grace and sanctifying grace for the elect.
-----------------------------
In political history, the ancient prejudice in favor of monarchical rule contrasts with the medieval prejudice favoring feudal aristocracy and the modern prejudice for more popular government. Evincing the last prejudice to an extreme degree, John Locke (1632-1704), in his Second Treatise on Government, Ch. 3 "Right of Revolution", went overboard when he stated that absolute monarchies, because they do not spring from an express consent of the governed, are eo ipso, or by that very fact, not merely bad or unjust forms of government, but rather, no forms of government at all.
The deep causes of Locke's error stem from the influence of a false or Cartesian rationalism, but that is a subject for another day. What matters here is that, if we are to be sound in our thinking about politics, we must, by always examining the premises or presuppositions of views, be wary of political prejudice and of fashionable notions. Locke's strong Whiggish prejudice against monarchy, for example — which true philosophy can easily refute --- continues to adversely skew political thought and policy in our day.
Balanced reflection or truth can often be found somewhere along the pendulum swing between prejudices. Thesis and antithesis can lead to synthesis. Having now briefly surveyed the Platonic philosopher-king, let us consider the bedrock claims of the view that is, at least ostensively, antipodal or opposite to Plato's --- namely, the popular view of government.
After antiquity, earlier champions of popular government were typically Christian. And being such, it was natural and inevitable that their thoughts on government would wed people and God.
The Latin phrase "vox populi vox Dei" translates as "the voice of the people is the voice of God." It suggests that the opinions and sentiments of a populace at large should be respected and valued; and it suggests, too, that those opinions and sentiments, properly registered through established organs of government, somehow possess a moral authority superior to that, for example, of the whimsy or corrupt and selfish partiality of hereditary kings and nobles. The phrase emphasizes the belief that the collective voice of a people should carry significant weight in decision-making processes affecting all.
In 1709, a Whig tract appeared, by an unknown author, titled "Vox Populi, Vox Dei." It was expanded the following year and appeared in reprintings as "The Judgment of whole Kingdoms and Nations: Concerning the Rights, Power, and Prerogative of Kings, and the Rights, Privileges, and Properties of the People." The most cited section of the tract reads:
"There being no natural or divine Law for any Form of Government, or that one Person
rather than another should have the sovereign Administration of Affairs, or have Power
over many thousand different Families, who are by Nature all equal, being of the same
Rank, promiscuously born to the same Advantages of Nature, and to the Use of the same
common Faculties; therefore Mankind is at Liberty to choose what Form of Government
they like best."
The phrase "vox populi Vox Dei" had been in use since at least the year 1327, when the Archbishop of Canterbury Walter Reynolds brought charges against King Edward II, in a sermon titled by that Latin phrase. And use of the phrase was favorable from Reynold's time on, even though Alcuin, centuries before, in a letter, advised Emperor Charlemagne to resist such dangerous democratic ideas on the grounds that "the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness."
Significantly, the Whig "popular" view actually agrees with aristocratic Platonism on at least one important point: gold, silver, and bronze persons, in every human society, because of the vagaries and mysteries of human breeding, tend to be "promiscuously born to the same Advantages of Nature", and to the same disadvantages of nature. So both Whiggism and Platonism allow for the existence of the different natural types of men. They differ, however, in how to best reckon with these types in actual political organization.
-----------------------------
The perennial political-philosophical debate between Whig democrats and Platonic aristocrats and monarchists centers around the political-epistemological question: How are the true interests of all members in a polity to be discovered and then promoted by wise and salutary laws? Put another way, which is better at discovering and instantiating the good of all members and interests of society, certain wise and trained individual human characters or certain wise and tailored structures of government?
Calhoun called this process of discovery and instantiation "registering the sense of the community", and he acknowledged the Providential roles both of wise men and of wise structures. So one may then ask, is there a single best possible determinate mix of characters and structures, or does this mix vary per polity and circumstances, according to some fixed but necessarily general and indeterminable best principle?
But if a best possible mix does exist, then presumably, by finding it, one will have found the best possible form of government short of direct and perfect Divine government in heaven in the After. But Rousseau (1712-1778), in his Social Contract, correctly argued that there IS no single best (concrete and particular) form of human government that can fit ALL societies, due to their great variety of customs and mores and sizes and races and religions, et cetera. And Calhoun agreed on this point with Rousseau, who was, by the way, a Platonist. And this Rousseauian insight points us back to the PRINCIPLE of concurrent majority, for which the Frenchman vainly, in his writings, strove, as well as to the more general PRINCIPLE that the best government is always that which fits the particular internal and external conditions of the community.
With these key insights in hand, let us turn to the critically important and long-running debate between Platonist aristocrats and Whig democrats on the inequality or equality of humans.
If a weakness of the Whig view is its too-egalitarian assumptions about human nature, one of its strength is its suggestion that there is a basic or approximate equality within the human race wherein it behooves the statesman to consult and to note the opinions of all about their own well-being and what will promote that well-being, This basic equality is highlighted by the fact that groups and individual members of the human race, however disparate and unequal in physical, moral, and intellectual capacities, are more similar one to another than they are to members of other species.
But this rough or basic equality among humans was not enough for Plato, who has his key interlocutors, Socrates and Glaucon, agree and then state flatly and definitely that the ideal republic is not for humanity at large, but rather for Greeks only (Book V, 470). Indeed, this sharp racialist distinction in Plato between Greeks and non-Greeks is seldom mentioned and studiously avoided in modern philosophy classes and seminars, which typically degenerate into childish obsession with the relative equality of women in the republic (Book V, 451d,466c). As Plato himself noted, a fear of triggering hyper-sensitive inferiors tends to derail the quest for truth and for good government (Book VIII, 563d). Alas! Plato, like the ancient Greeks in general, was far more perceptive, frank, and honest about sex and race differences than we dishonest and confused moderns.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), as slaveholder, French Enlightenment sympathizer, and coiner of the utterly false and dangerous but seductive expression "all men are created equal", typified our widespread modern confusion about race and race differences. After Jefferson, egalitarian confusion would broaden and become admixed with envy, rank dishonesty, self-delusion, and ridiculous unter-mensch pride that would corrupt and skew all public discourse about sex and race, thereby paving the road to public acceptance of dysgenic miscegenation and of the palpably ridiculous and dysfunctional homo-trans crowd. And this mental distemper, rooted in false philosophy and in rebellion against God and created nature, would eventually corrupt our understanding and use of ordinary language.
Language about basic human equality coined by political thinkers of white European origin (like Locke and Rousseau and Jefferson himself), and often intended by their authors for application only in white political contexts, where alone they are feasible, is now commonly misapplied to other races, under the heading of a false-philosophical chimera called "natural rights." And such misapplication is at the root of widespread modern political and social dysfunction, a dysfunction now so severe that it threatens not merely the well-being but also the very survival of the human race.
But if the basic strength of the Platonic view is its sober and honest and frank recognition of the substantial inequality between human individuals and human races, a weakness of it is imagining that a far less than All-Good and All-Knowing philosopher-king, who, as Calhoun would say, necessarily feels more intensely those things that affect him directly than those things that affect him indirectly through others, is as knowing and concerned about the interests of others as he is about his own interests.
What both the Platonists and Whigs agree on, though, is a need to understand human nature and to promote, by such understanding, human interests and the Good of created man, as deeply as humanly possible. In this way, political epistemology, earlier referenced, is rooted in philosophical anthropology, or in a close study of the nature of created but fallen man. Too egalitarian or too inegalitarian assumptions and policies can both lead to tyranny. Accuracy about human nature, including accuracy about the actualized moral and intellectual virtues of individuals and groups in society, is the statesman's solid starting point in forming and preserving good laws.
And if Plato's ideal republic is for Greeks only, that fact, in itself, precludes it from being a universally best form of human government. And then the further question arises, are governments that are genuinely constitutional capable of construction and preservation by all races and all peoples?
Civil rights "theorist" Lani Guinier, a mulatto woman, has assumed that American Negroes as a group could somehow form themselves into a Calhounian interest to defend themselves, by a veto power, and promote their own interests vis-a-vis other interests in society.
The main problem with Lanier's dream is that Calhounian interests assume sufficient moral and intellectual qualification in both their members and their leaders, and that interest status is not granted from above but rather is achieved from below by intelligent and skillful self-assertion by members of the group.
The predominant role played by non-whites, for example, in the abolitionist movement, in the forcible and illegal and murderous "Unionist" and "emancipationist" war against the South, and in the so-called Civil Rights movement, funded and organized largely by Jews, all belie the blithe assumption by Guinier and other egalitarians that blacks are capable of the political maturity demanded by a genuinely constitutional structure.
So the question remains: Are the best or loftiest forms of human government susceptible of instantiation by all races and peoples, or are these, instead, reserved for the higher races of man, or for those In whom God's image, with rational will at its core, is most pronounced and predominant? The answers to these questions come more sharply into focus as we look more closely at fallen human nature, and leave open the possibility of substantial differences in nature between the races of man, as a glorious feature of His unfolding Providence. (See my "Christian Revelation and the Origin of Races.")
-----------------------------
Theologian J.C. Ryle has aptly noted that most errors in theological thinking stem from a prior failure to understand and acknowledge the damage wrought in human nature by the Fall. The same is true of most political thinking and thinkers, ancient and modern, if not medieval.
The acrostic TULIP begins with "T" for total depravity, but Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul has rightly distinguished between a man who is as bad as he can possibly be, on the one hand, and a man who is radically damaged (from the Latin "radix" or root), at the root or core of his nature. If all people were as bad as they could possibly be, no human society would be possible, nor perpetuation of the race Instead, the Fall that occurred in Eden when Adam partook of the forbidden fruit was a radical damaging of human nature, a fracturing of the image of God in man, that struck at the heart or will of man, and spread therefrom throughout his entire physical and spiritual being.
The mental powers or faculties of man include sensation, perception, conception, reason, sentiment or feeling, memory, imagination, and will. Philosophers and theologians have debated over which, if any, of these faculties exercise functional primacy and authority over the others. Aquinas and Duns Scotus have favored reason and will respectively, according to their own conceptions or definitions of these faculties. Hume has noted a tendency in man for reason being a servant or slave of the passions.
The Bible, God's written Word, teaches that the governing faculty of man is his will, and that the Fall damaged man in his fundamental nature by directing his will towards himself (and locking it in that mode) rather than towards God. It teaches that fallen man, who is dead in trespasses and not able to not sin, is unable to redirect his own will back toward God and away from himself. This redirection can only come from God. And it is the will's direction that pervades and orients all of man's other faculties, determining his thoughts and feelings and actions at their core. And this is why Kant famously said, the only thing in human life that can be good without condition is a truly good will, i.e., a regenerated will and willing that can come into man only from God. And this is why Bonaventure said that only the thinker or philosopher who is Christian is one truly inclined and able to ask the right questions and to avoid wrong conclusions.
So Plato's charioteer would, in actual fact and in practice, amount to a REASON fractured and corrupted to its core by the Fall. Such fractured reason could only vainly aspire, and vainly be expected, to successfully steer fractured SPIRITEDNESS and fractured APPETITE, likewise corrupted to their cores. And so now we see how critically important it is for the political philosopher and the statesman to have a sound conception of human nature, a sound conception of philosophical anthropology as a starting point and foundation for theorizing and for prescribing, respectively, on matters of law and government.
Because of the Fall and of resultant sin nature, all governments carry within themselves the tendency to abuse of power and oppression, and this is, specifically, as Calhoun explains, because governments cannot administer themselves, but rather require human agents, who are fallen and sinful, to exercise and administer the powers of government. In every person there is a sinful willingness and proclivity to sacrifice the interests of others to our own interests, according to our sinful and therefore highly problematic reckoning of interests.
And this leads to the deeper question as to the ultimate complementarity of human interests. Are we created such that the true interests of each individual ultimately agree or dovetail with the true interests of every other individual? And is it merely our sinful and finite understanding of our interests that leads to conflict?
The challenge is to find a way to effectually counteract this tendency to abuse and oppression that is endemic to all human (as compared with perfect Divine) government. Can it be done by the Platonic education of guardians led by a philosopher-king, or can it be done by a wise structure like Calhoun's system of concurrent majority, which comes, historically and theoretically, in many forms?
So the statesman must reckon, in his calculations for wise laws, with sin nature both in political leaders and in the people at large. Disciplined political study and imagination must grapple successfully with a primal and central anthropological and political fact: the tendency of all men to sacrifice the interests of others to their own perceived interests, a tendency that, if not counter-acted, leads to universal conflict between individual men and between nations.
To understand more fully this tendency to conflict, and to learn how this tendency may be counter-acted effectually, and the conflict either resolved or prevented in our highly technological age, we turn again to John C. Calhoun, the philosopher with the best logos available on the subject.
-----------------------------
Everyone knows what a simple or numerical majority is. It is a subset of a set consisting of more than half of the set's elements. Hence, 16 is a numerical majority of 30. But very few people have ever heard of and understand that other kind of majority, the concurrent majority, that is the foundational principle of all constitutional governments in history. Indeed, ignorance of this vital principle extends to nearly all modern politicians and degreed "political scientists."
The English world "concurrent" comes from the Latin "cum + currere", which means "to run together." This other kind of majority — the concurrent majority — is an institutional organization or framework or "organism", as Calhoun called it, by which the sense or opinion of all the various interests of a society about their own good is registered and required to initiate and maintain governmental action.
Because a simple numerical majority can register the opinion or sense of only slightly over half of a society, it is inherently tyrannical because neglectful of the large (almost half) minority subset of that society. Rule by numerical majority leaves the minor institutionally defenseless and ever at the mercy of the major that possesses and wields the powers of government. Legislation by the major invariably tends to disregard and plunder and exploit the minor in its interests. By contrast, in a concurrent or truly constitutional system of government, the minor possesses a veto over the enactments of the major.
Every society, no matter how homogeneous the interests and occupations and pursuits of its constituent individuals or people, consists of at least two distinct interests as regards the fiscal action of its government: the tax-payers and the tax-consumers. Taxation and disbursement, by their combined action, and even in a system most just, necessarily result in net gain for tax-consumers and net loss for taxpayers. In less just systems, taxation and disbursement have been corrupted into systems by which consumers tend to systematically plunder the payers.
Government by concurrent majority -- whether democratic, aristocratical, or monarchical, or some combination of these -- is government that does not plunder any portion of the community it is charged to protect. Government that promotes interests rather than plundering them is government that enhances the moral and physical power of the community it was established to protect and perfect. Concurrent government unifies society as regards all its disparate individuals and subgroups and interests.
Government by concurrent majority means every interest in society possesses the power of self-protection in the form of a veto; and this veto is backed ultimately by a willingness and ability on the part of that interest to wield physical force in self-defense. The English word "veto", from Latin, means "I forbid." Through its veto power, an interest can nullify or strike down proposed legislation it deems prejudicial or harmful to its well-being.
For Calhoun, an interest is any institutionally-recognized portion of society that can be beneficially or harmfully affected by the action or inaction of government. The English word "interest" comes from the Latin "inter + esse", meaning, "to be among." It is the responsibility of the members of each societal interest to "be among" and to understand their own good or interest. They should endeavor to understand what laws, which are general rules enforced by government, promote or hinder their well-being. Providentially, a nascent or incipient interest is awakened into self-consciousness, leading to self-organization and effectual political self-assertion, by the sting of governmental abuse or neglect that originates in and is driven by other, previously awakened, governmentally-empowered, and institutionally-recognized interests.
The veto possessed by an interest, to command acknowledgement and respect from other interests and from the government, is ultimately backed by the physical force that interest is willing and able to project self-protectively in behalf of itself.
So, the right of veto is not an abstract "natural" right that comes automatically or without effort. It is not apportioned out arbitrarily and gratuitously as a boon by government, which, rightly understood, is merely an agent of the people. The concurrent right of veto secures rights and protections for individuals, but these rights are not in social isolation and without established institutional teeth — so their guarantor is not, and cannot be, impotent words on paper.
In the concurrent system, an interest -- and the individuals that constitute it -- obtain a formal or constitutional veto by skillful self-assertion, or by winning the right by intelligent and courageous and self-sacrificial exertion. And then -- to make liberty last -- vigilance, in turn, must maintain what skillful assertion has won.
This is why liberty — true liberty — is a Providential reward for moral and intellectual virtue; and why governmental tyranny and slavery in society, so common among men historically, is the just providential punishment for the ignorance, sloth, and depravity of whole peoples or portions. Providentially, it is the sting of tyranny — the painful experience of being abused and oppressed — that stirs the individual and social feelings of the abused and oppressed to skillful self-assertion and then vigilance.
But tyranny and slavery should not be conflated, since the former, and not the latter, is inherently abusive, and since the protection and direction entailed by humane (and especially Christian forms of) domestic slavery is right and just and good for all who cannot handle more extensive liberty responsibly, as well as for general society. (See my "Christian Society and the Failure of Capitalism and Communism.")
Finally, as Calhoun shows, real constitutional government, via its concurrent-majority heart and structure, is an exercise in self-knowledge. Individuals within interests are challenged to consider what laws redound to their good or ill. This system compels individuals to reflect on their own nature and good with respect to the physical and moral effects of laws. Also, truly constitutional or concurrent-majority governments promote unity and virtue and augment society thereby with moral and physical power.
Concurrent systems encourage the elevation of leaders of virtuous character gifted in identifying and articulating the interests of those they represent. In a concurrent system, individuals of all interests, being confident and secure in their own rights and powers of self-protection, are willing to work closely and cordially with other interests to promote the common good of all. In such happy systems, a friendly competition emerges, even, to promote the good of the other and of all.
So, a written constitution, by itself, cannot make or keep a government constitutional. Paper and ink cannot stay the hand and power of those who would sacrifice the interests of others to their own interests. Nor can a simple division of the powers of government into executive and legislative and judicial departments render government constitutional. Government is made and kept constitutional when portions of the society or community assert themselves and obtain the power of self-protection. Government is made constitutional when it is internally organized or structured to prevent its abusing and oppressing and plundering any portion(s) of the community.
As Calhoun observed, perfecting human government, by constructing and maintaining government that is truly constitutional, is arguably man's greatest challenge in this earthly life.
-----------------------------
In Plato's Republic we find the famous declaration that "unless philosophers rule as kings, or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize . . . There is no rest from ills for the cities [or polities or nations] . . . nor, I think, for human kind . . . " And, as Plato scholar Allan Bloom rightly notes, "This suggests a perfect harmony between [true] philosophy and the city, [between] science and society." And, says Plato, philosophy, rightly done, is "the one thing most needful to the city, and the philosopher is its greatest benefactor." And so, if philosophers are the natural rulers, they are the rivals of the actual rulers.
It is the true philosopher's surpassing and superior goodness and knowledge of statecraft that together make him most fit to rule. But the deepest human knowledge and the most genuine human goodness can come only from God as revealed in the Scriptures. And even if, for example, a Christian philosopher-king were possible, would a single man, as a paragon of moral and intellectual virtue, be the center of the highest form of human government offered by Providence?
Plato was right in arguing that the philosopher-king knows the res publica, the public thing, the public interest, better than any given people or populace, even the most virtuous and intelligent. But Calhoun was right in saying that the concurrent majority knows, by registering that interest, better than the philosopher-king. And, a people's constitution, as conditions of rule they have themselves agreed upon, holds more authority and, as a publicly-approved organ of government, is perceived by the generality as being less subject to bias and corruption than the unilateral determinations of an individual ruler.
The philosopher-king is essentially unconcerned with the sense of the community about its own good. At a fundamental level, he is indifferent to what the people consider their interests. Indeed, he believes them to be ignorant of their own interests, and bereft of any sound means of determining that interest, excepting himself. Since he knows better, he tells them their interest. But then, of course, questions arise as to the finitude and fallibility of the philosopher-king, as well as to any deficiencies even in his superior education and training.
It is possible that Plato's personal aristocratic pedigree and bent barred him from more openness to understanding organic institutional arrangements like the concurrent majority. His focus, rather, was more strictly on the personal, i.e., on the education of concrete individuals like the guardians and philosopher-king. Indeed, this more personal focus is what one would expect from a thinker ruminating in a small city-state and for Greeks only. In this way, geopolitics of scale influenced Plato.
But the aim of the true philosopher is to be timeless and universal in his theorizing, and timely and rooted in the universal in his recommendations for the statesman. And this raises the question whether the philosopher-king could rule effectually in a larger polity. Plato's personal focus contrasts with Calhoun's institutional focus, the philosopher-king with the concurrent majority.
Calhoun's thinking was formed in a large continental republic. He theorized and governed in the intellectual wake of institutionally-minded men like Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke. From Mandeville he learned how certain institutions can transform private vices into public virtues; from Smith he learned how the "invisible hand" of the market economy registers the subjective value-judgments of consumers and brings desired goods and services to market by a pricing system too complex for central planners to fathom or replicate; and from Burke he learned how British and French constitutional elements, and constitutional elements generally, evolve into being over time and are formed by struggles and by timely compromises between societal interests.
So if the philosopher-king model is more suited to smaller polities, and therefore is restricted in application, the concurrent majority system appears to be viable regardless of polity size. And this latter truth is evinced in the historical examples of the concurrent majority Calhoun gives in his various works. HIs examples include the United States, both as confederation and federation, the British Constitution, the Swiss Confederacy, the State of South Carolina, the Iroquois Confederacy, the Twelve Tribes of Israel before the death of Solomon, the Roman Republic, the Polish Diet, and so on. After his decease, Calhoun inspired the construction of the purest and most refined constitution ever, the Confederate States of the America.
So the world of Plato and the world of Calhoun, separated by over 20 centuries, differed widely, but both men were in quest of best government. Calhoun the democratic American embodied the statesman and participatory philosopher, while Plato the aristocrat embodied the standing-over philosopher-king. Their shared goal was to improve and to perfect, as far as possible, human government.
So God loves us enough to not do everything for us, by not making perfect government, either in ourselves or externally, automatic for us, like breathing. And while society and government emanate automatically out of human nature, constitution and constitutional government do not. But God loves us enough to focus our minds by holding us in a cauldron of bad government, where our sinful natures go after each other in a war of each against every other, as Hobbes noted in his Leviathan. God gives us government by our sinful selves because he wants us to learn about ourselves and to learn to love others.
The concept of the philosopher-king is an attempt to create a kind of surrogate God. To best approximate this, the task of ruling, of perfecting government, is placed of the hands of the most able humans. But the concept of a philosopher-king is perhaps based on a misunderstanding of the project of perfecting government, a misunderstanding that leads to an over-simple and inadequate solution. Evidence for this view is that the philosopher-king concept is inherently monarchical, and therefore leaves out the two other regimen types, aristocracy and democracy. Nor does it allow for admixtures of these. To escape this criticism, the determined Platonist would perhaps have to spiritualize the philosopher-king, or make the concept mere metaphor instead of literal recommendation.
The concept of a philosopher-king may be flawed too because he is very limited in his ability to ascertain by experience the good of all the people in all the interests of society. And every society, no matter how homogeneous as regards its interests, has, as we said previously, at least two distinct and often antagonistic interests, the taxpayers and the tax-consumers. So, the philosopher-king's knowledge of the people is largely generic, or about basic people-types, gold-silver-bronze. And Platonic laws, or directives of the philosopher-king, founder because of this over- generality or indeterminacy, since they lack the detailed knowledge needed to inform specific laws and policies as these affect real social interests, or as they help or harm. And there is no established quality feed-back loop from the people, by which the philosopher-king may make corrections and adjustments to imperfect laws. So members of a Calhounian interest have an internal, participatory knowledge of that interest that the philosopher-king does not and cannot have. The stake of these members is more directly and intensely felt by them.
Still, philosophy is the loftiness human calling, the most advanced and complicated human vocation and skill. The philosopher's job is to know the good; and the job of the (philosophical) statesman is to realize or to instantiate the good of his particular people. The philosopher has knowledge of the good, and the king has power. Mix them well, and you have the philosopher-king. But wouldn't a truly good and wise philosopher-king work to create and then defer to a concurrent-majority system of true constitution? In the developmental and Providential history of political thought, perhaps the philosopher-king is an imperfect prefiguring of the Calhounian statesman who presides over true constitution.
Significantly, for Calhoun, an interest can be either an organically evolved, self-identified group that shares or aspires to share in governing power, or a conception and identification by a societal group of what constitutes their good. Part of a man becoming eudaimon, or in a state the Greeks called self-actualized or self-realized or full-flourishing, would perhaps include his active participation in a Calhounian interest. Ironically, the top-down rule of the philosopher-king would seem to preclude such participation. And the Platonic counter-argument would be that gold or silver or bronze persons acting outside the spheres assigned by nature could never eo ipso achieve eudaimonia.
So again, the matter comes down to who has the sounder understanding of man and his earthly condition. And at the center of this debate is whether or not created man is a being with a Divinely-implanted calling. In the concurrent or constitutional system theorized by Calhoun, the philosopher is not a king, but is instead a statesman-caretaker of the concurrent-majority organism or constitution. His role includes that of Ezekielian watchman over the polity, one who sounds the alarm on dangers far and near, external and internal (Ezekiel 33).
The Calhounian philosopher-statesman sees to revising the governmental structure as needed to fit changing societal conditions, both internal and external. In this role, he becomes, not merely a ruler of persons directly but also a keeper and guardian of the constitution. Significantly, the word "constitution" , from the Latin, means "a standing together" (cum + stare). In Calhoun world, that would be a harmonious standing together of society's interests.
And it was precisely a failure to revise the government of the United States to fit a country growing rapidly in territory, wealth, and population that led to a horrendous war that destroyed the American Republic and the real or ordered liberty of its people. Repeated and urgent and brilliantly-conceived recommendations for reform by Calhoun himself went unheeded by his fellow senators and others.
-----------------------------
And now to the heart of our subject.
Calhoun's philosophical speech about constitutional government culminates in a thoroughly logical and fitting and profound manner. It concludes in a deeply religious manner, and one therefore that lost secularists will find baffling and discomfiting. In his Disquisition on Government, Calhoun says:
"The government of the concurrent majority, where the organism is perfect, excludes the possibility of oppression, by giving to each interest, or portion, or order (of society) -- where there are established classes — the means of protecting itself, by its negative, against all measures calculated to advance the peculiar interests of others at its expense. Its effect, then, is, to cause the different interests, portions, or orders — as the case may be, to desist from attempting to adopt any measure calculated to promote the interest of one, or more, by sacrificing that of others; and thus to force them to unite in such measures only that would promote the prosperity of all, as the only means to prevent the suspension of the action of the government — and, thereby, to avoid anarchy, the greatest of all evils. It is by means of such authorized and effectual resistance, that oppression is prevented, and the necessity of resorting to force superseded, in governments of the concurrent majority — and, hence, compromise, instead of force, becomes their conservative principle."
"It would, perhaps, be more strictly correct to trace the conservative principle of constitutional governments to the necessity which compels the different interests, or portions, or orders, to compromise — as the only way to promote their respective prosperity, and to avoid anarchy, rather than to the compromise itself. No necessity can be more urgent and imperious, than that of avoiding anarchy. It is the same as that which makes government indispensable to preserve society; and is not less imperative than that which compels obedience to superior force. Traced to this source, the voice of the people — uttered under the necessity of avoiding the greatest of calamities, through the organs of government so constructed as to suppress the expression of all partial and selfish interests, and to give a full and faithful utterance to the sense of the whole community, in reference to its common welfare — may, without impiety, be called the voice of God. To call any other so, would be impious." (bold emphasis added)
So by his close historical study of governments, Calhoun saw how governments of the concurrent majority are distinctive in being governments of the whole of society, and not merely of a part. Concurrent structures are generators of virtue and unity and of moral and political power for a people. Numerical-majority structures, on the other hand, though touted by fools and by corrupt and scheming factions as "popular" and "democratic", are structures of a mere part or portion of society, and not of the whole; and these structures tend, by their operations, to debase and divide and to weaken and destroy a people. Only numerical-majority elements operating in their proper places within concurrent systems are salutary and therefore free of debasing and destructive effects.
Just as true philosophy is philosophy of the whole and false philosophy is philosophy of a part merely, human government that issues in the voice of God is government of the whole society and not merely government of a mere part of society. And in speaking of wholes and parts, and of majorities and minorities, we speak of quantities and mathematically. And it was through the careful and close study of the behavior of individuals and portions and wholes in human society that Calhoun found and connected and described Providential episodes or advents of governments superior to the common run, governments through which God's voice spoke for the good of whole political communities or peoples.
In his work Of Learned Ignorance, the great philosopher Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) explained how mathematics is a very great help in the understanding of certain Divine truths. In the spirit of Pythagoras, Plato, and Boethius, Nicholas taught that "since there is no other approach [for finite man] to a knowledge of things Divine [and Infinite] than that of symbols, we cannot do better than use mathematical signs on account of their indestructible certitude."
So a mere part of society is analogous to finite man, and the whole of society is analogous to Infinite God. And since, as a form of government, only the concurrent constitution can register the sense of the whole community, and govern, accordingly, for the good of all, only concurrent government can issue in the voice of that God Who desires the good of all, both in this earthly life and through eternity. Therefore, concurrent-majority government, and not Plato's philosopher-king, is the best possible human government, the best government attainable by imperfect men. And with its voice of God, it prefigures the perfect government of God Himself, over heaven and hell, in the After.
The importance of the concept of the voice of God in Calhoun's thought cannot be understood and appreciated apart from an understanding of Calhoun's religious faith and convictions.
-----------------------------
One of the better biographies of Calhoun was Margaret L. Coit's Pulitzer Prize winning John C. Calhoun: American Portrait (1951). Sharing her research on Calhoun's religious views, a frustrated Coit, after noting Calhoun's intense interest in all things political and religious, remarked, "Even his friends had no idea where he stood."
And so, Calhoun did not oblige inquiring historians and biographers with a plain and simple statement of faith couched, for example, in a letter to family or associates. But to conclude from this dearth that Calhoun's religious views cannot be known is a non sequitur.
Calhoun, as philosopher and statesman, was characteristically systematic and circumspect in both his manner of thinking and of expression. Being such, he was not a man inclined to ad hoc or piecemeal or superadded pronouncement of his views on particular issues, especially on more complex political and religious issues. As a prominent public figure in an America rife with divisions that would ere long explode into war, Calhoun thoroughly understood how such deeply personal views, by their complex and often controversial nature, are subject to mis-construal, to unwanted advertisement that would attract or repel supporters, and to willful distortion by political detractors.
To descry Calhoun's views on religion, to the degree possible, one must consult, with care and discernment, the systemic whole of his philosophical thought. Doing so, one finds that Calhoun's political-philosophical views on God and progress, as expressed in his Disquisition and elsewhere, are consistent with the post-millennialist eschatological view commonly associated with Reformed Christianity.
The later Augustine of HIppo (354-430) and John Calvin (1509-1567) have been the most influential expositors of the post-millennialist view. The Savoy Declaration of 1658 contains one of the earliest credal statements of postmillennial eschatology. In its section on church government, it states:
As the Lord in his care and love towards his Church, hath in his infinite wise providence exercised it with great variety in all ages, for the good of them that love him, and his own glory; so according to his promise, we expect that in the latter days, antichrist being destroyed, the Jews called, and the adversaries of the kingdom of his dear Son broken, the churches of Christ being enlarged, and edified through a free and plentiful communication of light and grace, shall enjoy in this world a more quiet, peaceable and glorious condition than they have enjoyed.[4]
This belief that good will gradually triumph over evil in this earthly life has led proponents of postmillennialism to label themselves "optimillennialists", in contrast to "pessimillennialists", including "premillennialists", and then to "amillennialists."
"No man knows the day or the hour [of HIs Coming]" (Matthew 24: 36) does not mean we don't know that other things must, according to Scripture, happen first. As of 2025 AD, the end of history is not near, but our individual personal ends on this earth are not far off, even for the newborn. And so, there is no little self-centeredness and conceit and narcissism tied up in the absurd but common notion that somehow the world must culminate with us and in us and can't go on without us.
But God, in His Providence, factored in hysteria and delusions about the end times. He predestined or preordered human debate about it, as He preordered debate about many other subjects, including election and the Trinity and so on. In His infinite and unfathomable wisdom, He left some things obscure to us to stimulate inquiry and debate, and to exercise faith. Having created us, He understands the limited receptivity of our finite minds.
In Calhoun, who passed in 1850, there was never a hint that the world was near its end.
A plain and honest reading of the Disquisition, composed near the end of Calhoun's life, reveals his ultimate historical optimism. And this optimism in Calhoun is all the more striking when one considers how, in a few short years after his death, Calhoun would be viewed by many as the philosophical and spiritual founding father of the Southern Confederacy, a nation short of duration that would, militarily but not spiritually, prove a Lost Cause.
But Calhoun foresaw a "period of transition", signaled by the revolutions of 1848 across Europe, when there would be "a severe trial to existing political institutions of every form", a period of "shocks and modifications", when there would be "many and great, but temporary evils." And this period, discouraging and seemingly endless to many of those in it, "will endure until the governing and the governed shall better understand the ends for which government is ordained, and the form best adapted to accomplish them, under all the circumstances in which communities may be respectively placed."
Calhoun's views on ultimate historical or Providential progress in technology and government have been explored by this author elsewhere (See "John C. Calhoun and the Providential Progress of Technology and Government").
Material and technological improvement without accompanying moral improvement, for example, would lead to universal profligacy, techno-tyranny, and the final dissolution of the human race, and therefore cannot be a part of the plan of an All-Wise God. And a necessary condition for moral and material improvement is the improvement of government, by His Providentially-unfolding grace, as planned by Him before His creation of the world.
So God's grace waxes in power as the "millennium", begun at His Incarnation, progresses. In this era of His bride the Church, His great commission will advance until His Second Coming, and then the Judgment.
An avowed opti-millennialist, Calhoun equates historical pessimism with impiety multiple times in the Disquisition, including in his discussions of the concurrent majority, the benefits of a free press, and the progress of technology.
Near the end of the Disquisition, where Calhoun is discussing the advent of a free press in relation to progress in science and technology, we find unshakeable historical optimism rooted in Reformed or Calvinist predeterminism. Thus:
"When the causes now in operation have produced their full effect, and inventions and discoveries shall have been exhausted — if that may ever be — they will give a force to public opinion, and cause changes, political and social, difficult to be anticipated. What will be their final bearing, time only can decide with any certainty. That they will, however, greatly improve the condition of man ultimately — it would be impious to doubt. It would be to suppose, that the all-wise and beneficent Being — the Creator of all — had so constituted man, as that the employment of the highest intellectual faculties, with which He has been pleased to endow him, in order that he might develop the laws that control the great agents of the material world, and make them subservient to his use — would prove to him the cause of permanent evil — and not of permanent good. But this cannot be, unless the ultimate effect of their action, politically, shall be, to give ascendency to that form of government best calculated to fulfill the ends for which government is ordained. For, so completely does the well-being of our race depend on good government, that it is hardly possible any change, the ultimate effect of which would be otherwise, could prove to be a permanent good."
So Calvinist, post-millennialist optimism pervades and crowns Calhoun's Disquisition. But plodding and non-philosophical historians have been unable to descry Calhoun's religious convictions, in large part because they have, by lack of learning and philosophical depth and moral character, failed to grasp his political-philosophical thought. And such failures are of a piece with other failures in research and scholarship, including that of failing to characterize Calhoun fairly and accurately as an American statesman, failure to recognize him as a foundational political thinker, and failure to acknowledge and to appreciate his philosophical contributions in the context of the Western philosophical tradition.
And such failures and folly culminate in two great and interconnected failures, and help explain: why Calhoun is not yet "officially" ranked among the great philosophers; and why humanity is still so far from overcoming the great ills that beset human government. But these failures will yet be in somewise rectified, and perhaps in part by this present encomium.
So Calhoun expressed his religious beliefs through the medium of his political thought, into which they are interwoven. Wary of oversimplifying labels, Calhoun did not gratify shallow and simple-minded historians by checking a box. So the nature and proof of his religious convictions are to be found in the pudding that is his political philosophy — there to be discovered and appreciated by the philosophical connoisseur.
Finally, the historical optimism of Calhoun the political philosopher, in his quest for best government, finds a parallel in Leibniz the metaphysician, who plumbed the depths of monadic physical and spiritual substance that is the existential foundation of all that is, has been, will be, and could be in this best of all possible created worlds. Both men evinced, in their profound and irrefutable reasonings, unshakeable faith in the Lord and in His ultimately progressive Providence.
------------------------------
Winston McCuen, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Furman University, holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Emory University and is a John C. Calhoun scholar. A native of Greenville County, South Carolina, he is the son of Dr. William Garrison McCuen and Anne Ballenger King McCuen.
