The Declaration of Independence (Part One)

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

What a great way to start! It isn't altogether surprising that the 1955 Great Books Foundation kicked off with the Declaration of Independence. It was an American series, primarily intended for an American audience. Actually reading one of your nation's founding documents was exactly the sort of thing that the program's philosophy supported: real, first hand acquaintance with a great text that would have touched millions of lives. "If something shapes your country," the box set seems to be saying, "You probably ought to read it. Why not now?"

As a piece of rhetoric, it is marvelous. The rhythm runs naturally with the breath, each segment expanding as the text moves from idea to idea. You can imagine someone saying this. It is hard not to read aloud.

Notice, too, the rhetoric. What they are arguing for is "necessary" and what they are assuming is a station "to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them". These things are big claims, but the declaration speaks as if they were normal. And the double grounding - not just God, but nature, too. Why include both? And that turn into "decent respect". No, they are really not demanding anything unreasonable at all - just talking to you, and talking nicely.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world."

As an Englishman, coming to this fifty-six years after it was published in this form - and two hundred and thirty-five years after it was written - it is hard not to see the harsh reality behind the uplifting words. There is a clear and marked contradiction between the claim that "all men are created equal" and the existence of American slavery. English abolitionist Thomas Day had a good point when he wrote:

If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his afrighted slaves. 

Perhaps "ridiculous" is too kind: slavery was (is) not just silly but profoundly evil. Jefferson might have wanted to include a passage critical of Britain's role in the slave trade, but he also held that black people were inherently inferior to whites, argued that freeing slaves was impossible for reasons of self-preservation and had several children by his mixed race slave Sally Hemings - a relationship which even if affectionate would have been marred by a grotesque power imbalance, and, under the circumstances, is hard not to see as essentially rape.

It is interesting to note, though, that the declaration became a kind of rallying point for abolitionists:

Abolitionist leaders Benjamin Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison adopted the "twin rocks" of "the Bible and the Declaration of Independence" as the basis for their philosophies... For radical abolitionists like Garrison, the most important part of the Declaration was its assertion of the right of revolution: Garrison called for the destruction of the government under the Constitution, and the creation of a new state dedicated to the principles of the Declaration. 

(This quote comes from the Wikipedia article on the Declaration). Texts sometimes do that, of course - their meaning changes over time, as they are applied in different contexts. "All men are created equal" might mean different things to you, depending on how you define "men".

Given the recent extraordinary events in Michigan and Wisconsin, I find myself wondering if modern American patriots will take heart from the Declaration of Independence, in the face of a government that often appears to be for many of them nowadays all too callous and destructive of their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So, what dreadful things has the King of Britain has been up to? Well, that will have to wait for part two.

What I am doing here...

"Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop”

A few months ago, I was browsing Metafilter when a front page post caught my eye. It was about Shimer College, a small liberal arts college off-shoot from the University of Chicago with a syllabus based on reading the "Great Books". Shimer had recently repelled an attack by some radical right wing administrators, who wanted to take it over and turn it into a completely politicized institution.

Seeing fanatics trumped is always a pleasure; but this post had a more personal appeal. It reminded me of something from my past.

In my late teens, I was browsing through my parents book-shelves when I came across a peculiar series of colour coded books. They were arranged in boxes, by year, with a simple logo on the side in the shape of a stylised flame and the words "Great Books School of Chicago".

As I looked at the titles I had to admit I was impressed. Plato, Thucydides, Cervantes, Rabelais, Freud... These were all works that I had heard of, growing up in an academic household, but certainly not ones that I had read, despite thinking of myself as fairly literary at the time (mainly because I tended to do well in English - in retrospect, what I read for fun was actually pretty embarrassingly bad "extruded fantasy product").

Also, I had recently read the Count of Monte Christo and I remembered Edmond Dantes learning from the Abbe Faria in jail. Faria, the "mad priest", claimed that everything a man would need to know could be found contained in 150 books - and by carefully memorising those books, he, Faria, could now perform the function of a walking library and tutor Dantes well enough to turn him into the mysterious and glamorous Count.

That seemed pretty exciting. It also seemed appealingly efficient. Find the right 150 books and you could be a master of anything and everything. Nobody could read all the books that were ever written, but maybe you could imbibe a distillate, a sort of cider of knowledge. And, if you were ever imprisoned, you could teach your fellow prisoners to become stylishly vengeful and erudite aristocrats - a handy side-benefit.

All of this meant that when I chanced on these "Great Books", I was deeply pleased. It seemed that somebody else had done the hard work for me. Here was everything anyone thought was worth reading, in one place! Problem solved!

I asked my mum where the books came from. To my surprise, she told me that they were actually her mother's. My grandmother, who died before I was born, had been a librarian in Canada. She had organized book clubs where people read these books. Each boxed set was supposed to be a year's worth of discussion material. Everyone would get a box at the beginning of the year and read their way through it step by step. When she came over from Canada to England, my mum had brought the Great Books collection with her in her trunk.

I tried to make a start on reading the books, but didn't get very far. Partly I found them a bit too challenging at that stage - I just wasn't as smart as I thought! Then, too, there were the pressures of reading for university. I had just recently begun my undergraduate degree, and the workload was pretty intense. Some of the "Great Books" I wound up reading later, anyway, in Political Thought or English literature courses. I also learned enough to know that these colourful boxed sets didn't represent some ultimate distillate of knowledge - they were the culturally particular choices of a group of mid-twentieth century people and rather short on anything that wasn't by a dead white European male.

Gradually, I forgot about them. I grew up and lost the idea of becoming some kind of superhero polymath. Then, a few weeks ago, thanks to the Shimer post, I remembered their existence and, in a mood of mild curiosity rather than teenage megalomania, went back to them and checked them out.

I was surprised to find that they comprised lots and lots of things that I genuinely wanted to read - not to be able to appear witty or wise, although that would be nice; but because, as an adult, as someone now a father, as someone who was becoming ever more aware of being a part of society - I actually wanted to know what they had to say. Even if I disagreed with them, even if I thought they were stupid and wrong, and even if I thought, in some cases, that they were downright evil - nevertheless, I wanted to engage with them and through them, perhaps, with a grandmother I never knew.

So, I decided to read them. And, there being no Great Books groups near me at present, I also decided to blog about reading them. That way, if anybody wants to join the discussion, they can.

I hope it goes well.

Where the name comes from...

"Nearly all our associations are determined by chance, or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most need-them. All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; or put a question to a man of science, and be answered good humoredly. We may intrude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive; or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of a queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet; and spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of little more than these; while, meantime, there is a society, continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation; — talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long, — kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it! — in those plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our book-case shelves, — we make no account of that company, — perhaps never listen to a word they would say..."

John Ruskin, Of Kings' Treasuries (1864-5)