Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Civics In A Year
Enlightenment DNA: The Philosophical Origins of America's Declaration
The influences on the Declaration of Independence extend far beyond John Locke to encompass a complex tapestry of philosophical traditions, religious thought, and legal principles. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams crafted a document that uniquely blends Enlightenment rationality with Protestant theology, Scottish moral philosophy, and English common law.
• Both Jefferson and Adams received extensive liberal arts educations that exposed them to diverse philosophical traditions
• The Declaration represents distinctly American "both/and" thinking rather than "either/or" philosophical approaches
• References to "laws of nature and nature's God" reflect natural law traditions from classical through medieval Christian philosophy
• Montesquieu may be more influential than Locke when considering the Declaration as a complete document
• The Scottish Enlightenment contributed concepts like "self-evident" truths through thinkers like Francis Hutchison
• Protestant covenant theology influenced the Declaration's blending of liberty with religious principles
• English common law shaped the structure of the Declaration's indictments against King George III
• The document's complexity requires careful reading and discussion to fully appreciate its philosophical foundations
Join us for future episodes as we continue exploring the Declaration of Independence and its enduring significance.
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My name is Ryan, from Michigan, and I teach AP, us Government and Politics. My students want to know what Enlightenment thinkers influenced the ideas in the Declaration. Welcome back everyone. We again are joined by Dr Carice, and in previous episodes we talked about the Declaration. You've heard terms or you've heard people mentioned, like maybe Montesquieu or John Locke, and so today we're really going to look at who are the enlightenment thinkers that influence the ideas of the declaration, because Thomas Jefferson did not just sit down one day and put all of this on a piece of paper. He definitely was somebody who was very thoughtful, he studied a lot. So, dr Kreis, what can you tell us about the Enlightenment thinkers that influence the ideas in the Declaration?
Speaker 2:Thank you, liz. As I've mentioned in other episodes, have the text handy, because I'm going to make reference to the text of the Declaration to point out some phrases and words which suggest the influence of a particular philosopher from the Enlightenment period. I'm going to go so, in a way, go beyond the Enlightenment to talk about some other influences on the Declaration. So I want to make a general principle first and invoke Abraham Lincoln. Why does this question matter? Who cares what philosophers, which philosophers or ways of thinking, or even theologians may have influenced the Declaration of Independence? And again to invoke Lincoln, lincoln says there's a philosophy embedded in the Declaration of Independence. This is not a merely revolutionary or merely political document. You don't need to talk about the laws of nature and nature's God, or the unalienable rights of all human beings and a creator who has endowed all creatures, human creatures, with these unalienable rights. You don't need to do that, lincoln says, in order to declare independence and keep fighting a war. You're already fighting, right, but the Americans decide to do it that way because that's what America means and stands for these larger philosophical ideas. So then that raises these really big questions. Well, the Declaration has big ideas in it, as we've been talking about and all of the meanings of the ideas aren't obviously evident when you first read, or read for the 50th time, the Declaration and it raises questions about just what does that word mean or where did it? That raises the next question when did it come from? Maybe Right?
Speaker 2:And we know that the five members of the committee in the second Continental Congress, including the three most important who had a hand in the Declaration, are very well educated and the two most important I'll say Thomas Jefferson and John Adams are extremely well educated in what's called a liberal arts education related to the word for liberty, liberal arts, right, free people. How they should be educated John Adams at Harvard, thomas Jefferson at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. So we know they've read a range of philosophers from the Enlightenment period, this modern period, in the sort of starting in the late 1600s and going through the 1700s and maybe a bit into the 18th century. We know they read classical Greek and Roman philosophers and also medieval philosophy and thought. We also knew they knew the Bible. They're Protestants and they know some Christian theology. And they're both educated in the law. John Adams really is a practicing lawyer, jefferson knowing the law, not ever really practicing it as a profession.
Speaker 2:I want to suggest all of those are influencing the Declaration of Independence. The most important are the Enlightenment philosophers, and I'll mention a few of them, but I want to say more than these enlightenment thinkers. Another way of putting it is the enlightenment thinkers that are the most complex are the ones we should be most interested in, the enlightenment thinkers who mix ideas from seemingly different traditions. So one way of thinking about the declaration and american political thought generally is to think about the common phrase. We use either or or, the other common phrase, both and Right. And I want to say that the Declaration of Independence and the rest of American political thought is complex in its thinking. The Americans are both and kinds of thinkers single-minded, thinking it's got to be this way and everything else is completely wrong, or nothing else fits except this and we've got either or thinking in our political life and beyond politics. But American thought tends to be this both end kind of thinking category.
Speaker 2:So to me let's start at the beginning with laws of nature and nature's God, to assert that as the foundational principle in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence to me suggests awareness of natural law thinking which extends from Greek and Roman thought through medieval Christian philosophy, say Thomas Aquinas, to the Enlightenment, to Locke, english philosopher writing in the 17th century, and Montesquieu, french philosopher writing in the 18th century. They all know of this natural law tradition of thinking. Laws of nature and nature of God is a more rational way of phrasing divinity as a source of laws. It's less overtly sort of Christian or based on a faith or a revelation that you believe by faith Laws of nature and nature's God. But if you put it together with the other references to a divinity in the Declaration of Independence a creator but also the supreme judge of the world in the final paragraph and relying on the protection of divine providence, that suggests a broader view of the natural law tradition that's friendlier to Christianity. So I think that suggests to us we want to be looking to Enlightenment philosophers who are a little more openly friendly to Christianity and incorporated into their political philosophy, and that's why I'm going to point to the Frenchman Montesquieu. Now, this is an unusual way of thinking.
Speaker 2:When you ask the question what Enlightenment thinkers influenced the Declaration of Independence, the first name that comes to everybody's mind, so to speak, is John Locke, because in a way the opening paragraph, but definitely the second paragraph. Right, the individual natural rights equally held in all human beings life and liberty. The first two, this is. And a right of revolution, let's not forget. Right, a right to overthrow government if it's violating rights. That's John Locke's philosophy in the Second Treatise of Government. Right, I want to step back and say the four corners of the Declaration of Independence can't be explained. What's in the document as a whole can't be explained only by Locke's philosophy. Am I saying John Locke is not important for the Declaration? No, I am not saying John Locke is not important for the Declaration. I'm just saying it's Locke plus it's both, and that's the American way of thinking, you see, in the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 2:So if we have to take the laws of nature and nature's God and a creator and the other two references as important foundations for the view of justice in the Declaration, we're looking to Montesquieu more than to Locke. Montesquieu incorporates Christianity into his account of what a just and decent form of government is, whether it's a constitutional monarchy, a complex monarchy or it's a republic. Whether it's a constitutional monarchy, a complex monarchy or it's a republic, democratic republic, it's there in the fabric and the tissue of the main work that Maltescu writes. That's the most important influential work on American thinking from the 1760s onward. It's called the Spirit of Laws and Christianity is an important part of that book, the Spirit of Laws. Another influence is the Scottish Enlightenment Lord Kames, francis Hutchison, adam Smith, those are the three I'm going to mention philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. So in an earlier episode when we talked about self-evident, what that means. Right, we hold these truths to be self-evident. Probably Francis Hutchison is maybe the leading thinker, philosopher that the Americans might have had in mind when invoking that phrase in relation to principles of justice and government. But again, that principle goes way back to classical philosophy and medieval philosophy, christian ideas, into the mix with rational enlightenment ideas, so to speak, of philosophy about what justice is.
Speaker 2:Then I also want to mention the Protestant Christian tradition. If you think back to the Mayflower Compact Right 1620, when the declaration is being drafted in July of 1770, june and July of 1776. This is after 150 years of American practice of self-government. And when Alexis de Tocqueville, french philosopher, very influenced by Montesquieu, he comes in around 1830 to visit America and he's here on the ground for nine months to visit America, and he's here on the ground for nine months. He says the Americans have as their first founding the Puritans and the Mayfair Compact and New England government, which blends the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion, and I think you can see that in the Declaration of Independence, this blending of rational philosophical argument about liberty, with Christianity supporting this idea of liberty. So the Mayfair Compact is arguing about how we will govern ourselves by reason as well as Christians, under a particular religious belief and tradition.
Speaker 2:So this is called the covenant tradition in Protestant theology and so you could see that influencing the Declaration of Independence. It's also part of how you could get pursuit of happiness as one of the three not exhaustively three, but the three unalienable rights listed. And also sacred honor. At the end of the Declaration of Independence we mutually pledged to each other not just our lives, not just our fortunes, but our sacred capital, h, honor. And then again, I don't want to forget Locke right, individual, equal, natural rights, red Revolution. But I think this document goes beyond social contract to something like compact or covenant. Thinking is the American flavor of this, so Locke is in the mix.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, I want to mention the common law and the rule of law. We don't think of that as enlightenment thought, but it's influential in British and Anglo-American thought all the way through the period of enlightenment and still today. Right, as I mentioned in other episodes, the bulk of the Declaration is the list of charges right, let facts be submitted to a candid world. At the end of the second paragraph. Well, the bulk of the document that follows is a bill of indictment. The King and the Parliament have violated this principle of the common law, this principle of the common law, this principle of the common law. So then, I'll finish with this that Montesquieu, as a philosopher, the scholars have shown he's the single most cited European philosopher from 1760 to 1800, the whole period of the American founding, more than Locke, more than Blackstone, this important English common law jurist, but Blackstone himself is very deeply influenced by Montesquieu.
Speaker 2:Montesquieu is this both-and kind of thinker. He's this complex kind of thinker. He fits together abstract principles of reason and philosophy with Christianity, with history, with the English common law he's a big fan of the English common law and the common law itself fits together practices of law going back hundreds of years with invocations of Christianity, with ideas of natural law. The common law itself is a complex kind of thinking with ideas of natural law. The common law itself is a complex kind of thinking. So I think Montesquieu and the common law are hugely important for the Declaration of Independence as a whole. They fit in Enlightenment philosophers, including Montesquieu, himself an Enlightenment philosopher. Locke an Enlightenment philosopher and that's a controversial argument I'm making that Locke is not the single most important or influential philosopher for understanding the Declaration of Independence as a whole, but I think it's worth thinking about that. We need to look to Montesquieu and the common law and Protestant covenant theology, scottish Enlightenment this range of influences to understand the Declaration of Independence and why it matters.
Speaker 1:You've given us a lot to think about, especially considering, you know, the two main authors of the Declaration, how they themselves were influenced, you know, by their time in law, their college education, even their travels, because they both, you know, traveled to France and England Just France, I can't remember.
Speaker 2:You know, liz, I'm not sure if before 1776, either Adams or Jefferson had traveled outside America. I think they may not have. I think their travels may have been in diplomatic service to the United States of America, once it's launched as the United States of America.
Speaker 2:Well, so John Locke is important, but he's not the only important one when we talk about the Declaration of Independence, yes, yeah, and, as we've mentioned in other episodes, it's just another sign of how this document is worth reading carefully and rereading and then joining other people to talk about it. Whether it's in a formal class that you're taking for some credit, or it's in a discussion group or it's in some other way, it helps to have other people to talk with. If you're reading and rereading this and then thinking through gee, what does that phrase mean? But how does that idea fit together with this other idea? They seem not to fit together. Just individual, equal natural rights. How does that fit together with sacred honor? And how does that fit together with looking to God as a protector in divine providence? If I'm focused on my individual natural rights, how do I fit together that with these larger ideas? Very important to talk through and think through?
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you so much, Dr Grace. I know we're gonna be talking to you in further episodes, so we really appreciate your expertise.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Liz.
