Nathan Wahl
Phil Oliver
MALA
08 03 2021
Enlightenment and the constitution of the United States: Changing
meaning over time
Enlightenment
According to the Oxford English Dictionary: The
action or process of freeing human understanding from the accepted and
customary beliefs sanctioned by traditional, esp. religious, authority, chiefly
by rational and scientific inquiry into all aspects of human life, which became
a characteristic goal of philosophical writing in the late 17th and 18th
centuries.
I can tend to go off on tangents at a whim and the discipline
to focus on a single line of thought can sometimes elude me, however, I will try
to tie the following thoughts together as we travel back in time and return to
today. Among the great
achievements to which Aristotle can lay claim is the first systematic treatment
of the principles of correct reasoning, the first logic, and then there was
Copernicus. Copernicus gave us the audacity to argue with the church by
simply stating that we lived within a heliocentric universe. This of course is
not true as we live in a universe filled with suns other than our own, but this
was true of our world at the time as we had no way of seeing the universe as
any larger than our planet. Copernicus opened the door to the age of reason. logic
is the systematic study of the form of arguments whereas reason is the
application of logic to understand and judge something. Reason without logic
left humanity wandering.
John Locke stated the end of law is not to abolish or
restraint, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created
being capable of laws, where there is low law, there is no freedom. For liberty
is to be free from restraint and violence from others which cannot be, where
there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to
do what he lists: (for who could be free when every other man's humor might
domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order, as he lists, his
persons, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of
those laws under which he is; and they are not to be subject to the arbitrary
will of another, but freely follow his own (Locke.) John Locke is a mentor in
enlightenment many of our founding fathers and enlightened thinkers throughout
the history of the United States.
George mason represented Fairfax County in Virginia‘s
third revolutionary convention (1775) and in the fifth convention (1776), where
he drafted Virginia’s first state constitution and its Declaration of Rights,
which is widely considered his greatest accomplishment. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/mason-george-1725-1792/
I would call George Mason a mentor to
Thomas Jefferson and Madison as well or at least he was a collaborator in
understanding the ideals of enlightenment during the fledgling years at the United
States. Mason and Madison or partners in what would become the Bill of Rights
for the United States. Thomas Jefferson fires the soul of a new nation with the
ideals of enlightenment when he wrote the Declaration of Independence and
penned the words quote we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable
rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Shannon
LaNeir has complex feelings about being descended from Thomas Jefferson and
Sally Hemings. “He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he didn't
practice it. He owned people. And now I'm here because of it.” It is safer to have a whole people
respectably enlightened, than a few in a high state of science and the many in
ignorance (Jefferson). With these words, we can surmise that Thomas Jefferson
was a man who not only studied the idea of an enlightened people he worked to
create an ongoing system to give all children the chance at an education. James Madison brought the disenchanted
representatives together from the states suffering under the failure of the
Articles of Confederation. Madison was
nicknamed the father of the constitution for his tireless work to bring the
disparate factions together. He was a meticulous note-taker.
There are many things to see in
the constitution in the light of enlightenment, but the 1st
Amendment states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This tells us that there is a
separation between church and state. While the public at large is Christian as
a rule and Christian ethics are considered the moral standard at the time of
the Civil War. A pastor from Pennsylvania asked the treasurer of the United
States to add the motto IN GOD WE TRUST to be placed on United States coins
largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil
War. This was done without consideration for those that had a different understanding
of the existence of God as anything other than a creation of man. Today you can
look at any denomination of US currency and see this motto present.
Does using “In God We Trust” as
our motto interfere with the first amendment?
The
15th Amendment states:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude. This is a continuous fight that is
happening today as well with the many attacks on voting today. Stacey Abrams stated: “Voting is a
constitutional right in the United States, a right that has been reiterated
three separate times via constitutional amendment.” The Constitution allows for
correction and augmentation to our laws because our national population is
continuously changing and the moral standards are changing as well.
Why should we change our ruling document?
Works Cited
"enlightenment,
n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2021, www.oed.com/view/Entry/62448.
Accessed 31 July 2021.
Jefferson,
Thomas. Letter to Joseph Carrington Cabell, 13 January 1823: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-3266
Jocke, John. Second
Treatise on Government, sec. 57; discussed in Palmer, Realizing Freedom.
Shields,
Christopher, "Aristotle", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/aristotle/>.
“Reason without logic left humanity wandering”—but our problem today is worse, we live at a time when the forces of UN-reason have huge influence on public affairs, elections, and discourse generally. We’ve wandered too far from the light.
ReplyDelete“…on July 30, 1956, the President approved a Joint Resolution of the 84th Congress, declaring IN GOD WE TRUST the national motto of the United States. IN GOD WE TRUST was first used on paper money in 1957…” —treasury.gov
Delete“Why should we change our ruling document?”
DeleteAny truly-living entity MUST be responsive to changing circumstances in its environment, to address the unforeseen exigencies of a dynamically altered world. The authors of our constitution knew that, far better than many of its most ardent defenders today.