RICHARD VETTERLI and GARY
BRYNER. In Search of the Republic. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield,
1987. xii; 269 pp. $32.95 hardback. $14.50 paperback.
Reviewed by William B.
Allen, professor of government at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California,
and member, United States Commission on Civil Rights.*
In
Search of the Republic provides evidence of a remarkable change in American scholarship on
the founding of the United States. This study by Richard Vetterli and Gary
Bryner is all the more valuable in proportion as the change they record has
heretofore passed unperceived. Where once scholarship debated the question
whether the United States were founded purely on material considerations and a
view of human nature as evil or, alternatively, on moral considerations and
possibly some particular providence, today the debate is radically altered.
That is why this book is able to announce its purposes as to “consider the
evolution of the idea of public virtue,” “to discuss its central role in the
political thought of the founding,” and “to describe its relationship with the
other political and cultural elements of the American republic” (2). The
question now is whether virtue (or morality) constituted a foundation of the
United States Constitution, or whether virtue is the goal of that enabling
instrument. Superseding all former quarrels, this new debate installs virtue on
each side of the equation. Thus the old battle is terminated, though it remains
obscure how that came to pass.
Vetterli
and Bryner seem to me correctly to have grasped the metamorphosis taking
place—as is reflected in the title of Lance Banning’s essay “Second Thoughts on
Virtue.... “[1]
Nevertheless, no less recent a production than Allan Bloom’s The Closing of
the American Mind maintains with considerable persuasiveness the thesis
that the founding was radically flawed, Hobbesian, and altogether hostile to
the claims of virtue and nobility. This study, on the other hand, situates the
founding so squarely in two millennia of concern for virtue that it creates the
impression that The Closing of the American Mind sprang purely from the
brow of Allan Bloom without any foundation in the American past.
Every reader of Bloom’s
book, however, discovers the familiar face of our own time in his account of
the relativity of values (and indeed there are no moral values that are not relative!) and an evident decline of moral
consensus within the society. Thus, the portrait of moral continuity that
Vetterli and Bryner draw serves to set off in stark relief the portrait of
moral decline depicted by Bloom. Sometime after 1832 (the period in which
Tocqueville visited the United States and up to which Vetterli and Bryner
survey) and up to our own time, a dramatic break has occurred—a break of
epoch-making significance.
This picture is somewhat
ironic. For the accomplishment of a view of the founding in which virtue is no
longer problematic resulted partly from a decision to see the Revolution as no
decisive break with the past. To the degree, then, that the American Revolution
expressed moral continuity with the past rather than a radical departure, it becomes
more urgent to discover where America did in fact depart in later years.
I believe, however, that
this excellent book errs in downplaying the revolutionary significance of the
founding in precisely the opposite manner to that in which Bloom erred in
depreciating the moral accomplishment of the Revolution. Of the two errors,
Vetterli’s and Bryner’s is far the more acceptable. For they seem to wish to
resist the imputation of man standing alone, cut loose from his moral moorings
in the Judeo-Christian heritage. Their insightful discussion of private
morality as the foundation of the republic—echoing Washington’s first
inaugural address—therefore integrates private morality with a moral tradition
instead of leaving it to be colonized by value relativism. I submit, however,
that the idea of a historical break—indeed, even new revelation—need no more
leave man standing alone than did the flight from Egypt leave Israel standing
alone. Particular providence generally distinguishes itself by thwarting human
plans.
The eight chapters of In Search of the Republic chronicle the “conversation
about virtue” from the perspective of what American colonialists and founders
were likely to have heard and said. In addition to generous reliance on primary
testimony, the study demonstrates an admirable command of secondary literature.
The account is compelling, as far as it goes, and prepares the way for the next
step. That is, from a virtue conceived as subordination to community (chapter
1) to the ultimate identification of virtue with “self-interest rightly
understood,” the authors carefully maintain their focus on the relationship of
virtue to the idea of republicanism.
Vetterli and Bryner are far
from the first to have imagined ancient virtue and republicanism to be founded
on generous expectations of human nature, while modern virtue and republicanism
purportedly profit from the ultimate recognition of man’s fallen nature. The
facts are actually the reverse, however. The ancients believed few indeed were
capable of true virtue (and thus salvation, later). The great modern
breakthrough was the affirmation that the many were capable of virtue—that is,
self-government. This is nowhere so evident as in number 51 of The Federalist, where Publius argues the
need to supply the “defect of better motives” in representatives—but not in the people—with “auxiliary
precautions.” Such a conception would have been incomprehensible in the ancient
world. And today folk often misread this language as applying to the people, because
that still seems intuitive (compare page 187 with 194, where this
passage is discussed from both of these perspectives).
The contrivances of American
constitutionalism need to be comprehended as aids to facilitate the people’s
rule rather than merely as checks upon their vices. In Search of the Republic helps us to see this truth with clarity.
In the last analysis, we discover the need to take virtue seriously at the
founding only when we have finally conceded the people’s copious authority for
social and political institutions.
For that reason the
discussion of virtue is the natural pair to the discussion of equality. Virtue
is important at the founding because equality is the central principle of the founding.
There is no foundation for republicanism apart from the consent of the
governed, no consent apart from equality, and no equality apart from
transcending moral law. The equation is straightforward and simple. In Search of the Republic succeeds in
the best way a book can: it not only leads the reader to the center of the
conversation about its subject, virtue; it also readies the reader for a new
search.
* Published in BYU Studies (Brigham Young University) v. 30, no. 1 (1990):89-91.
[1]
Lance Banning, “Second Thoughts on Virtue and the Course of Revolutionary
Thinking,” in Terence Ball and J. G. A. Pocock, Conceptual Change and the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 1988), 194-212.