As the Declaration of Independence approaches 250 years, its most famous line continues to provoke reflection: “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.” Is this statement a matter of philosophy or of faith? It turns out to be both. We find in this sentence the fundamental convictions of the Founders of the United States, convictions reflecting a reasonable faith and a faithful reason. Understanding why both faith and reason are found in the Declaration teaches us something important about the founding vision of the country and the current possibilities for renewal.
When seeking to understand the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson deserves special attention because he wrote the first draft, most of which remained in the final version. Jefferson communicated seemingly contradictory statements on various occasions which compounds the difficulty of interpreting the Declaration. “The boldness of his mind,” wrote Dumas Malone, “was sheathed in a scabbard of politeness.” Malone continues, “It would have been surprising if such a man did not occasionally cross the thin line between courtesy and deception.”
Yet we may hope that he would not deceive a friend in a private letter. In one such letter, Thomas Jefferson suggested that in drafting the Declaration he was drawing upon and synthesizing a wide variety of sources both purely secular and those influenced by the sacred. Jefferson wrote:
This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent. . . . Neither aiming at originality of principles or sentiments, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind. . . . All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays or the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.
These authors are, of course, at odds with one another over a great many matters. To take one example, Aristotle is a man of pure philosophy. Although he did write about an Unmoved Mover, Aristotle knew nothing of the God of Abraham. By contrast, Locke is not just a philosopher, but also a committed Christian who commented on the Book of Genesis and wrote a book called The Reasonableness of Christianity. Yet, despite their differences, Jefferson sees that both Aristotle and Locke make a contribution to the making of the American mind.
The intellectual milieu of 1776 was informed by a choir of philosophical and religious voices in rich harmony.
But reading the Declaration as an expression solely of the thoughts of Aristotle and Locke will not fully capture what Jefferson was seeking to express. Jefferson concludes his list of influences with an “etc.” In mentioning “and others,” he opens the door to considering the Declaration from a variety of other perspectives. All the sources Jefferson drew upon, as well as subsequent political philosophers, have led to rival interpretations of what Jefferson was seeking to say. Various readers have found a Machiavellian Jefferson, a Marxist Jefferson, and a Ku Klux Klan Jefferson in the Declaration. No doubt, other Jeffersons will emerge.
This bewildering variety of possible understandings may arise in part because Jefferson had the mind of a politician, a rhetorician, a diplomat, a leader, but not of a consistent theoretician. As Alasdair MacIntyre points out, “Jefferson was, so far as philosophy was concerned, an inconsistent eclectic—the greatest of inconsistent eclectics certainly, but no less inconsistent and no less eclectic for that. So it is unsurprising that Lockean, Hutchesonian, Reidian and other views are all there together in Jefferson’s notebooks and in his mind.” We will search in vain for a systematic theory in Jefferson. He was a learned man, but primarily, he was a practical man. His goal was to free his people rather than to construct a theory.
Although the original draft of the Declaration was composed by Jefferson alone, the drafting committee included Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, and John Adams, who made their mark on the Declaration as well as putting their honor, property, and lives at risk for treason. Adams also saw the principles of the American Revolution as the principles of both pagan philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero as well as Christian thinkers such as Locke, Reid, and Hooker. The intellectual milieu of 1776 was informed by a choir of philosophical and religious voices in rich harmony.
In his original draft, Jefferson had written, “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” Someone on the committee, Franklin perhaps, edited the text to read, “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” This change made the text more philosophical. The Declaration’s claims are not merely religious but a matter of reason.
At the same time, the Declaration still speaks of the Creator endowing us with inalienable rights. In this way, the Declaration avoids both a sectarian religious approach and a secular denial of the Divine. The signers of the Declaration, Jefferson included, reflected a broad consensus about a reasonable faith and a faithful reason despite their differences in the details of how this relationship of faith and reason is to be exactly understood. For those who today think that faith and reason must always stand in opposition, the Founders point to a middle path.
This article is part of a series in which Dr. Kaczor will provide more insights leading up to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.