Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Truth
-
- Adler on the
Constitution:
- Truth in
vs about the Document
I N C E L E B R A T I O N -- J U L Y 4th
As individual celebrants of this occasion, the personal obligation of every
citizen of the United States is to understand as well as possible the three documents that
are our American testament--words that should be piously revered even though they are not
in a strict sense this country's holy scriptures. This understanding occurs as a private
accomplishment, not a public event. It is something done in the quiet of one's own mind,
with the solemnity of sober reflection. -- Mortimer Adler
A M E R I C A ' S T E S T A M E N T
by Mortimer Adler
Of the three great documents in the history of the United States -- the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address -- there is a
closer affinity between the Declaration and the Gettysburg Address than there is between
those two documents and the Constitution.
I wish not only to call attention to this fact, but in the light of it to say why
I think Abraham Lincoln is unique among the presidents of the United States. In taking the
oath of office, presidents, Lincoln among them, swear to uphold the Constitution of the
United States.
- All the others do that willingly and without reservation, but
not Lincoln. In my judgment, Lincoln is the only president who did that with some unspoken
reservations, for he would have much preferred to pledge himself to uphold the principles
of American government stated in the magnificent second paragraph of the Declaration of
Independence. (He is also the only true genius, like Shakespeare and Mozart, among our
presidents.)
Why do I make this claim for Lincoln's uniqueness?
It partly rests upon the words of the Gettysburg Address: "this nation
conceived in liberty"; and "dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal."
It partly rests on the extraordinary statement in the Gettysburg Address that this
nation came into being four score and seven years ago-in 1776-when it is so obvious that
the colonies which rebelled in 1776 and sought to dissolve the bonds that tied them to
Great Britain finally became the United States after the Constitution was drafted in 1787,
after it was ratified in 1788, and only when George Washington took the oath of office as
its first president in I789.
Lincoln knew all these historical facts. Why then did he date the birth of this
nation--its sovereign statehood--in 1776? That birth date was not something taken for
granted by Lincoln, nor perfunctory for him.
- In his years of argument against the extension of slavery to
new territories, Lincoln repeatedly appealed to the Declaration of Independence. His
opponents resorted to the Constitution, with its covert references to the institution of
slavery, as decisive for issues of policy regarding the extension of slavery.
In effect, they took the adoption of the Constitution as the juridical birth date
of the nation. Even that is incorrect, for it was not merely with the adoption of the
Constitution that this nation came into being, but rather with its beginning to function
in 1789 when Washington occupied the presidency and Congress assembled. That the
Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address
be regarded as the American Testament arose from the following considerations.
- To an astonishing and unprecedented degree, the United States
was born out of sustained argument and grave political deliberation which committed this
nation to a coherent political doctrine. That doctrine is set forth with an inspired
brevity in a few momentous state papers--the first occurring at the moment of this
country's resolution for independence, the second at the moment of the new government's
formation, and the third at the moment of the major crisis in our national history.
Direct and concentrated inquiry into the truth of that doctrine should be a steady
part of the American experience, and the basic propositions in it should be the object of
sustained, disciplined public discussion, not only during the bicentennial celebration,
but at all times.
To regard the three documents chosen for this purpose as constituting a testament
attributes to them a character that calls for a special mode of interpretation--the kind
of interpretation that the faithful give to scriptures they look upon as sacred.
The assumption underlying the way in which Muslims read the Koran, Jews the Old
Testament, and Christians the New Testament is that the text they are reading contains
truths which they should make the most strenuous effort to discover by patient and careful
exegesis.
Such a reading is called "exegetical" because it tries "to lead out
of" the text the truth assumed to be in it. To approach the three documents that
constitute the American Testament in this way does not require us to regard them as sacred
scriptures or as revealed truth, nor indeed as the basis for any sort of "civil
religion."
There is a long tradition of commentary on secular writings in which the approach
to the text being interpreted is analogous to the approach of the faithful to sacred
texts. Medieval commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle--by Arabic Jewish, and
Christian teachers--can be cited as examples of this method of reading a text for the
purpose of discovering the truth it is supposed to contain. Modern examples are to be
found in the extensive commentaries on the writings of Immanuel Kant or Karl Marx.
- With some variation in style, what is common to all these
examples of exegetical reading, whether of secular texts or of texts regarded as sacred,
is a method of interpretation that concentrates on the meaning of words, phrases, and
sentences, and on the relation between one element in the discourse and another, while
paying little or no attention to contextual considerations or to psychological and
sociological factors that may or may not have been responsible for the genesis of the
texts being interpreted.
An exegetical reading is concerned with philological aspects of the text, with the
biography of its author, or with the historical circumstances under which it appeared only
to the extent that these considerations contribute to an understanding of the text, not as
affecting judgments about the truth of what is being said.
- In sharp contrast to the exegetical method of reading a text
is another method of commentary, which was called "the higher criticism" when,
in the nineteenth century, it was first applied to the Old and the New Testaments. This
method of interpretation is widely prevalent today, especially in the reading of political
documents such as the ones chosen to be components of the American Testament.
- It makes little or no effort to get at the truth that the
text being commented on may contain; it may almost be said to have no concern with the
truth or falsity of what is being said in the document under consideration. Instead, the
truth with which it is concerned is the truth about the document in question.
To this end, it concentrates on the historical circumstances, the sociological
influences, and the psychological motivations that are thought to have determined its
content.
- These two methods of interpreting and commenting on the
written word are thus seen to differ radically with respect to the truth with which they
are concerned--the one with the truth in the document, the other with the truth
about the document.
This book offers its readers one approach to the three documents that are the
subject of its three commentaries--the approach that has been called an exegetical reading
of them. This by no means precludes the other approach, but it does require the reader to
accept, even if only provisionally, the assumption underlying the approach made here;
namely, that
- the three documents under consideration contain basic truths
to be ferreted out by the most careful explication of the meaning implicit in the words of
the text.
On this assumption, the effort of the commentator-and of the reader as well-should
be to arrive at as clear and explicit a statement of these truths as can be found.
EPILOGUE
- There is an absence in our society today of statesmen or
persons in public life of a caliber comparable to those who assembled in Philadelphia in
1787.
Why, it may be asked, can we not find in a population so many times larger than
the population of the thirteen original states a relatively small number who would be as
qualified for the task as their predecessors?
I cannot give a satisfactory answer to this question except to say that the best
minds in our much larger population do not go into politics as they did in the eighteenth
century.
Perhaps the much larger number of citizens in our present population are not
nearly as well educated. Their minds are not as well cultivated and their characters not
as well formed.
Even if a second constitutional convention were to assemble statesmen of a
character comparable to those who met in Philadelphia in 1787, and even if that second
convention could be conducted under circumstances favorable to a good result,
- the resulting constitution would not find a receptive and
sympathetic audience among our present citizenry, to whom it would have to be submitted
for adoption.
They would not have the kind of schooling that enabled them to understand its
provisions and to appraise their worth. The vast majority would not even be able to read
intelligently and critically the kind of arguments in favor of adopting the new
constitution that were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, and
published in current periodicals in the years 1787 and 1788.
- A radical reform of basic schooling in the United States
would have to precede any attempt by whatever means to improve our system of government
through improving its Constitution.
That is also an indispensable prerequisite for making the degree of democracy we
have so far achieved prosper, work better, or, perhaps, even survive.
We are, indeed, a nation at risk, and nothing but radical reform of our schools
can save us from impending disaster. Whatever the price we must pay in money and effort to
do this, the price we will pay for not doing it will be much greater.
Editor's note: read the last section of Ned Dougherty's NDE report for a surprising
reference to the Founding Fathers.
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