VICKY WILKINS: --a quick moment
and welcome you this evening
to this important event.
And I want to extend my
gratitude to Professor Allen
for being with us
and [INAUDIBLE]..
So we might be
warmer than Boston.
So maybe, it's a
little bit better.
DANIELLE ALLEN: A little bit.
VICKY WILKINS: We
are grateful for you
being with us here tonight.
Tonight does a couple of things.
First, we have the opportunity
to hear from a thought leader
and someone who is doing great
work to talk about the unity we
need to build in our country.
But we also get to
celebrate the first lecture
series of our Lincoln
Scholars Program.
And for those of you who don't
know about the Lincoln Scholars
Program, it's truly the
vision and leadership
of Professor Tom Merrill
that brought this to SPA.
And it was his insight
that, through reading
challenging books, students
come together and grow
both their hearts and their
minds and challenge each other
and move forward
in conversation.
And this program has been very
popular among our students.
It's something that we're very
proud to have in this school.
And I know it will be a great
place for discourse, going
forward throughout time.
So I welcome him up here
to do the introduction.
And I also thank him for
his leadership on this
and for planning this event.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
TOM MERRILL: Thank
you, Dean Wilkins.
I need to start my comments
with some thank yous.
I need to first
thanks everyone here
for coming, especially
on this cold night
when maybe you're preoccupied
with impeachment business.
But we're grateful
that you're here,
spending this time with us.
I need to thank
Dean Wilkins, who
has been a big supporter
of Lincoln Scholars,
and indeed the key fact to
allowing this program to get
off the ground this first year.
I think one thing that needs
to be said about Dean Wilkins
is that, unlike many other
political scientists,
she is a citizen.
And she cares about
the common good
and that she's willing to
push hard to build the things
that she thinks need to be
built. So thank you for that.
I also need to say
thanks to my colleagues
in the Political
Theory Institute.
It wasn't just me that
came up with this,
despite what Dean Wilkins said.
I need to thank Alan Levine,
the Director of Political Theory
Institute, Gordon
Flannigan, my colleague who
teaches ancient political
philosophy, Sarah
Houser and Jeremy Janow,
who all have advised
and really helped me think
through what [INAUDIBLE]..
Finally, I need to
recognize another group
of people, I think, most
of whom are here tonight.
Some of them are not--
so shame on them--
and who've been important
in getting the program
off the ground this fall.
This is the students in my two
freshmen seminars this fall.
I don't think that, when
they signed up for the class,
they knew what they
were getting into.
How could they?
But they've been cheerfully
talking about hard topics,
reading hard books, arguing with
each other, arguing with me,
getting their papers in
on time, most of the time.
They're funny.
And they're smart.
And I want to tell
them that it's
been a pleasure and
a privilege for me
to spend this time with them.
So it's important
to have [INAUDIBLE]..
Just for the record,
so you can get
a sense of what
we've been up to,
I want to mention
some of the topics
that we've been
talking about in class.
There are four.
Death-- in his autobiography,
Frederick Douglass
tells a story about
his confrontation
with [INAUDIBLE] slave
breaker, a confrontation
in which Douglas could
easily have been killed.
Death is a scary thing
for a human being,
maybe the scariest
thing for a human being.
But Douglas makes
us ask, do we have
to face up to our fear of death
in order to be truly brave?
What makes it possible
for a human being
to look death in the
face and still do
the thing that they believe in?
For two-- sex.
We read, in class, Simone de
Beauvoir's The Second Sex.
She talks a lot about
sex which, as we know,
is messy, physically
and emotionally.
She argues that the root
of sexism in human beings
is our fear of that messiness,
especially the messiness
and weirdness of pregnancy.
And we ask, is she right?
Number three-- god.
We read Karl Marx, who argues
that human beings will never
be truly free,
unless they overcome
their attachments to religion.
But we also read
Martin Luther King,
who called upon
the United States
to live up to its original
promise of equality and freedom
for all.
Religion, I think,
is an essential part
of King's argument
and the grounding
for his case for freedom.
So we ask, who is right?--
Marx or King?
Finally, number four-- freedom.
We read the Declaration
of Independence together.
How could we not, as Americans?
But we had to wrestle with
questions like, how do we
square the noble words
of the Declaration
and the historical reality
of race-based justice
in American history?
Is it still possible to
believe in the teaching
of the Declaration in the
light of that history?
How would we think differently
or act differently today,
if we did really believe in
the words of The Declaration
of Independence?
In our classes, we hadn't
come to any agreement
about those questions,
nor will we, I suspect.
But we share a sense that
wrestling with those questions
and others is a
task for each of us.
No one can do the
work of thinking them
through, except for each of us.
For at the same time, we
can't do it by ourselves.
We need smart people to
talk these issues through,
to challenge us,
to argue with us.
And the things that
we've done in classes
is that we sit
together at the table
and we look each other
face in the face.
And we try to make the
best arguments that we can
about these things that are
most difficult to talk about.
When we were thinking
of possible speakers
for this first Lincoln
Scholars lecture, the committee
of people who were
talking about this,
we all agreed that
there wasn't anyone
who would be better for
what we were looking
for than Danielle Allen.
Professor Allen is the James
Bryant Conant University
Professor at Harvard
University and the Director
of Harvard's Edmund J.
Safra Center for Ethics.
She's the author of five books
and co-editor of two others.
Her main topics of interest
are justice and citizenship,
both in ancient Athens and
in contemporary America.
She's written many books.
One of her books
that I'll mention,
Cuz, an American Tragedy, is
a memoir about a family member
who was incarcerated.
She also writes regularly
for the Washington Post,
the Atlantic, and other outlets.
Tonight, she's going
to give a lecture based
on one of her books,
which is up here,
Our Declaration, Reading the
Declaration of Independence
in Defense of Equality.
She says a lot of interesting
things in the book.
The main reasons
that we wanted her
to talk about this, in
addition to the fact
that it supports
the [INAUDIBLE],,
the book is really a model on
how to read a text carefully
by arguing with it, by trying
to think through, is it true?
What would it mean if it's true?
How does the text
work as a text?
And so we really
wanted to have someone
to speak to that discipline of
reading closely and wrestling
with books that we're not
sure if they're right or not.
So without further
ado, I'd just like
to ask you to join me in
welcoming Professor Allen.
And we're glad that she's here.
So welcome--
[APPLAUSE]
DANIELLE ALLEN: Let's see
if I can do this this way.
Perfect, that works.
Good evening.
AUDIENCE: Good evening.
DANIELLE ALLEN:
I know it's cold,
but you guys can do
better than that.
Good evening!
AUDIENCE: Good evening.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Good to see you.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
DANIELLE ALLEN: OK, so I want to
say thank you to Dean Wilkins.
Where'd she go?
Thank you so much for having me.
And thank you, Professor
Merrill, for your leadership
in building a new
curriculum and a new program
here at American
University and for inviting
me to participate in
conversation with you
and your students.
It's a pleasure to be here.
It's funny for me
to be here, too,
Because I actually don't
come to DC very often.
So I think about American
democracy all the time.
I write about American
democracy all the time.
I write for the Washington Post.
But I almost never
come to Washington, DC.
So when I go other places,
I always like to ask people,
so how many of you
would say that you've
thought about politics at
least once in the last month?
[LAUGHTER]
So I guess that's all of you.
OK, then?
And how many of you think that
you've thought about politics
at least once in the last week?
And how many of you have
thought about politics every day
for the last period of time?
I want to see a show of hands?
Where are we on that one?
OK.
Now, I'm curious-- here's
what I want to know,
if you guys are the same
as the rest of America
or different from
the rest of America.
How many of you think we are
living in a moment of crisis?
All right, you're different
from the rest of America.
Every hand goes up everywhere
else on that question.
So I just want you to know
that about yourselves.
So that's interesting.
I don't know if--
should I take hope from that?
Or should I be alarmed?
We'll figure that one out.
But everywhere else
I go, if I say,
do you feel like we're living
in a moment of crises?--
every hand goes up.
So that is the context
that I want to start from.
And then the question
is, how on earth
can the Declaration
of Independence,
written nearly 250
years ago, authored,
we most commonly think, by
Thomas Jefferson, a slave
owner--
how can this text be
of any help to us now?
That's the question.
How can it be any help
in a moment of crisis?
Now you guys aren't fully
there's a crisis going
on. (WHISPERING) There's a
crisis going on! (SPEAKING
ALOUD) Nonetheless, the
question pertains even if you
don't quite think it's a crisis.
Still, there's the question
of, can the Declaration
be of any help?
And I want to make the
case that it can be.
You knew I was going
to make that case.
So the interesting
question will be
how I make the case
that the Declaration can
be of real value and should be
a resource that we turn to now,
in the present,
as we try to think
our way through the political
questions confronting us.
The first thing I want to say
about this is just, actually,
a point that's more
generally about democracy
and what democratic
citizens need in order
to build and maintain
healthy and thriving
constitutional democracies.
So if you ask somebody--
if a kid comes up
and asks you to explain
what a monarchy is,
it's very easy to
answer that question,
because you just sort of go find
a picture of Queen Elizabeth.
And you say, that
person is in charge.
Obviously, that's
not exactly accurate
at this point in time of
the British constitutional
monarchy.
Nonetheless, they get
the basic concept,
that there's a person who
can establish a set of rules
for a polity, power
is centralized,
and that is the end of
the story about what
is entailed in politics.
Now, if a kid asks,
what's democracy?
That's a much harder
question to answer.
There's no picture you
can point to to say, well,
that's who's in charge.
There's not actually a picture,
because the word "democracy"
means "the power of the people."
"Demos" being the
ordinary people.
"Cratos" coming from the
Greek word for power,
related to a word for hand
and grasping and control.
So how do you have a
picture of the people who
is in charge in a democracy?
The very concept of democracy
requires abstraction
from the get go.
And that makes democracy
a pretty distinctive kind
of political form,
different from a monarchy--
any kind of autocratic
government--
different from an oligarchy,
where you have rule by the few.
And the fact that democracy
demands abstraction just even
to understand what
it might possibly be
means that democracies
require citizens to think.
First and most important point
about democracies-- democracies
require thought on the
part of their citizens.
And so in a moment
of crisis, I think
it's really important
to underscore
the value of thinking.
And that's one of the beauties
of being able to participate
in your program here as
the inaugural lecturer
for the Lincoln
Scholars Program--
the notion that you're
building a curriculum,
the purpose of which
is to rebuild capacity
for reflection,
spaces for reflection,
not the quick back and forth
of "can I beat this person now
in this immediate argument?"--
but how do we actually think
about an argument that can
justify a case we'll make
to others about the direction
we should collectively go?
The Declaration of Independence
is an excellent model
of that kind of thinking.
And that's one of its
first values to us
in a moment of crisis.
But beyond that, it provides
the most succinct account
of what democracy is
that I know and can,
I believe, offer a
world of education,
just in its words, about
what the fundamental job
of a citizen in a democracy is.
So I know several of you in
the audience have read my book
and have spent time with the
words of the Declaration.
So I'm going to make
you do it one more time.
We're going to spend some
time doing some close reading
together as a part of this.
But I also want to acknowledge,
as I do, that lots of people
are skeptical about the
value of the Declaration.
And they're skeptical
about it, as I
said, again because of questions
around slavery and questions
around gender and
things like that.
And I'm going to come
back to those questions.
But I'm going to ask you to just
put them aside for a moment.
I know you have them.
And I will address them.
But I want to start
by just thinking
about what it is that the
text actually offers us,
by way of a vision of what it
is we're trying to do together.
So I'd like to spend time with
the second sentence, which
many of you know.
"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,
that to secure these rights,
governments are
instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed,
that whenever any
form of government
becomes destructive
of these ends,
it is the right of the
people to alter or to abolish
it and institute new government,
laying its foundation
on such principles and
organizing its powers
in such form as
to them shall seem
most likely to affect their
safety and happiness."
Now, be honest.
How many of you remember
the sentence was this long?
I know those of you in Professor
Merrill's class know that.
Exactly-- we forget that
the sentence is this long.
We tend to stop reading after
"pursuit of happiness," where
all we've gotten
by that point is
a story about individual rights.
But this is a beautiful
philosophical argument
that starts with the premise
that people have rights.
Second premise--
governments are instituted
to secure those rights.
Conclusion-- if
governments aren't
doing the job of
securing those rights,
it's the right of the
people to change them.
That last clause is the most
important part of the sentence.
So never may you read the
sentence again and not read
all the way to the end.
And I do have a homework
assignment for you,
which is, I want you to
memorize this sentence.
Because I believe that, if
you carry this sentence around
with you and meditate
on it, over time,
you will acquire a much
deeper understanding
of what your job is as a
citizen in this democracy.
So let me dig into
some of that right now
and some of what
it shows us, things
that are of value even
to us immediately now.
So really important
is the very end.
This is the piece that
sums up what it means
to be a democratic citizen.
We have the job of
diagnosing our world,
assessing whether our government
is securing our rights
or is destructive of that end.
So diagnosis is the
first job of citizenship.
And if we do think
the government is not
securing our rights, then
we have a two-part job,
as we think about alterations.
We have to lay the
foundation on principle
and organize the
powers of government.
What does this mean exactly?
In the phrase, laying the
foundation on such principles,
they're actually pointing
back to the top part
of the sentence, where
they're articulating
a vision about basic rights that
are empowering to human beings.
These basic rights,
in their argument,
are what people
need in order to act
on that element of human
equality that we all share,
a basic capacity for agency,
to chart a course in life,
to pursue making tomorrow better
than yesterday, better than
today.
So those principles
about what the rights are
is something that we
have to debate, discuss,
try to come to some
shared understanding of.
Shared values--
this is actually one
of the jobs of being a
citizen, to work on this
with your fellow citizens.
This doesn't mean we all
have the same set of values.
To the contrary, I am going
to chart my own course
towards happiness.
And it will be different from
how you chart your course.
You will have a list of
personal values and commitments
that direct you and give
purpose to your life.
But on that list,
there should be
some principles that connect
to the project of democracy.
Think of the
project of democracy
as depending on liberty,
equality-- liberty and justice
for all, freedom, fairness.
These are sets of
principles that
should be somewhere
in your value
set-- maybe different
meanings for you
for freedom than for me.
But we can put those
together on the table
and begin to talk about
them with each other
and explain, how does
my commitment to freedom
relate to my other
personal commitments
to beauty and faith and
truthfulness and integrity?
I can tell you that story about
how my personal values connect
to my shared values.
And if we can have that
conversation about shared
values, we are doing
the work of laying
the foundation on principle.
The sentence itself
tells us, think.
Think for yourselves.
Don't take the answers from us.
It tells us that
in a few places.
It tells us that right at
the beginning when it says,
we've been endowed with
certain unalienable rights.
And among these
are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
Have you guys noticed
that before?--
among these.
That means, it's
not a complete list.
It's just some examples.
So they're just some examples.
That's an invitation
to figure out
what else goes on that list.
Does health go on that
list, for example?
That's one of the things
we're debating in this country
right now.
What are the basic
rights that we
ought to be protecting
for one another?
The work's not done.
They just made their stab
at it and say, hey, here's
some examples.
Here's the basic structure
for thinking about the core
principles democracies
might share in order
to build a structure that
empowers everybody in them.
So the second way it shows
us that there is a call--
an invitation to thought
is, again, the last clause.
Because-- whenever-- whenever
any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends--
it doesn't say, well, King
George became destructive.
And that's the end of the story.
It says that later
in the Declaration.
But here, it says, whenever.
It is an open-ended invitation
to democratic citizens,
one generation after the
next, to think for themselves.
All right-- so I have
focused on one part
of the thinking for
yourself, the part that's
about the foundation
of principle.
But what about the
parts about organizing
the powers of government?
What does that mean?
It's very, very straightforward.
This is a to-do list.
And I mean that quite literally.
So when Richard
Henry Lee stood up
to Philadelphia in Continental
Congress in June of 1776
to put a resolution
in front of Congress
to declare independence
from Britain,
Congress decided they
weren't ready to vote.
They put it off.
They punted for a month.
They said, we'll schedule
that vote for July.
They had a really good
reason for punting,
in that they wanted to have
unanimity for this vote,
it was so important.
They establishing the basis
for a new polity, a new set
of political institutions.
Nothing less than unanimity
would suffice, was their view.
That's like-- message to Brexit.
Don't use a majority vote for
a constitutional decision!--
supermajority or, in
this case, unanimity.
That's the point.
In other words, they knew
they were fundamentally
restructuring society.
There were going to set the bar
at unanimity for this decision.
So they put the
vote off until July.
But in the meanwhile, they
set up three committees
to get ready for
the moment when they
would be ready to vote on this
resolution for independence.
The first committee was
the one we're sort of here
talking about.
It was the committee to draft
the statement of principle,
come to be known as the
Declaration of Independence.
It happened that Thomas
Jefferson got elected
to be chair of that committee.
But there were
five people on it,
so not just Jefferson but John
Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger
Sherman, Robert Livingston.
It was a committee project.
That was the first
committee that set up.
The other two
committees were given
the job of organizing
the powers of government.
What did that mean?
One committee was
charged with drafting
the Articles of Confederation.
And then the third
committee was charged
with setting up treaties
or drafting treaties
with France and Spain.
So this is literally a to-do
list for what they thought they
had to do in June of 1776, as
they were going about the work
of setting up a new nation--
lay the foundation on
principle and organize
the powers of government.
So I started to
talk a little bit
about how we can collectively
do the work of laying
a new foundation on principle,
having conversations
about our shared
democratic values,
and how they connect
to our individual sets
of personal values.
But what about organizing
the powers of government?
What does that actually mean?
So that is just all the stuff
of our political institutions
and the question of whether or
not they operate in such a way
as to deliver safety
and happiness for us.
This is where I get
back to the crisis
part of the conversation.
And it's one of these
things I find sort of darkly
funny, that Americans have
a really good capacity
to blind themselves to the fact
of a slowly creeping crisis.
So it's not exactly
that just right now
is a moment of crisis for us.
All you have to do is
think about the fact
that-- honestly, I've forgotten
whether it was 2010 or 2011.
One of the political
scientists will correct me.
But registered the fact that
Congress had an approval
rating of 9% in 2010 and 2011.
And it's come back up to 20%.
But Congress is
the first branch.
It's not coequal, despite what
everybody's saying right now.
Like, we have coequal branches.
No.
The legislature in any
democratic republic
is the first branch.
It is the branch with
responsibility for articulating
the will of the people.
The executive branch
has the job of executing
the will of the people.
It's second, because you can't
have any action until you
a will of the people, which
is the job of the legislator
to render.
Right?
Did you all follow that?
Congress is the first branch.
You cannot have a polity
of self-government for free
and equal citizens if you do not
have a functional legislature.
9% approval-- 20%
approval-- we will all
have varying opinions
of how well they're
doing at this particular
moment in time.
I'm putting that aside.
I'm looking at this in the
larger picture of things,
where our respect for Congress
has plummeted precipitously.
We really have to dig
into the question of why
it is that our national
legislature is not delivering
in a way that a people--
we, the people-- register
with a sense of approval.
And if we really don't approve
of Congress, if it really
is at 9% or 20%, we
really ought to do
the work of rethinking
how we organize
the powers of government.
That's on us, not
actually on Congress.
That's on the people
whose right it
is to lay the
foundation on principle
and organize the
powers of government.
So the Declaration helps
us right from the get-go,
by giving us a really
crystal clear picture
of what our responsibilities
as citizens are.
And it is this
combination of laying
the foundation on
principle and thinking
about how to organize
the powers of government
to deliver our safety
and happiness together.
The Declaration also gives
us a few other resources
that are relevant to
this present moment.
And I want to share
them, before turning
to the question of slavery
and the question of gender.
So this sentence, in
addition to providing
this crystalline and
concise account of what
democratic citizenship
requires, also shows
us important moments
of compromise.
So the sentence is
elegantly constructed.
It moves from individual rights
that including life, liberty,
and the individual pursuit
of happiness to the notion
that we need, together,
build government, organize
its powers, in a way
that delivers our safety
and happiness.
In other words, the
sentence moves from I to we,
from what I individually
do to think through what
will be good for me to my
effort to put that together
with everybody else to develop
a collective vision of where
we should be collectively
steering our polity.
And how do we ever
get from I to we?
This is the hardest
problem of democratic life?
How do we convert the multitude
of different preferences
and interests and
commitments and aspirations
into something that we can
collectively hold onto?
A part of the answer
is just process,
that it has to
involve conversation.
It has to involve listening--
hearing other people.
But another part of the
point and the argument
is that it has to
involve compromise.
And this is the piece I
want to spend more time on.
Because we are in a world
where, I think, many of us
have come to think that
the only good compromise is
no compromise.
And there is good reason for
us to come to think this,
in the sense that, as we
learn about our own history,
there is one compromise which
is front and center in how
we think about compromise.
And that is, of course,
the Great Compromise
that secured enslavement in
this country for decades.
So the regrettable thing is that
democracy requires compromise
to function.
But our most powerful
and compelling example
of compromise is the
compromise over slavery.
So how do we get ourselves
out of that bind?
How can we see our
way to appreciating
the value of
compromise but being
able to see a difference
between good compromises
and bad compromises?
That's the problem
that we currently face.
So there are two compromises
in the Declaration.
And I want to tell you
about both of them,
because I think one
is a good compromise
and one was a bad compromise.
And I think, homing in on the
differences between these two
compromises can
help us reacquire
a distinction between
good and bad compromise
that might make it possible
for us to reimagine where
compromise might fit into
our own political lives
and political world.
So what's the good compromise?
The good compromise
shows up in this passage
in the word "Creator."
Jefferson did not
write "Creator."
I mentioned, this was
a committee process,
committee writing.
Benjamin Franklin made
significant edits and "creator"
came in from one of them.
In fact, as an
aside, I can say, one
of the really important lessons
that Thomas Jefferson teaches
us is how to get
credit for something.
Because why do we all
think that Thomas Jefferson
is the one and only
author of the Declaration?
You guys live here, so you know.
You know what's on his
tombstone, right?--
author-- Declaration
of Independence.
So that's the secret.
If you want credit
for something,
put it on your tombstone.
And forever, people
will absolutely
credit you with that.
Jefferson was one of five.
John Adams was the
intellectual architect
of the Declaration, which we can
see from things that he wrote,
January through April of 1776.
I'll come back to
more about Adams,
because he's also responsible
for the language of happiness
in this Declaration.
But the compromising
went all the way through.
And when Jefferson
wrote his first draft,
there was not much language for
religion in the draft at all.
He didn't use "Creator."
He didn't use "Divine
Providence" or "Supreme Judge,"
which show up in the final
paragraph of the Declaration.
All the language
for a divine figure
came in from Congress, when
it edited the Declaration.
It changed about 25% of the
wording in the Declaration.
So what happened
with that language
though is super interesting.
None of the language for
religion in the Declaration
is connected to any specific
theology or doctrine.
So it's wide open for people
with very ranging set of views
to hang onto.
And in addition to
that, the language
depends not only on language
with religious connotations
but also on language with
secular connotations.
The first sentence
of the Declaration,
when it starts out, refers
to the basis of the argument
as being the laws of
nature and nature's god.
And that, I like to
think of as a sort
of belt-and-suspenders phrase.
When you're asking
the question, well,
what's the grounding for
the statements of principle
in the Declaration?
The answer is, the laws of
nature and nature's god.
And so if you are
a person of faith,
you might hold onto the
phrase "nature's god."
If you are a deist or a
theist or even an atheist,
as were present in
Continental Congress,
you'll hold onto the
"laws of nature" phrase,
the notion that an
account of human nature--
an anthropological picture of
what we are all like across
[INAUDIBLE] space--
the element that we share,
despite different contexts,
justifies the argument
that human beings
need rights and
protection of their rights
in order to have empowerment
and a path to human flourishing.
You can rest the argument
of the Declaration
either on a foundation of
faith or on a foundation
of a commitment to a
picture of human nature,
where human beings need
protection of rights
in order to flourish.
Belt and suspenders--
that was a compromise
when they wrote the text with
vocabulary that permitted
a huge range of people with
different kinds of views
about god and religion all
to endorse the Declaration.
Now, the other compromise
is about enslavement.
This will come as no surprise.
Exactly the same
kinds of debates
that transpired in the
Constitutional Convention
transpired in 1776 in
Continental Congress,
as they're drafting
the Declaration.
And they have the same arguments
of representation, and how
to count people, and so forth.
So the decisions
that get encoded
in the Constitutional
Convention have actually
been predetermined in 1776.
You get a kind of path
dependency situation,
where they've compromised
on how to count things.
And they can't undo
that compromise
by the time they get to 1787.
But where does the compromise
show up in this text?
There is an anti-slavery
moment in the text
and a pro-slavery moment.
The pro-slavery moment
comes in a paragraph
that Jefferson wrote and
that his committee endorsed,
but that Congress cut out.
And this was a paragraph in
the draft of the Declaration,
condemning the slave trade--
the inexorable
commerce, he wrote.
And he condemned
the slave trade,
because he described
it as a violation
of the sacred rights of life
and liberty of people in Africa.
In other words, Jefferson used
exactly the same vocabulary
of sacred rites of
life and liberty
for Africans as he was using
for people in colonial America.
And this is a passage
that Congress cut out.
That was a pro-slavery
moment when
they got rid of that passage.
So what was the
anti-slavery moment?
The anti-slavery moment
shows up in this paragraph.
And it is the phrase,
"life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness."
But at this point in
1776, philosophers
have become
accustomed to arguing
for a rights-based political
system in the vocabulary
of life, liberty, and property.
So what happened to property?
Where'd it go?
Why did we get happiness?
There were really two
people who were driving
the politics leading
to independence,
John Adams from Massachusetts--
we might have mentioned--
and Richard Henry
Lee from Virginia.
Adams never owned slaves.
He thought slavery
was a bad thing.
Richard Henry Lee from Virginia
was in the slave-owning caste.
Massachusetts was
well ahead of Virginia
in being ready to
go for revolution.
The reason the
Virginians finally
decided to join the
course, join the cause,
and commit to independence
came in the fall of 1775.
What happened was
the royal governor
of Virginia, Lord Dunmore,
issued a proclamation
declaring that any enslaved
person who escaped and fought
for the British would be freed.
That proclamation
radicalized the Virginians.
It inspired them to join
the cause of revolution.
So that's one of the hard sad
facts of American history.
That the thing that
generated union,
brought the colonies
all together finally
ready to fight for
independence was actually,
in the case of Virginia, threat
to the system of slavery.
That's just a fact we have
to acknowledge honestly.
So what happened when
Lord Dunmore issued
this proclamation--
the Virginians began
complaining that he
had violated their
rights of property
by affecting
slavery in this way.
And so from the fall of 1775
through the spring of 1776,
the concepts of right
to property and slavery
became very closely
linked to each other.
Benjamin Franklin commented
on this fact in the debates
on the Articles
of Confederation,
where the term
property was, again,
causing problems in the debate,
because of its close linkage
to defense of slavery.
At the same time that property
was acquiring this connection
to slavery, John
Adams is really trying
to answer the question of
what new kind of society
should they build, presuming
that they decided to embrace
revolution and independence.
And he publishes
a text in January,
in Massachusetts,
where he outlines what
he thinks will be necessary.
And it has the structure
of the Declaration.
And it uses lots of the same
vocabulary of the Declaration.
And then he publishes a
pamphlet in April called,
"Some Thoughts
Concerning Government,"
where he argues that the
purpose of government
is exactly the
same as the purpose
of the individual human being.
And that fundamental purpose,
he says, is happiness.
John Adams is the person who,
for those months leading up
to June and July, is arguing
that happiness should
be the concept that
they use to organize
a set of shared values that
will motivate the revolution.
So we can see the debate
unfolding and working,
in the sense that,
when George Mason comes
to write the Virginia
Declaration of Rights
in May of 1776, he uses both
the property and the happiness
concept.
He talks about a
set of rights that
involve acquiring and
securing property and pursuing
happiness.
So we can see them trying to
work on compromise language
here.
As property terms
become problematic,
happiness is starting to
emerge as a possibility.
And then when we get
here, it's happiness,
the antislavery position.
Obviously, happiness
is a capacious term,
capacious enough that those
who were defending enslavement
could see themselves still
as potentially represented
in this language.
Nonetheless, for
the abolitionists,
it was a clear signal.
And the first people to make use
of the Declaration for purposes
other than revolution
were abolitionists.
So in January of 1777, a free
African-American in Boston
named Prince Hall uses
language from the Declaration
of Independence to submit a
petition to the Massachusetts
Assembly for the end of
slavery in Massachusetts.
And this language repeats
itself in the Massachusetts
Constitution and
also in constitutions
in Vermont, Pennsylvania,
all three of which
get rid of slavery by 1783,
so before the Constitutional
Convention.
So this text, this
language helps
crystallize-- coalesce-- the
abolitionist movement to bring
slavery to an end for real
in a portion of the newly
united States.
So that pursuit of happiness
is the anti-slavery moment
in the Declaration.
So that's the second compromise.
So I said two compromises,
one good and one bad.
Both compromises
helped them achieve
union, the union
they believed was
necessary to fight the British.
From a pragmatic sense,
they defended the compromise
on slavery as being motivated,
in essence, by fear--
that they had to put
their lives on the line,
they were traitors,
they had no choice
but to compromise
on this question,
otherwise they would
all die, basically,
in their inability to fight
England without being unified.
So that was pragmatic
argumentation that they gave.
But we, from our vantage
point, have the luxury
of being able to make a
judgment and to say, well,
what do we think about
these compromises?
Were they equally good?
And I think, they weren't.
I think the compromise around
religion was a good compromise.
And the compromise
around enslavement
was a bad compromise.
But what's the basis
for that judgment?
How can we tell the difference
between a good compromise
and a bad compromise?
The compromise around
religion importantly
incorporated the viewpoints
of all the different modes
of religious experience then
present in the colonies.
Believers of a
variety of kinds--
there were some, like,
wild sects acting
and active in the
colonies, really very usual
an extreme theological
viewpoints.
And they are incorporated
in this language.
And there were people who
weren't believers at all.
And there were deists.
The colonies had a range of
opinions and perspectives
about religion.
All of them are incorporated
in this compromise.
It makes itself
available and accessible
to each of those
potential viewpoints.
Enslavement is a
different matter.
That compromise did not include
the viewpoints and perspectives
of all affected.
And it's very obvious how not.
It did not include the
viewpoints or perspectives
of enslaved people.
And so there you have it,
a very simple principle
for being able to
identify the difference
between good compromises
and bad compromises.
Good compromises rest on a
foundation of inclusion of,
in fact, seeking to ascertain
the viewpoint of all affected
by the relevant decision,
as a part of testing
the quality of the compromise.
Bad compromises
are those that fail
to bring in the
viewpoints of all
affected in the consideration of
the structure of the decision.
So we don't have to take
from our history the lesson
that all compromises
are bad compromises.
We can actually take the time
to look at different compromises
made at different points in
our history and ascertain
which are the good ones
and which are the bad ones.
But why have I going on
so much about compromise?
Why is it so important?
I want to say one more thing
about that before turning
to the end of my reflections
on the mistakes they made
and how we can recuperate them.
So democracy depends on
self-governing people
coming together to make
decisions together.
People lose.
In every political
contest, somebody loses.
So if a democracy
is going to work,
it has to be worth
it for the people who
lose in any given moment
to continue to participate.
So in other words, over
time, political institutions
have to deliver
broadly for everybody.
And they have to function
in a united way for that
to work-- for that to happen.
Because if they don't work
over time for everybody,
those who are losing
out will secede.
And we've been through that.
We know what that looks like.
They will break away.
But if the losing
party secedes, all you
have is a principle for
the end of democracy.
Because you have one
group that secedes,
you've got a run of that's left.
And then you'll have another
group that loses out.
And then they'll secede.
And eventually, democracy
will break down.
In other words, the
biggest threat to democracy
is the kind of division that
leads people to opt out.
Because democracy cannot survive
that process of fragmentation.
It can survive only
if people commit
to the political
institutions that's
valuable in themselves for
the kinds of empowerment
they provide to us.
And we can commit to
that only if we also
commit to maintaining
their union over time,
their existence over time.
So compromise is one of the
tools that's necessary in order
to establish and maintain
the principle of union
for political institutions
that makes democracy
a long-term
possibility, not just
a short-term
temporary possibility.
Now, that was a pretty
abstract argument.
I'm happy to talk more
about that in Q&A,
if you want me to
clarify for [INAUDIBLE]..
But I just want to say why
compromise is so important.
It's because you can't
actually maintain democracy
over the long-term unless
you can maintain union.
And you can't maintain union
unless you have compromise.
That's the basic point.
So here we are, trying
to figure out how
to use the Declaration today.
And I hope I have
shown you, first,
a very clear picture
of what citizenship is,
what is entailed-- laying
the foundational principle
and understanding
how to organize
the powers of government.
I hope I have secondly shown
you that the Declaration belongs
to all Americans.
And it wasn't just the text
of Thomas Jefferson, a slave
owner.
It was also the
text of John Adams,
somebody who didn't own slaves.
It was also a text
used by abolitionists
right at the very beginning
of this country's founding.
In other words, this
country has always
had multiple
political traditions.
And the Declaration belongs
just as much to abolitionists
as it may have done for a very
brief window to slave owners.
They didn't stick with it,
because they repudiated it when
it came to the Confederacy.
They wrote an alternative that
said explicitly, no, people
are not equal.
And we have to set
our government up
on that new footing.
So slave owners repudiated this
declaration, as it happens.
But the point is
that, sometimes, we
dispense with the
entirety of our traditions
and patrimony on the
grounds that the founding
of the country had,
as a part of it,
the compromise over slavery.
But there were people right from
the beginning fighting slavery.
And this text was
actually a part
of what helped them do that.
So I hope I've given you that as
another element of recuperating
this text for the present.
But here's the third thing.
And it's really about the work
that is in front of all of us.
And this is my last point.
So in addition to issues
around slavery, lots of people
always ask, well, what
about the word "men"?
Where are women?
What does it mean
that this language
seems to be focused on males.
And there's an easy
answer to this question.
And then there's a
more interesting answer
to the question.
The easy answer
to the question is
that the word "man" was
used, at this point in time,
in a universal way to mean
human beings, generally.
And we know that, because in
that same passage I described--
sort of cut out about slavery--
Jefferson describes and
criticizes markets where MEN--
in all caps, he writes it--
are bought and sold.
So he's talking
about slave auctions.
And we know, when he talks
about men being bought and sold,
he doesn't just mean males.
And he doesn't just mean adults.
He means women and children--
everybody.
So we know, in that
passage, that he
used "men" in a universal way.
And he used it this
way here as well.
But here's the more interesting
and more complicated thing.
So Abigail Adams,
John Adams' wife,
was super excited
about revolution.
And she was sort of, like,
chivvying John along.
She was like, what's
taking you guys so long?
Why haven't you gotten to
declaring independence?
And as they were starting
to articulate principles,
she also came back to him and
said, what about the ladies?
Where are the ladies in this?
Remember the ladies
is her famous phrase.
And she complains that she
doesn't see any advance
for women in the language
that they're using
to articulate their principles.
And John writes back to her
and says, well, yes, actually.
You're here.
The rights of life,
the [INAUDIBLE] pursuit
of happiness-- he doesn't
use that phrase exactly,
but he uses the same
kind of language.
The goal is to deliver
that for everybody,
for women as well as for men.
He writes similarly
to a fellow politician
who is asking about people
without property and Negroes.
And the same thing-- so he
goes, yes, these principles,
[INAUDIBLE] principle
applies to everybody.
Everybody deserves
to have their rights
of life and liberty protected.
But-- but-- when it
comes to how we organize
the powers of government, he
says, we are not going to,
in his phrase, give up
our masculine system.
So it's this very
distinction at the bottom
that explains how they're able
to make the mistake that they
made.
They could lay the foundation on
a principle of universal rights
for all but nonetheless think
it was possible to organize
the powers of government
within a masculine system,
a patriarchal structure, with
the white male property holders
controlling power,
and make the case
that that would be a way
which they could deliver
on rights for everybody.
Now, Abigail wrote back.
And she said, OK.
But the truth is, husbands
don't have a very good track
record over history in their
use of power in relationship
to their wives.
So we'll give you
one more chance.
But you better do
better this time.
And if you don't, you should
be aware that women will foment
rebellion-- was her phrase--
for voice and representation.
And at that moment,
Abigail is making
a philosophical contribution
to the development
of our understanding
of democracy.
She's making the point
that, if you actually
want to protect
rights for everybody,
you can't put power
in the hands of a few.
They will inevitably abuse it.
So she is actually adding
a principle of inclusion
in how we organize the
powers of government
as a necessary foundation for
achieving genuine democracy.
And indeed, her
prediction was borne out.
Suffragettes fomented for
voice and representation.
We are now all in the midst of
celebrating 100 years of voting
rights for women.
And Abigail articulated
the philosophical principle
at stake there.
And it was basically
to make the point
that, if you're
going to organize
the powers of
government, in order
to deliver rights
for everybody, you
have to organize the
powers of government
to include everybody in
the allocation of power.
And so we have been working
through that question of how
to reorganize power in an
inclusive fashion for a very
long time at this point.
We are still working on it.
But I want to just call
out the distinction
between the principles
and how we organize
the powers of government
as a way of seeing
what the work still
is for us, as we
seek to correct mistakes--
philosophical mistakes-- that
they made at the founding.
So the text is relevant.
It can guide us, give us
lessons, but also charges us
with responsibilities and jobs
to do for ourselves in 2019
that nobody prior to us
could possibly have done.
So in that regard, it should
be an empowering document,
not one that, in some sense,
puts the dead hand of history
on us, but rather one
that elevates us and asks
us to think anew and for
ourselves on how to deliver,
for all of us in this country,
the picture of empowerment
to which it draws our attention.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
TOM MERRILL: Thank you
for that, Professor Allen.
It's our practice to take
questions from students first.
And we'll let you handle
the questions to take.
We are going to stop
promptly at 7:00.
So just all keep that in mind.
DANIELLE ALLEN: It looks like
there's a mic for students.
So if you put your
hand up, then I
guess the mic will
come around to you.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
Hi, Professor Allen.
Just a quick question-- you say,
life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness are self-evident.
However, what's not
mentioned in there
is the precise form
of government that
messages those liberties.
So it's not self-evident that
democracy is the best possible
way, best possible form.
So how exactly do you
arrive at the conclusion
that democracy is the best
way to secure these rights?
Thank you.
DANIELLE ALLEN: So the
relevant self evidence
is lodged in the structure
of the entire sentence.
So the premise about life,
liberty, and happiness
is actually not the
self-evident bit.
So the sentence
has five clauses.
It's taken together that they
constitute self-evidence.
So they are that all
men are created equal.
And then there is the
specification of that.
That means, equal in
the sense of being
endowed by the creator
with certain rights.
And here are some examples.
So premise 1-- human
beings have rights.
Premise 2-- governments
are instituted among men
to secure those rights.
That delivers a
self-evident conclusion.
So it's the right of
the people to alter
or to abolish their government.
That right of the people
is a democratic right.
It's in the final
conclusion that you get
the argument about democracy.
The notion that it's
the job of the people
to lay the foundation
and organize
the powers of government
to deliver on their safety
and happiness.
The people may decide on a
variety of kinds of forms
for organizing their government.
But at the end of the
day, sovereign power
rests with the people.
And that's a fundamentally
democratic principle,
regardless of what kinds
of institutional structures
you sit on top of that.
AUDIENCE: Hi, how are you?
Thank you for coming out here.
I wanted to ask a
question in regards
to something that
actually appears
in the bottom of the
Declaration of Independence.
As this is talking
about equality,
I think it's worth noting the
status of Native Americans
at this time.
There is a passage within
the Declaration which
notes how the British
government and King George
were motivating the
Native Americans
to the west or the people who
were quoted in the Declaration
as being "merciless
Indian savages"
who were going through the land.
But I thought it
was a bit confusing.
Because doing some of my own
research on Thomas Jefferson,
he seemed to be pretty
forward-thinking,
in terms of American
Indians or Native Americans.
I don't know what your
preference is here in the room.
But I guess, Native
Americans works.
Cataloging Native
American languages
and stating in his writings
that Native Americans
and white Americans
should be seen as equals.
So I don't know if
this is maybe an edit
that one of the members
of Congress made
or if this was supported
by Thomas Jefferson.
But either way, how do
you think we should look
at it from either perspective?
And what would you
say the Declaration
holds, in terms of
ideas like tree rights
and stuff like that?
DANIELLE ALLEN: Thank you.
That's a super
important question.
So I pointed to compromises
around enslavement
in the Declaration.
And I did that in order
to show that there
were a diversity of
opinions around slavery
at the point of the
writing of the Declaration.
And they were contesting that.
It is not the case that you
can say the same thing really
about how the colonial Americans
of the Continental Congress
were thinking about
Native Americans.
So there is no
counterbalancing moment
in the Declaration
to the language
about merciless Indian savages.
And we have to recognize,
from my point-of-view,
that the founding of
the country does rest
on genocide of Native
Americans, in addition
to resting on enslavement.
And there is really
nothing, I think,
that you can say positively
about that passage.
So I think one has to be honest
about the fact that it's there.
So for example, sometimes if
I'm participating in an event
where people are reading
the Declaration out loud,
people will propose
to not read that line.
And I think that's actually
not the right thing
to do because, again,
I think we have
to be honest about our history.
So my goal is
always to be honest,
without slipping into
cynicism, and to be
appreciative of the good things
that the founding did achieve,
but without falling into
[INAUDIBLE] of the founding.
Because there were wrongs done.
And there were people
who knew better.
So Jefferson is an extremely
complicated figure and full
of contradictions of all kinds.
But at any point
in history, there
is always actually somebody
who is articulating
an alternative moral position.
And so I think another
thing we should avoid
is the view that they just
never knew any better.
Not many people may
have been articulating
an alternative moral viewpoint.
But it existed.
So I think we have to
talk about that honestly.
I'll add one last thing
there, which is to say,
when I talk about equality
in the Declaration, one
of the things I'm trying
to do is show people how
freedom and equality
belong together
and that the kind of
equality that I'm really
emphasizing in talking
about the Declaration
is political equality.
So you can't achieve freedom
in the space for every given
person of a sphere of agency,
unless that sphere of agency
includes being able to steer
the collective polity together.
And so you need political
equality for that.
And for all to be
free, everybody
needs access to that, which is
one of the aspects of equality.
Even though, however, I
focus on political equality,
it's also the case that
the American founding
had a huge emphasis on
economic egalitarianism.
And that shows up, for example,
in Thomas Jefferson's work
to get rid of
primogeniture-- janitor
so to change inheritance so
that states wouldn't just
consolidate in the
firstborn and develop
aristocratic estates over time.
The goal was to keep
breaking up inheritance,
so they could have lots
of middling estates.
And Thomas Paine proposed that
everybody, when they turned 18,
should get a allocation
of funding to help
them get their start in life.
And one of the most radical
versions of this was the land
lottery in Georgia, where
they gave out land--
these are equal-sized
allocations--
by lottery to men, women,
and children-- white men--
widows, and orphans.
But where did that
land come from?
It came from expropriation
from Native Americans.
And so as I see it, one
of our current challenges
is to figure out,
once again, how
to help steer our economy
in egalitarian directions.
That's not the same thing
as saying socialism.
You could absolutely
be committed
to egalitarian directions
in your own economy
without necessarily having
to be committed to socialism.
Socialism is one way
of thinking about that.
It's not the only way.
You could also have
market-oriented approaches
to an egalitarian economy.
But the job is to figure
out how to do that
without expropriating
from anybody.
And that's an example of how
we can learn from the mistakes
they made.
They understood they needed an
egalitarian economic foundation
to support a
democratic republic.
But they made the mistake of
resting that on expropriation.
AUDIENCE: During our
class, we discussed
a lot the difference between
altering the government
or abolishing it.
I wondered if, with
your close reading,
do you think they have
any suggestions of where
the bright line should
be between changing
government or abolishing it?
DANIELLE ALLEN: So
that's a great question.
And it's a hugely important one.
And you probably noticed when I
was talking about [INAUDIBLE]..
Thank you.
You probably noticed,
when I was talking
about the job of
being a citizen,
that I didn't focus
on abolishing, right?
I just focused on
altering, the fact
that we have work to
do to alter things.
And they are very
explicit actually.
Because immediately
after this sentence,
they say that
government should not
be changed for light
and transient causes.
And then they make the
case that the history
of the present king
of Great Britain
has a long history
of usurpations.
And so they're very
careful to spell out
the way in which
they've been working,
for a long period of time,
across multiple dimensions,
and receiving no
response from the king.
So in other words, the
sort of capsule lesson--
that they articulate,
at any rate--
is that you have to make
a concentrated effort
over a long period
of time and be making
no progress before you
can put on the table
the prospect of completely
overturning existing structures
and trying something new.
So in general, when I
think about the state
of our political
institutions and things
we might do to make
Congress more functional,
I talk about increasing
the size of the House
or introducing
rank choice, voting
in congressional elections
and other kinds of elections,
or achieving this
spread across all 50
states of independent,
nonpartisan, redistricting
commissions.
These are changes that
would be transformative
for our political system.
And it cannot be said
that collectively,
as an entire society, we've put
all our will into making them
over an extended period
of time and come up short.
So I feel like there is
plenty of room for us
all to be engaged in a
project of alteration,
working together with
shared purpose and will.
AUDIENCE: Well, a
notion that we can ask--
I have three.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Three questions!
Oh, man, OK--
AUDIENCE: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE].
DANIELLE ALLEN: Duck and cover.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, arguably.
So first of all, I love the idea
of having this as a dog whistle
for abolitionists.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Mm.
AUDIENCE: And I want to ask if--
DANIELLE ALLEN: It was
more than a dog whistle.
It was right out there.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, well,
so the question is--
because it's Aristotelian.
So I wanted to ask--
DANIELLE ALLEN: Mm-hm.
AUDIENCE: --if any of this
comes from Adam's reflections
are influenced by Aristotle.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Mm-hm.
AUDIENCE: That's
what [INAUDIBLE]----
DANIELLE ALLEN: Yeah, so I think
some parts of our government
absolutely dips into Aristotle.
It dips into a variety of
theological traditions as well.
And yes, it is a
[INAUDIBLE] conception
of human flourishing
conception of happiness.
AUDIENCE: Terrific.
[LAUGHTER]
Put it in the bank.
And the other is, I
wonder if maybe you've
separated principles
and organizing
organizational powers
a little too much.
Isn't it the case
that, for them--
because you see this in
the Federalist Papers--
the arguments for separation
of powers, checks and balances,
followed very closely upon
the notion of sovereignty
of the people and the notion
that they're instituting
[INAUDIBLE].
They're instituting
limited government
that they need to
form in a certain way
so as to protect those rights.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Absolutely.
Yeah-- no, that's exactly right.
The two have to be completely
connected to each other.
You organize the
powers of government
in order to deliver on the
foundations of principle
that you've committed to.
So absolutely, they go together.
But I think it's important
to see the pieces of work
as analytically distinct.
And let me give you one
more piece of evidence
for how they saw them as
analytically distinct.
So one piece of evidence
was just the fact
that they set up these
separate committees
to do the different
parts of the work,
to write the statement of
principle on the one hand
and then to organize the
powers of government.
And when it comes to the
Constitutional Convention,
1787, the Committee on Detail--
one of the members of
that is James Wilson.
It is a very much
under-acknowledged leader,
really, of the
Constitutional Convention.
He had the same level
of influence as Madison
and was esteemed
by his colleagues
in the same way for his
learning and his insight
into political
philosophy, basically.
Wilson had signed
the declaration
and then participated in the
Constitutional Convention.
And he spends the years from
1783 up until the Convention
making the case that
the original foundings
of the whole thing rested on
the Declaration of Independence.
And indeed, at
the Convention, he
reads the Declaration of
Independence out loud.
And then the Committee
on Detail takes the time
to ask the question
of whether or not--
so the Committee on Detail
was this moment where they've
gotten to a point
in the convention
where it's clear that they
can't, in the committee
of the whole, all 50-plus of
them, actually draft the thing.
They have to assign it
to about five people
to do the actual drafting.
And so that small
committee-- one
of the first things Wilson
does is ask whether or not
they need to write a new
statement of principle.
Or is the job just to rewrite
the instrument organizing
the powers of government?
And they decide they
do not need to write
a new statement of principle.
Their job is just
to re-articulate
how to organize the
powers of government.
And then subsequently, in
the Ratification Conventions
for Pennsylvania--
Wilson was a delegate
from Pennsylvania.
As he had done at
the Convention,
he stands up there
in Philadelphia
and recites this sentence.
And then he says--
I actually wrote
this down, because I
wanted to share it tonight.
This is the broad basis on which
our independence was placed.
On this same certain
and solid foundation,
this system is erected.
About this sentence he
said this-- so the draft
of the Constitution.
So the point being that
they recognized the work
on principle done in this
text as its own kind of work
and recognized the work with
the Articles of Confederation
and the Constitution as an
analytically distinct kind
of work, inseparably linked
to each other-- right?
And the language is, this
is the broad basis on which
this instrument rests--
so totally linked, but
analytically distinct.
And I just want people
to take that away.
Because we just don't really
spend enough time thinking
about our principles.
And we've gotten used to
a public life where, ooh!
Aye!
Do-do-do.
I've seen a principle in spell.
It's not so pretty out there.
And they set a
really high standard
for the kind of thought
we should all be bringing
to our democratic life.
And that's what I really want
people to see and take away.
AUDIENCE: Great.
And number three is just,
isn't the value of including
the position of the enslaved
people on their slavery
really dependent on
the prudential question
of what would happened if they
hadn't cut out that paragraph?
Because I'm thinking,
you can include
that anti-slavery moment of
Jefferson's in his complaint
about the [INAUDIBLE]
trading in slavery.
But if the result is that the
Southern states don't join
and the union is not
achieved, wouldn't you
end up with a worse situation?--
less chance, less possibility
of eventual emancipation?
DANIELLE ALLEN: See this
as one of those things.
We were talking about
this earlier today.
These are those kind of
impossible hypotheticals.
Because the truth
the matter is, we
do know one thing you would have
ended up with, which is Canada.
If there'd have
been no revolution--
in Canada is what it looks like
where there was no revolution.
And Canada did not have the
same kind of difficulties.
So the North would probably
have looked like Canada.
And then who knows
exactly what would
have happened in the South.
That would have been a different
kind of question and picture.
So there's no question
that they thought
it was pragmatically necessary
for the sake of union
to make a compromise amongst
themselves, Northern whites,
Southern whites, than
to ignore the interests
of enslaved people.
But I think that's the kind of
hypothetical we can't actually
answer, in the sense that
it would have been a much
harder thing, without
any doubt, to achieve
moral consensus at that point
in time on the fundamental wrong
of enslavement and to
have refused to build
a society on that basis.
But what if they tried?
We don't actually know
what that would look like.
We really don't.
There's no way to say
what that would actually
have looked like.
Therefore, there's actually
no way we can assess--
would things have
changed faster or slower
if they had not made
this pragmatic decision?
AUDIENCE: At first,
I want to thank you
for an excellent closed reading.
I really appreciated it.
My question is outside the
text and inspired by the title
of the [INAUDIBLE]
from "our" Declaration.
In my experience of the
Declaration today and teaching
young people for
25 years, is I find
that they find the
Declaration both to be
a dead dogma, in that they think
they know everything about it
already.
And at the same time, they have
fundamentally contradictory
ideas about the principles.
And so on the one hand,
if you asked them,
should all people who have
never hurt anybody else
have the right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness?
And do you believe
in human rights?
They all say, yes.
And then if you ask
them, do you think
that these are
"true" rights that
somehow exist beyond our
subjective preferences?--
they get extremely
uncomfortable.
Many will just say, no.
They're not true.
And they don't believe in truth.
They're not comfortable
with the language of truth.
And others will say,
well, it's my truth.
But I would never say
it's anybody else's truth
or should be forced
on anybody else.
And so we have a generation
that's fundamentally
uncomfortable with principle.
So I have two questions.
One, is that your
experience with students?
And two, what do
you do about it?
DANIELLE ALLEN: What
do I do about it?
So thank you.
That's a really
important question.
So I do have that experience.
I do have that experience.
And yes, you're
right that we do have
not just a generation but,
I think, a broader society,
in all honesty, that
has lost its grip
on the concept of truth.
So I suppose what I do is I
articulate my own position
in relationship to
that question and talk
about it with students.
My own position on that
question is that, yes,
I take there to be truth.
And I take it that it is my
job, as a thinking person,
to seek the truth.
But I also take it that it's
my job, as a thinking person,
to do that with humility
and with an expectation
that I am fallible.
And so the best I will
ever be able to do
is to make fallible
judgments about what
I take to be the truth.
And so that's
something which we do
have to debate with
each other, absolutely.
It's not going to
be the case where
I'm going to stand up and
say, I know the truth.
It's been revealed to me
in some perfect way that
can never be questioned.
But I will always tell you that
I have made my best judgment.
I will provide my evidence
and my arguments for it.
I will absolutely convey that
I recognize my own fallibility.
And I will ask you to
show me my mistakes.
And I try to exhibit that over
and over again in my classroom
and to win students
over by helping
them see the value
of a commitment
to truth, the fact that the
rest of our standards of ethics
and moral commitment
to each other
actually depend, in
the first instance,
on our commitment to
truthfulness as a character
trait.
AUDIENCE: Does it work?
DANIELLE ALLEN: Well,
it's a great question.
I mean, that's a good question.
I hope it works.
I hope it works.
In my experience, I
find, I don't, over time,
have any difficulty talking to
my students about principles.
So I find myself quite able to
engage my students in arguments
and debates about principles.
So I suppose, in that
sense, it must work,
because they do participate
with me in these discussions.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Hello.
AUDIENCE: I really
appreciated your lecture.
It was very interesting.
My question is, how do we know
that people are fundamentally
created equal?
It's pretty easy to
say that it's a truth
and that it's self-evident.
But in which ways
are we supposed
to see the fundamental
equality that they ascribe?
Or do we have to just take
from, like, a natural rights
sort of perspective and
just assert it and just
have that be the end
of the discussion.
DANIELLE ALLEN: So thank you.
That's a great question.
So I could spend a little
bit more time on the concept
of self-evidence here.
And this might be slightly--
slightly-- annoying,
because I'm very
technical about it,
which is not what people want.
We're so used to giving the
concept of self-evidence
almost a mystical significance.
But that is really not
how it's working here.
So philosophers talk
about syllogisms
as a way of
structuring arguments,
where the conclusion follows
necessarily from the premises.
And the traditional example is
that human beings are mortal.
Bill Gates is a human being.
Bill Gates will die.
Which is interesting, because
we so lionize Bill Gates
that we kind of forget
that he's going to die just
like the rest of us.
He's no different from the
rest of us, in that regard.
But the point is that, the
conclusion is logically
entailed by the premises.
That's what self-evident means.
So what self-evidence
is referring to here
is the structure of an assertion
of premises about human beings
have rights, an assertion about
governments being instituted
to secure rights, and
then the conclusion that
follows from that
is the relationship
among these truths, which is the
relationship of self-evidence.
Now, that leaves your
question on the table,
which is, where do those
first two premises come from?
The one about human beings
being equal and having rights
and human beings
instituting government.
And that first premise--
there are two different ways
that you can see it as coming.
So one way that is offered
here is the view that--
a divine picture--
people are created.
And in being created, there
is a certain equality.
But there is another
way of seeing that too,
which is the way that
you get to through sort
or nature's laws from the
previous sentence, which
is simply that you
look around the world.
And over time, everywhere across
societies, every day, day in
and day out, human
beings are trying
to have a tomorrow that
is better than yesterday.
And it's that effort that human
beings make, that act of agency
that we all share.
That's it.
That's the whole story
of human equality.
And the question is,
once we recognize
that about human beings--
and that is a thing
that we recognize
through observation.
It's an empirical claim
about human beings as a kind,
as a creature, as
a species kind,
of a thing that we share--
is that engine of agency,
as we seek to build
a path to something
better tomorrow than
we had yesterday.
So then there's a question
about, well, given that
about human beings,
what's the right thing
to have happen for human beings?
And the thought
there is, basically,
if human beings all have
this kernel of agency
and that agency is directed
towards this improvement
of experience for itself or
towards flourishing, then
in order to make good on that,
to let that achieve what it can
achieve, human beings
need a structure
of freedom and participation
in collective institutions.
That is, it's not to have
personal freedom if you're
subject to a set of
social constraints
that you had no role
in helping to create.
If you're going to be the
agent charting your own path,
you need freedom protected
both through individual rights
but also through the
rights to participate--
public autonomy, political
participation, and so forth.
So you get from a basic
observation about human beings
and that kernel of agency--
human moral equality--
to a subsequent argument
about the need for
political equality,
to recognize and make
good on that basic kernel
of human moral equality.
I hope that helps.
I know it's not a
complete answer.
Yours was a deep question.
AUDIENCE: I have a
shallower question.
[LAUGHTER]
Later on in the
Declaration, there's
a litany of charges
against the king.
And I'd like to know whether
you think that litany of charges
sheds any light on what
the founders thought of as
high crimes and misdemeanors.
[LAUGHTER]
DANIELLE ALLEN:
OK-- all righty--
so I think everything that's in
that litany is basically also
in the Constitution,
in effect, implicitly.
So let me just try to say
that's in the grievances
and then let's see if I can
connect that as an answer
to your question.
So the grievances are structured
in a beautiful way, where
there's a first set
that are complaints
about legislative
functions and then
a set of complaints
about judicial functions
and then a set of complaints
about executive functions.
So the grievances are
actually structured
to lay out the kinds of
three branches of power
and to set some
standards for what
you should expect in
the operations of each
of those branches.
And you got quite
a beautiful picture
of what counts as
good governance
from the inversion
of the grievances.
And so, yes, I think
you can extract
from all those
sets of grievances
particular examples
of things that
counted as high crimes
and misdemeanors,
on the part of King George.
What they come down
to fundamentally
is whether or not
the key elements
of a structure that secure our
rights are being undermined.
And so I think that's basically
the question, if we're
considering the
president's actions,
the question is whether or
not the president's actions
undermine any of
the key [INAUDIBLE]
for this institutional structure
that guarantees and secures
rights.
So he takes a constitutional
oath of office
to faithfully execute the laws
and defend the Constitution.
And in so doing,
that commitment is
to that institutional structure
that guarantees rights.
So that's the question.
Once one is clear about what the
president's actions have been,
have they in fact worked
to fundamentally undermine
the structure of institutions
that protects our rights?
That's the question.
AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.
So in the long-form
argument of our Declaration,
you develop this theory
of democratic writing.
And I was so moved by
that section of the book,
because it thinks about how
folks are getting together
to try to learn things about
questions that they don't have
answers to and that democratic
writing involves people,
thinking through questions,
doing research, and doing
the actual work of
inscription, and then
listening to the
correspondence from other folks
in the conversation.
And it struck me as a
pretty tight analogy
for what we might be trying to
do at a university classroom,
even if we're not talking
about political theory.
And so I wondered if you
could talk with us about some
of the dispositions
that the founders had
to their own
questions that helped
them to come to these
principal conclusions.
Or are there, by
contrast, examples
of dispositions they had
to their own questions
that were not so helpful?
DANIELLE ALLEN: Hm, that's a
super interesting question.
Thank you.
So let me think about
that for a second.
There is something that
they did that I've always
had trouble articulating.
So it's something I can do, but
I have trouble describing it.
And it is to accept the idea
that you go into a conversation
not knowing what the answer
will be but having agreed
on a question and believing
that the people participating
in the conversation will
collectively achieve
an answer by the end
of the conversation
that no individual coming
in could have predicted.
Does that makes sense?--
and to have faith
in the value of that process.
And the reason to have
faith is the value
of that process is because
each of us has a partial view--
can't see everything.
And so we will
get better answers
if we can actually pool
our intellectual resources
with others.
So there's that faith in pooling
of our intellectual resources
and openness to the
unpredictability
of the answer-- or the
surprise of the answer.
I'll just give you one
tiny little example
of a place where I recently
experienced this or felt
the power of it.
So I am part of a large
consortium of people trying
to-- we just got a
grant from the NEH
and Department of Education
to develop a kind of road map
for civic education
for the country.
And it's a terrific group.
And it's cross-ideological
or trans-partisan
or multi-partisan
or whatever you
want to call it when
you're getting people
from a lot of
different perspectives.
And some of you
will know-- and I
think one of the
questions earlier
came from a place of-- there's
a debate in this country about
whether or not we're a
democracy or a republic.
Like, which word
are we actually?
I think that's a red
herring of a debate.
The founders used both terms.
Hamilton described us as
a representative democracy
in the same years and time that
Madison used the vocabulary
republic.
So I think it's just a
complete red herring, frankly,
to have that argument.
The result of thinking
that it's a red herring
is I've been going
around referring
to what we are as a
democratic republic, which
doesn't sound very good.
Nobody really likes that one.
And it conjures up all kinds
of failed states and things
like that have gone
by the same label.
So anyway, in this civic
education consortium,
the first thing
you have to do is
figure out what you're
actually trying to do.
Like, what are we educating for?
And we're like,
is it a democracy?
Is it a republic?
Is a democratic republic?
What is it?
And you're really stuck
on that kind of question.
And so what has emerged
out of our conversation?
Well, we're working on
the education you need
for a constitutional democracy.
Yeah, that's right.
That works as a solution
to our long-standing,
slightly weird-- if
you ask me-- debate
about our very vocabulary for
describing who and what we are.
And we only got there because
we had a shared question
and were willing to
engage in a process
where we didn't know what
the answer would be before we
started the conversation.
AUDIENCE: Just a small aside on
the question of their habits--
one interesting thing is, in
the Constitutional Convention,
when they justify
secrecy early on,
it's because they're
afraid that people
will be entrenched in the
positions they identify
themselves with early on.
And so--
DANIELLE ALLEN: Yeah,
that's a great point.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, so it's-- the
ability to change your mind
actually requires
discipline and structure--
AUDIENCE: Yep.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Exactly.
AUDIENCE: --rather than it
being a natural instinct.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Absolutely--
no, that's absolutely right.
And protection-- the
space of confidentiality.
And in fact, there's a lot of
good research at this point
that lots of our "sunlight"
laws and the mega transparency
around Congress is one of the
causes of our dysfunction--
that it's so hard
for Congress people
to actually have off-record
confidential conversations
where they can take a chance,
where they can have something
be unpredictable, where
it's not a message
to send out, that they
can't function any longer.
So I think that's
something that we have
[AUDIO OUT] real thought to.
I also want to just--
thank you for reminding me--
cite Benjamin
Franklin, because it's
another aspect of
this ethos where,
at the very end of the
Constitutional Convention,
he says basically, I'm
not going to pretend
I think this thing is perfect.
Though, whether there could be a
more perfect thing-- neither do
I have any confidence in that.
But here end
[AUDIO OUT] payments.
I'm going to bury all
of my reservations,
all my other opinions.
I am going to sign
on to endorse this.
And the world will never
know which parts of this I
was less enthusiastic about.
And so that's
another piece of it.
Be willing to sacrifice
the completion
of your own personal set
of opinions and commitments
for the sake of the
thing that the group has
developed together.
I think we've got
another student back
there-- yep-- as well.
AUDIENCE: So there is
a growing sentiment,
I think, in the
economics profession--
it's definitely existed in
political theory going back,
I guess, to Plato.
But there's a sentiment
that people don't
know what's right for them.
George Akerlof and Robert
Shiller wrote a great book
on the subject.
So I just wonder how
dangerous is that sentiment
to these principles?
DANIELLE ALLEN: Well, I
always say, economists
don't know what's
good for people.
So--
[LAUGHTER]
--it's mutual!
They might think that about me.
But I think that about them!
[LAUGHTER]
So yeah, it's super dangerous.
And actually, I would say
that that point-of-view,
from the point-of-view
of economists,
is another part of the
explanation for why
we are where we are currently
in our political world.
So we have given far too
much authority to economists
and have failed to invite
them, in their policy-making,
to integrate the perspective
of ordinary people
on their policy proposals.
So I have a piece that came
out in the Atlantic yesterday.
And the long stretch of
it is about this actually.
But I was just really
struck, in 2016,
by hearing more than once
from economists friends who
said things--
like, about
globalization-- well,
we knew it would cause a 20-year
dislocation in the economy.
But I never thought
about what 20 years feels
like in the life of one person.
And that's a really
important way
of capturing the
mistake economists make,
which is that they're
thinking in the macro,
thinking in aggregate terms.
Their thinking in measures
like GDP and so forth,
our average income, et
cetera, and not actually
understanding what
transformation
in a particular life looks like.
So I think the work of
Agnes Deaton and Ann Case
recently, which is focused
on depths of despair,
the increase in
suicides and things
like that, particularly in
working class populations
without high school degrees--
is a starting point
for economists
to reacquire the
ability to figure out
what life looks like from
the point-of-view of people
actually living in
the effects of policy.
And I think, there's
been just too much
of a disconnect between how
economists have approached
policy and the kinds
of knowledge that
comes from lived
experience in communities
going through transformation.
And we really need to
rebuild that connection.
So economics is valuable, if
it can partner with the people.
AUDIENCE: There's
another student there.
AUDIENCE: OK-- yeah.
Please.
DANIELLE ALLEN: So I know
you're an Econ major.
So sorry if I--
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Hi.
My question is in regards
to the phrase, whenever
any form of government
becomes destructive,
because I find that
term "destructive"
is quite arbitrary and is
open to several different
interpretations.
So what do we, as a
society do, when half of us
believe that the government
is very destructive
while the other half
believes that we're
living in a golden age?
DANIELLE ALLEN:
Yeah-- no, that's
a hugely important question.
And I think there are multiple
parts to the answer to that.
So I think any healthy
democracy depends
on a virtuous circle
of mutual influence
between a healthy
political culture
and civil society and healthy
political institutions.
And so it can be tempting, when
we think about polarization
and so forth, to say, well,
we need more conversations
with each other or we need more
civility or something like that
or we need this kind of attitude
towards group writing that we
were just talking about.
And I think we do need that.
But I think, there's no
point in asking for that
if you have political
institutions that
are structuring
incentives in ways
that work towards polarization
and towards division.
And we do.
So I think you
actually have to reform
the political institutions
at the same time
that you're trying to rebuild a
culture where people reach out
across lines of difference to
have the kinds of shared values
conversations I was describing.
And let me just give you one
very concrete example of what
I mean about that reform.
I've mentioned this already.
But I'm a big advocate of
ranked choice voting, which
is when you go into an
election and you don't just
vote for your first
choice, but you
vote for your second and your
third and your fourth as well.
And so then, if your first
choice is one of the low vote
getters, your votes drop out.
And your vote goes to
your second choice person.
And the result of
that is that winners
will be people who have
actual majorities, not
pluralities for starters.
But more importantly-- and
there is empirical evidence
to support this--
people campaign differently
in ranked choice elections.
And the reason for this
is because, you want to be
somebody's-- not just
their first choice.
But you want to be somebody's
second choice and third choice
too.
So there's no point in
demonizing your opponents.
And so rate choice
voting starts to generate
a kind of political ecosystem
where people are campaigning
more to the middle, in
more moderate weights
and in more positive ways,
less demonizing of opponents,
and so forth.
So I think there are actually
institutional changes that
could help us have incentive
structures that would support
a healthier culture.
And then we can all engage
in those healthy cultural
practices of reaching
out across divides
and expect it genuinely
to get some traction
and make a difference and
start making forward progress.
So we have to do both of those
things together, I think.
I think there's time
for one last question.
So it should be
somebody who hasn't had
a chance to ask a question yet.
I'm not sure--
OK.
AUDIENCE: Hi there.
Thank you once again for coming.
I wanted to specifically
ask you about your concerns
with division.
I just read,
actually, your essay
in the Atlantic,
which I appreciated.
It was very good.
But I was wondering
how much of this
is, perhaps, a nostalgia
for an ahistorical period.
Like, postwar America
was a unique time
in which the end of, literally,
wartime nationalism under FDR,
the threat of communism--
many other factors of how
the press operated
at the time created
a really unique and
frankly ahistorical
low partisanship era.
This was not how, normally,
America has functioned.
And it seems to me,
we are increasingly
moving away from that time
period, for many reasons.
So I'm just curious
to some degree--
and I agree, we need
these institutions
in a democracy to work
and legislation to pass.
But to the broader question of--
will people suddenly start
becoming friendly to one
another, in terms of
partisanship [INAUDIBLE]?--?--
I'm curious if you think
that it's so simple, given
that, with the exception
really of the post-war era
and those unique conditions,
American partisanship has
been pretty bitter.
In, I think, the 1910
census, the Republicans
literally just didn't
conduct a census,
because it would give more
votes basically to the cities
that the immigrants
had moved into.
So they just didn't
conduct one for 10 years.
That's one example
that comes to mind
of just how often it's been
the case of playing hardball.
So I'm curious of your thoughts.
DANIELLE ALLEN: No, I
appreciate those good questions.
So it's not
nostalgia in my case.
I think there are versions of
the argument that absolutely
are nostalgic.
But it's just basically not
possible, I don't think--
I shouldn't make
such a broad claim.
I would find it
highly surprising,
actually, for any
African-American,
in all honesty, to
be able to offer
a nostalgic point-of-view.
So post-war was
also Emmett Till.
Post-war was when my
dad left the South.
And the story I
grew up with was,
I left the South because I
was tired of feeling, when
is somebody going to jump out
from behind a tree and shout,
get that nigger.
So I can say that word.
I know, everybody else can't.
So I apologize for that kind of
equity in access to vocabulary.
But that is the
story I grew up with.
And so it's the
story I have to tell
to be true to my own history.
So at any rate,
it's not nostalgic.
But then the question
is, is it realistic,
given that we have
a country that
is built on contestation
and conflict, and not
just the partisan conflict
but also race conflict?--
as I just pointed to.
And in fact, there
is a way in which
you could look at our current
division and polarization
and say, that's success!
That means everybody's voice is
finally in the public sphere!
We're hearing everybody.
That's why it's so noisy!
Right?
You could think, whoa-hoa!
We're moving in the
right direction actually.
And I think there's
some truth to that,
in fact, that we actually
have to recognize contestation
as, actually, success.
Like, we've got people's
voices in the public sphere.
So in that regard,
I actually feel
like I'm trying to set
the marker further out.
And I feel like what
I'm trying to do
is set the marker on a
place where we can genuinely
build a multiracial democracy,
where, for me, the stress is
as much on the word "democracy"
as on the word "multiracial."
And I think we
spend a lot of time
talking about the multiracial
or multicultural part.
We don't spend enough time
talking about the democracy
part.
And that's what I'm
trying to get us to spend
more time on basically.
But thank you.
It was a really
fantastic question.
[APPLAUSE]
TOM MERRILL: Dr. Allen,
[INAUDIBLE] thank you.
And it's been a
wonderful evening.
DANIELLE ALLEN: Thank you.
TOM MERRILL: And thank you all.
[APPLAUSE]
