The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment

Rating:
Summary: A must for teachers of government or constitutional law
Review: Makes clear how the "framers' intent" can only be understood through the dense network of classical allusions in which they expressed their ideas and from which they took most of them. A beautiful example of how the "framers' intent" is inaccessible to us and not something we should want to emulate anyway.

Rating:
Summary: An American Classic
Review: Richards asserts through this book that the "classics," being the ancient Greco-Roman historical/literary tradition, were the primary influence upon the American Founders through their education and socialization. The Founders' theories of government, their views on human nature, nature, and virtue, were all classical in essence and origin. The classical education of these great men gave them the impetus for the American Revolution, models and anti-models for the creation of the Constitution, and heavily influenced the overall worldview of the Founders despite the discrepancies and disagreements amongst themselves towards the classics.
Carl J. Richard is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and a scholar of American Intellectual history. The purpose of this pioneering work was to spread more light on the educational and philosophical influences upon the historically important personages of the late colonial, revolutionary and early republican periods of American history.
Richard's arsenal of evidence includes the private and public correspondence of early American educators and the Founders, the records of the Federal Constitutional Convention and of the state ratifying conventions, the published writings of the Founders, and historical works by later American historians of the early American time period. Richards addresses his evidence critically and openly, and presents compelling arguments for his thesis.

Classical education produced men of intellect and virtue by instilling in the young the character traits of critical thinking, a love for liberty (and subsequently a fear of tyranny), a sense of civic duty and pride, and by presenting them with models of morality. Besides, an intimate knowledge of the ancients could elevate one into the "natural aristocracy" of early American public life. Richard's discussion of the use of classical symbols by the Founders to legitimate their arguments in the eyes of the public and of their peers is excellent. Hamilton, for example, not only used the names of classical heroes for his pseudonyms, as most of the Founders did, but chose names of men whose challenges and situations uncannily mirrored his own. Richards also presents how influential and important classical models and anti-models for government were to the debates and deliberations at the federal and state constitutional conventions. Whilst a few dared to question the validity of the classical canon and its applicability to the American experiment at all, the majority of both Federalists and Anti-Federalists invoked the authority of the classics to legitimate and substantiate their arguments and viewpoints. The philosophy and religious views of the Founders were also a unique blend of classical philosophy, primitive Christianity, and the religious skepticism of the Enlightenment. The Founders reliance upon "reason," our divinely granted innate ability to sort out truth from falsehood, was also a classical intellectual heirloom.
Not all of the Founders were completely enamored of classical learning though. Some of the Founders, especially among the Anti-Federalists, whose arguments for a simple democracy were for the most part defeated by classical allusions, sought to mitigate the influence of the classics in the constitutional debates by stating that America was uniquely birthed and situated, and therefore past historical experiences could not and did not apply. Several of the Founders, including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush and Thomas Paine, even crusaded against the necessity of learning the classical languages at all in the post-Constitutional education system. While acknowledging the importance of the study of ancient history to the development of the intellectual and moral character of the young, they saw the forced acquisition of foreign languages, especially dead languages, to be a severe hindrance to development of American youth. So strong was the classical conditioning of the early American era that these education reformers, in spite of their prominence as leading men of their country and their times, were thoroughly chastised and reprimanded. The classics and especially classical history, as the link between the past and the present of Western Civilization, were deemed, at the time, sacred and untouchable.
This book is an excellent addition to the history of the early American period and an original book. It distinctly and uniquely approaches the classical influence on the Founders in a comprehensive and scholarly way. While there are a few articles covering this topic, this is the first book-length study of its kind. With the great foundation laid out in this book for further study in early American intellectual history, I'm positive it will not be the last book of its kind either. The only fault I can find with this book is that Richards defines several of the most important phrases and terms he uses throughout the book in his preface, but fails to define "classical republicanism" and "liberalism;" terms which he uses continually throughout the book. By not assuming that everyone reading this book is completely informed on its subject, and by defining these terms, this book would easily stand on its own.
In the present time, with so many different interest groups and factions seeking to monopolize the American Founders and their ideas for themselves and their cause alone, Richards presents a timely and brilliant work whose light dispels much of the current misinformation and myths surrounding the Founders. While Richards presents the American Founders as high-minded men of honor and intellect, he does not deify them. He exposes their contradictions, usually unconscious to themselves, and their disunity. Few would argue that the Founders were not great men, but we must always remember that they were still simply human. Though humans heavily influenced by the classics, and "It is impossible to read a passage in Plato or Tully [Cicero] and a thousand other ancient moralists without being a greater and better man for it" (quote from Addison, 176).
Historians of the classics and of the Founders alike will find this book enlightening, refreshing, and essential to their scholarly work. Anyone deeply interested in the formation and foundation of our great country will be truly happy to have read The Founders and the Classics as it will clarify and deepen our understanding of the Founders and the cultural, philosophical, and social world in which they lived.