Friday, August 28, 2015

Common Sense, Part XV: the Radical and the Real

            With any luck this will be the last in what has become a terribly (terribly) lengthy series of posts about Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense. I thank my audience, as ever, for bearing with me lo these many weeks. Your patience is in every way the equal of your taste, and may I say that you smell very nice as well.

            Anyway…

            Before I sign off from this particular endeavour I’d like to discuss two final elements of Common Sense that I feel are important enough to receive some mention yet abstract enough not to have come up during my overly-exhaustive rundown of the same. One is the level to which Paine made use of particularly radical, nay incendiary, language over the course of his four-part political and social manifesto, while the other concerns the possible influence on said document of some of the philosophy native to the Scottish Enlightenment. I will dispense with these hopefully brief examinations...now.

            I recognize that I mentioned at the very beginning of this exercise that one of the things that defined Paine’s rhetorical voice was his abiding and often irreverent radicalism. Hopefully my examination of various elements of Common Sense has provided ample evidence of the same. That being said, I feel the need to emphasize one last time before parting how strongly said radicalism set Paine apart from his 18th-century contemporaries. Returning to some of the examples I deployed earlier, allow me to pull from Jefferson, and from John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767-1768) in order to show how the British monarchy, for example, was usually referred to in orthodox 18th-century American political rhetoric. Turning first to Dickinson’s Letters, which will be discussed in greater detail in weeks to come, one finds a tone of, if not deference then at least a degree of habitual respect. In Letter II, for example, Dickinson discussed the recent use, which he opposed, made by the British Parliament of taxes on goods imported into the colonies for the purpose of raising revenue. Throughout, Dickinson reserved the greatest share of his scorn for Parliament and its ministers. The King, who was referred to more than once, is by comparison characterized more as an important part of a large and complicated machine than an agent of causation or a source of ill intention.

            Similar portrayals of the British monarch can be found in Letter VI and Letter VII. Rather than excoriate monarchy in general, or even the British monarch in particular, Dickinson therein placed blame for the conflict between the Thirteen Colonies and the Crown on the shoulders of British politicians. The latter contained quite an explicit declaration of the same. “I do verily believe,” Dickinson wrote, “that the late act of parliament, imposing duties on paper, etc. was formed by Mr. Greenville, and his party.” Consequently George III was not the true cause of America’s woes; for, “As it is usual in Great Britain, to consider the King’s speech as the speech of the ministry, it may be right here to consider this act as the act of a party.” According to John Dickinson, or at least to his pen, partisan politics rather than monarchy itself or a specific monarch, were to blame for the imperial crisis that in the 1760s was threatening to tear the American colonies from their accustomed sovereign. While Dickinson himself may have disagreed with the way George III in particular seemed to bow unhesitatingly to the whims of his ministers, he did not say as much. In his Letters the British Monarch was still something of an august, if distant, personage, and was deserving of a certain degree of respect.      

            In contrast to the cautious and deliberate Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson was reliably among the most radical and outspoken of the Founding Fathers. He rarely seemed to hesitate before speaking his mind, and his historical reputation is arguably built on a series of impassioned quotations that often display more eloquence and zeal than good sense.  That being said, a degree of reticence seems to abide in his Revolutionary-era writings that prevented him from decrying monarchy outright. A Summary View of the Rights of British North America, published in 1774, referred with relative frequency to specific British kings with the respectful title “his majesty,” and in less specific cases used the same form of address on its own. Though it should be remembered that at the time of publication the Revolution had yet to begin, this still strikes as an unusually deferential style of reference for the Sage of Monticello.

            The text of the Declaration of Independence, as it turns out, is only slightly less courteous.  Therein Jefferson spoke of the “present king of Great Britain” as having overseen, “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” This is, in fact, the only mention of George III, and an oblique one at that. Though what followed was a fairly exhaustive list of the many and various ways the British Crown had visited harm upon the Thirteen Colonies and their respective populations, the monarchy itself, as a concept, is not really called into question. Indeed, the thrust of Jefferson’s argument, as discussed in this same blog many moons ago, was not a literal denunciation of all forms of hereditary kingship but rather an attempt to justify casting off the authority of one king in particular. By arguing that he and his fellow colonists were exercising their right as a free people to revolt against a government that had become unjust, Jefferson thereby spoke to a specific context rather than a general one. Presumably if the government of George III had been more favourably inclined towards its colonial subjects, and had avoided infringing upon their traditional rights and privileges, Jefferson would have had no cause to declare his and his associates desire for separation.

            As compared to these two men, among the intellectual guiding lights of the American Revolution, Paine appears as something akin to a schoolyard bully. Whereas Dickinson characterized the British monarchy as having been misused by corrupt ministers, and Jefferson seemed to find George III a particularly incompetent example of leadership within a system that was in itself theoretically sound, Paine spared no venom in attempting to tear apart and delegitimize the very concept of inherited kingship. “There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy,” he wrote in the twentieth paragraph of the first section of Common Sense, and thereby set the tone for what would follow. Over the course of said pamphlet Paine variously declared that inherited monarchy was the, “most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry”, that William the Conqueror was a “French bastard” and hereditary succession the parallel of original sin, and that George III was variously a “hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England” and the “Royal Brute of Britain.” He had, unlike his contemporaries Dickinson and Jefferson, no interest in being courteous or deferential to the British king. Nor did he seem inclined to excuse the flaws he perceived in the monarchical system of government as the consequence of poor political leadership or the flaws of a particular king. Monarchy, Paine proclaimed in no uncertain terms, was a corrupt, sinful, and manifestly illogical form of government under which no one could expect to live a life of safety and prosperity. It had been so since its inception, he asserted, and the only remedy for those suffering under its crushing weight was total emancipation.

            The disparity between Paine and his fellow Revolutionaries was not simply a matter of tone, however, but concerned a fundamental difference of methodology. Dickinson and Jefferson approached their work, and their audience, in a very elevated, scholarly fashion. They argued from a place of logic, laid out their claims in an almost forensic, evidence-based manner, and maintained at all times a restrained, unemotional voice. In many ways the literature they each generated prior to and during the Revolution are best understood as something alike to political essays. Both considered themselves educated, cultured gentlemen, and they accordingly approached the conflict between the Crown and the Colonies in a deliberative, lawyer-like fashion (fitting, since they were both trained attorneys) that sought to justify resistance in philosophical, legal and moral terms. Thomas Paine, conversely, was an intelligent, though only partially educated, middling bureaucrat and man of business whose origins were distinctly humble. The pamphlet he wrote in late 1775 and saw published in early 1776 in favor of American independence was neither scholarly nor an essay. Indeed, it wasn't trying to be either. Common Sense was a clear, concise, at-times visceral, irreverent, and emotional manifesto that sought to appeal to the gut reactions of its audience rather than their objectivity.

            Dickinson and Jefferson, the greatest 18th-century detective team that never was, attempted to speak to men of their own class in a manner that prevailed upon their sense of propriety, as well as any feelings of injustice. Both felt, in their own way, that their case against the British Crown was a reasonable one, and wished to give potential critics no excuse to characterize them as hysterical or irrational. Paine conversely let fly at first opportunity with extraordinarily vitriolic rhetoric whose purpose was to whip his audience into a lather and then direct them at an appropriate object of scorn. Some of them were almost certainly dyed-in-the-wool Loyalists, and were repelled almost immediately; perhaps an equal number were already of his opinion, and needed no convincing. Another third, however, were likely unconvinced either way. Maybe they had long suspected that monarchy was an unjust system but felt it improvident to say so out loud. Perhaps their sense of spiritual or moral propriety was irked somewhat by what they perceived as the manifestly un-Christian way the British monarchy carried on. Neither group, however, was likely to act on their own unless someone or something came along and showed them in no uncertain terms that they were not alone. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was almost certainly intended to do just that. By being outrageous, provocative, and oft-times slightly vulgar, he gave permission to others among his fellow colonists to cast off any lingering sense of propriety and embrace the cause of revolution.

            Cue the rising strains of Hail Columbia…

            As I pause to wipe away a tear I see that we've come at last to the final element of Common Sense I wish to discuss. As I think has become clear by now I do enjoy drawing connections between the events and in particular the documents of the American Revolution and their various influences and antecedents. During an early examination of the Declaration of Independence, for instance, I attempted to impress upon my dear, dear readers how much that documented owed to both the political philosophy of John Locke and the example set by the British Bill of Rights of 1689. The American Revolution, though in many ways an exceptional event, did not spring fully-formed from the head of Washington with all its intellectual underpinnings intact. Rather it was the product of centuries of colonial American history, European philosophical exploration and Western political innovation. In this same vein, many of the underlying intellectual sensibilities at play in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense can be traced back to earlier, non-American precursors. Specifically, the manner in which Paine seemed to depend on his audience being able to distinguish between good and bad propositions when phrased in a straightforward manner appears to owe much to the concept known to the Scottish Enlightenment as Common Sense Realism.

            Briefly, the Scottish Enlightenment was period in the history of Scotland covering the better part of the 18th century during which changes to the social, economic and political fabric of the country resulting in a flourishing of the arts, science, education, literacy, philosophy, industry, and commerce. Said changes were largely the result of the 1707 Act of Union, a piece of legislation accepted by the English and Scottish Parliaments which united the two countries and formed the Kingdom of Great Britain. What followed was a mass migration of Scottish politicians, aristocrats and ministers to the seat of the newly-enlarged government in London. Left behind were scores of lawyers and legal scholars, doctors, scientists, ministers, architects, philosophers, and educators who effectively took the place of the absent elite. Over the course of the following century they redefined Scotland as a major European centre of scientific, medical and philosophical education, advanced economics, and innovative engineering. Common Sense Realism was one of the products of this intellectual renaissance, and which bears the stamp of Scottish culture’s stereotypical pragmatism.

            Commonly attributed to the work of minster and doctor of philosophy Thomas Reid (1710-1796), historian Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), and mathematician Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), Common Sense Realism, or Common Sense Philosophy, holds that all people possess an innate ability to perceive and evaluate certain common concepts. This “common sensibility” forms, these men argued, the fundamental epistemological bedrock of understanding from which all philosophical inquiry could proceed.

            Not very helpful, right?

            Well, perhaps it’s important to understand that Common Sense Philosophy was originally devised by Reid in opposition to something called the Theory of Ideas. First described by French 17th-centruy philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650), the Theory of Ideas, or Idealism, argues that reality is fundamentally the product of our individual minds. There is, accordingly, no way to determine the true or objective nature of the world because each of us are absolutely incapable of perceiving it outside of our senses and the mind that interprets them. A common, schoolyard exercise along these lines involves, say, the nature of color. What I perceive as the color blue and what you perceive as the color blue may not actually look at all the same in the abstract, objective sense. My blue may be your red, for example. Neither of us have any way on knowing this, however, because when asked to point to the color blue we will both gesture toward the same thing, and because we neither of us have the ability to experience the world outside of our own heads. This, Descartes and other Idealist thinkers posited, was potentially problematic, and entire schools of thought thereafter developed from this intellectual basis that attempted to grapple with the supposedly subjective nature of reality.

            Reid and other Scottish Enlightenment figures were unsatisfied with the level of abstraction Idealist philosophy seemed to promote. Indeed, they regarded the thoroughgoing skepticism of the Idealists as rather absurd, and accordingly sought to combat it by establishing a basis of common, consensual knowledge upon which to structure an understanding of experienced and un-experienced reality. This difference between these two, which I fear is not obvious, is that experienced reality is what we can perceive directly with our senses, while un-experienced reality is what we perceive “second-hand.” The house where I live, for instance, is an example of the former, while Paris, France (to which I have never been) for me forms part of the latter. Regardless of whether we perceive something directly or indirectly, however, Reid believed that, “there are certain principles […] which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them.” These principles, he declared, “are what we call the principles of common sense.” Because we are, as a species, incapable of perceiving reality any other way but via our senses, Reid argued that we must then take for granted that what we perceive is real and true. This is what is known as a highly empirical or scientific form of philosophy, whereby knowledge is rooted in experience and evidence and is thus subject to constant revision.

            This is, I understand, rather heady stuff, and you can be forgiven for speculating how it is I'm going to wend my way back from such a weighty and at-times obtuse digression. The reason I saw fit to bring Common Sense Philosophy to the forefront for the moment is because I perceive in its basic principles an acute similarity with the style of rational argument put forward by Thomas Paine in Common Sense. The practical, everyday implication of the Realism of Reid and his colleagues is that every person, regardless of birth, education or experience, possesses the same innate ability to perceive and evaluate the world around them. George III of the United Kingdom, for example, and a farm labourer from Worcester, Massachusetts could thus be said to hold within them the same inherent capacity to observe and judge the quality of an object, person, or concept. Indeed, the Realists stressed, this needed to be so for knowledge to have any objective meaning at all, and not simply evaporate in a cloud of abstractions once somebody began poking at the idea of my reality vs. your reality. Stripped of its larger metaphysical implications, this is precisely the same assumption Thomas Paine based so many of his arguments on in that most famous of American Revolutionary pamphlets.

            By seeking to address the common inhabitants of the American colonies, and by phrasing his many and various assertions in a plain, unadorned rhetorical style, Paine demonstrated a fundamental faith in the ability of his audience to understand and evaluate certain key ideas and concepts. The citizens of the Thirteen Colonies were not, he knew, a terribly well-educated bunch. But the capability he attempted to prevail upon was not the product of education. Rather it was a quality the Realists of the Scottish Enlightenment had earlier asserted was essential to human nature and the development of human knowledge. If Common Sense is any indication, Paine believed it possible to explain to an average American colonist in 1776 some of the more troubling implications of inherited monarchy and expect a reasonable evaluation in return. Said colonist likely wasn't well-versed in political theory or history, and thus to some might seem an unfit judge, yet Paine asked only that they exercise what Thomas Reid had earlier characterised as their inborn common sense. He asked, in effect, if it felt right that the ability of a given monarch to rule was essentially left up to chance, or if it looked right that the so-called defender of the people’s liberties was the descendent of a family of warlords and brigands. This invocation of this intangible but universally familiar sensibility is truly what set Paine and Common Sense apart from the great mass of rhetoric dispensed leading up to and during the American Revolution. Paine, by asking his fellow colonists to judge some of the implications of the Revolution for themselves, effectively helped instil in them the idea that their opinions had value.

            I will grant that I have no solid evidence to link Thomas Paine to Scottish Common Sense Realism. He did not explicitly invoke the names of Reid or his contemporaries over the course of Common Sense or cite any of their theories directly. It may, in fact, have been the case that Paine was personally unfamiliar with the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, and instead absorbed an appreciation for its base principles second hand. He was, after all, a man of limited formal education, and though certain of his arguments in Common Sense betray a surprising familiarity with European history and philosophy it would not seem at all unlikely for there to be holes in his knowledge. Be that as it may, however, Paine and Common Sense remain important examples of the transmission of ideas from Europe to the New World that is central to understanding how and why the American Revolution happend where and when it did. Whether he was aware of it or not, Paine was a conduit for many of the fundamental assumptions of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy. However he became aware of the notion that all people possess a “common sense” which allows them to understand and evaluate the world around them, he put the idea to expert use when he argued in favour of American independence in early 1776. Thusly, aspects of an early 18th-century Scottish philosophical renaissance were transmitted to the people of late 18th-century Anglo-America, where they have since played their part in changing the course of world history.

            Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the reverberations of Paine’s attempt to place value on the “common sense” possessed by his fellow colonists continue to be felt to this day. Generally speaking, Americans do tend to place a great deal of faith in their own judgement, and can accordingly be quite hostile to the pronouncements of those identified as “experts” in a given field. This has manifested in a variety of ways, from the at-times aggressive economic and political democratisation that occurred in the 1820s and 1830s, to the anti-intellectualism of the 1950s, to the post-Great Recession populism of the present day. I don’t doubt in the slightest that the rise of the some of the more stridently individualist elements of the American identity are due to a more complex set of factors than the influence of a single, early piece of political propaganda. Nonetheless, I cannot help but perceive in Common Sense, one of the best-selling American titles ever, the seeds of the abiding self-possession that in many ways has come to define America and Americans to the larger world. Of course, whether or not Thomas Paine helped set the development of that particular element of the American self in motion is likely impossible to determine.

            Still, it is worth thinking about.

            Before I sign off I’d like to thank the small band of apparently dedicated readers who seem to check in on my work week after week with relative consistency. You happy few have become a source of elation and terror on my part, and your patience with my interminable ramblings is very much appreciated. I'm sure that this last series of posts was not the break you were hoping for after the epic poem I tossed off about banking, of all things, but so it goes. It turned out that I had a great deal to say about Thomas Paine and his take on all things common and sensible. In my defence, forty pages of revolutionary pamphleteering makes for much clay and very many bricks. With any luck the next few weeks will witness a return to a slightly more…digestible…format.

            Of course, for those of you who care about this sort of thing, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Common_Sense

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