John Locke. David Hume. George Berkeley.
Put these names in your "to be researched and read" file. Reading their works is an essential part of being an American.
Every other blogger in the universe will have something to say about the American Declaration of Independence and Revolution today and tomorrow, and that's a good thing. We should be proud of what the founders of this nation brought to the planet - an entirely new way to govern a nation. The Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, the documents they produced and which defined a novel way to run a government, were a turning point in the political arena of mankind.
I'm gonna pull an end run, and instead of talking about the birth of our nation, I'm gonna go back a couple of years before that event and mention men who were dead, one for over seven decades, before it happened.
The ideas our founders put to paper were not original - they were refined versions of the thinking of the men I listed at the start of this post. If you want to know what America can be - what it was meant to be - read what these three giants of intellect had to say. It won't take a long time, they all believed in brevity.
It will, however, take a while to understand them. As citizens and voters, all of us would be well served by the reading of their ideas. No politician should be allowed to be seated in any office without reading their works AND demonstrating understanding of what they had to say.
Oops. I forgot - politicians talk - they don't know how to read. And, there's a concert and BBQ tonight - tomorrow we're gonna be hung over. Oh well, maybe we'll have some free time next week.
I have to admit I've never read any of those fine men, but this is the second time in a few days that Hume's been mentioned favorably to me, so maybe I should take a look.
ReplyDeleteBoomer, Locke's "Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay" describes almost to a tee the government given us by our founders. He really gets rolling in Chapter 8. Berkeley actually lived in America for a time and donated his library to both Harvard and Yale. Hume was the youngest of the three and benefited from their works. All three, The Empiricists, were closely studied by our founders.
ReplyDeleteThe works are difficult to wade through, they were written in a much different language than we speak today. Religion is a central and constantly recurring topic, and in general, they are not for the everyday reader of modern fiction.
Sometime between the eighteenth century and now, we've lost the ability to read and then ponder what the author had to say. Good luck with Hume; he's worth the effort.
PS to Boomer: I was introduced to these men at the age of nineteen while my brain was less cluttered and more nimble. If I were to read them today, for the first time, I'd probably close them in frustration. Their works remain on my bookshelves, alongside yours. I find it difficult to rid myself of decent books.
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