The Philosophical Roots of the American Revolution

When studying the American Revolution, particularly the military tactics, boycotting methods, and other means of rebellion employed to fight British control, it is easy to forget why all of this was taking place. There is little time for high-minded debate over philosophy, politics, and human rights when being stabbed in the guts with the bayonet of an irate British soldier or when shooting a Redcoat in the leg during the Battle of Princeton. So too is it hard to cram thoughts about broader intellectual topics into a mind currently occupied with the tactics of generals like George Washington, Nathanael Greene, Daniel Morgan, and Ethan Allen. However, the reasons why the Continental Army was willing to sacrifice so much is just as, if not more, important than how they were offering these things. Thus, I have decided to write this article describing the more significant philosophical ancestry of the American Revolution. This article will begin with a discussion of the ancient Roman and Hellenistic political systems that inspired early American democracy. After that, it will cover the more recent - recent at the time of the revolution - political thinkers whose writings encouraged the American Revolution and the arguments used by both Loyalists and Patriots in the immediate buildup to the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

Ancient Athens and the Roman Republic hold the origin of American liberalism. Athens, like other Greek city-states, began as an authoritarian oligarchy. The political nature of Athens was, at first, hardly different from the political nature of Sparta, Corinth, Iocus, Troy, Corfu, or any other micronation lining the antiquated land that became modern Greece. However, the city eventually became interested in an early form of representative democracy. A man named Draco went on to become the first democratically-elected politician in recorded history. Unfortunately, Draco was incredibly tyrannical and despotic, to the point where people were executed for stealing a head of cabbage. Of course, this was a horrible way to begin an experiment in democracy. Draco was soon removed from power and replaced by Solon, who implemented reforms that promoted a truer type of democracy. Eventually, control of Athens shifted to another official named Hipparchus.

Hipparchus' brother, Hippias, soon developed an affection for a man Harmodius, leading to a sex scandal. Fortunately, homosexuality was mostly accepted in ancient Greece, so the target of Hippias' love was not the controversial aspect of this ordeal. Instead, it was how Hippias handled it: When Harmodius rejected his requests for courtship, Hippias retaliated by removing Harmodius' sister from the Athenian priesthood. Furious, Harmodius had Hippias killed. This episode scarred Hipparchus and transformed him into a paranoid lunatic. He saw threats manifest in every single corner and became sick with fear as each acquaintance of his was changed into a monster waiting to devour his soul. The people of Athens naturally lost their tolerance for Hipparchus' newfound tyranny. Thus, they rebelled and replaced him with a new leader: Cleisthenes. Like Solon, Cleisthenes believed that the average Athenian man deserved political power, but Cleisthenes - who actually coined the term "democracy" - was far more radical.

Cleisthenes instituted a series of reforms that carved out Athens as a direct democracy. The Athenian government manifested into 3 specific agencies: The Boule, the Ekklesia, and the Dikasteria. The Boule was composed of 500 members, with 50 people representing each of Athens' 10 tribes. They were selected at random to avoid corruption. The Boule was tasked with deciding what issues would be decided by the Ekklesia, which functioned as the actual legislature. Anyone could vote at the Ekklesia, with the unfortunate exceptions of women and immigrants. Even Aristotle himself was denied suffrage, as he was born in Macedon, rather than in Athens. The Dikasteria, which any native-born male could work in as well, operated as the Athenian courthouse. Anyone who was allowed to vote essentially had to, as they were publically humiliated by being covered in red paint if they refused to participate.

Around the time that Cleisthenes implemented these policies, the Roman Kingdom underwent a similar transformation. In -510 BCE, the son of King Tarquin the Proud raped and murdered a noblewoman named Lucretia, sparking a series of riots. Through these riots, the people of Rome pressured the kingdom into becoming a representative democracy, where control over the country was split between two consuls. When the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire under the reign of Augustus in -27 BCE, the consuls were demoted merely to the role of controlling the Senate. During the Republican era, the Senate served as another check on the power of the consuls. After the assassination of Julius Caesar in -44 BCE, his nephew Octavian worked with Mark Antony and Lepidus to establish the Second Triumvirate, which took control of the Roman Republic after promising to punish those involved with Caesar's death. The members of the Second Triumvirate split apart in -36 BCE, causing Rome to be split up between Lepidus, Octavian, and Mark Antony. Octavian reunited Rome and declared it an empire, changing his name to Augustus. Athens abandoned its democracy in order to cease alienating Persia and receive its support in a war against Sparta. Either way, these two ancient democracies inspired the American Revolution.

The Roman Empire collapsed in 476 CE. Over a millennium later, in 1588, Thomas Hobbes was born. Hobbes studied art and geography at Oxford University, working as a tutor to the children of politicians and business owners following his graduation. Meeting these various powerful figures fostered in Hobbes a deep interest in politics, and so he began producing texts discussing questions of how the government should best operate. Hobbes' writings contained one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of political philosophy: The social contract. Hobbes argued that a good way to understand the government is as a contract between the people and their authority figures. The people, Hobbes wrote, surrendered a portion of their liberty in exchange for a promise by the government to fulfill some specific role. Hobbes didn't believe any historical event could be categorized as the creation of the social contract, but he did think it was a good framework.

Hobbes believed that the social contract was one of safety. Hobbes had very little faith in the average person, demonizing them as stupid, barbaric, selfish, and uneducated. Thus, the government was created to keep them in check. Hobbes believed in a strong, authoritarian ruler he called "the Leviathon", dubbing that the perfect system. He argued that the only time the people ever had a right to rebel was when the government actively endangered their lives. Baruch de Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher and Hobbesian, went even further, claiming that the right to rebel never existed. The approach of Hobbes and Spinoza was soon rejected by other philosophers, even when using the social contract framework. The most important user of the social contract in this context is John Locke.

Locke was born in 1632, just as Hobbes was beginning his work in political philosophy. Locke's father had served as a respected general in the English Civil War, thus being able to afford his son a robust education. Locke originally studied medicine, anatomy, and health, working as a doctor. However, in 1667, he befriended a politician named Anthony Ashely Cooper. Like Hobbes, Locke became interested in politics only when he became involved in the personal lives of government officials. Locke and Cooper actually developed a very intimate friendship, with Locke once performing a surgery on Cooper's liver that likely saved the politician's life. Despite his closeness with a politician, Locke was far less authoritarian than Hobbes. For Locke, the social contract did exist, but it was not a blank check for the government to do anything that might increase safety, impact on freedom be damned. Instead, Locke had an incredibly maverick and novel idea: That the government actually exists to protect freedom, rather than simply abridge it when necessary.

For Locke, all humans were born with 3 fundamental rights: Life, liberty, and property. That phrase - life, liberty, and property - should sound familiar to Americans. Thomas Jefferson, when writing the Declaration of Independence, used that phrase, substituting "property" with "the pursuit of happiness". Jefferson is actually a great example of how influential Lockean liberalism was to the ideological foundation of the American Revolution: Jefferson considered Locke, alongside Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, to be one of the 3 greatest men to ever live. Regardless, Locke argued that the government should simply serve to protect people's rights to life, liberty, and property. By banning murder, the government preserves the right to life. By banning slavery, the government protects the right to liberty (Locke did want to abolish slavery, though he did unfortunately think slavery should be used to punish criminals). By banning theft, the government protects the right to property.

Furthermore, Locke was a huge proponent of democracy, or as he called it, "consent of the governed". Locke also helped inspire the revolution's dedication to religious liberty. Though a devout Christian who had his wife read to him from the Book of Psalms as he died, Locke rejected religious dogma. Instead, he believed that it was the God-given responsibility of all humans to think rationally and to always look for new knowledge. He was like Maimonides in this regard, who believed that the God of the Torah chose Abraham to gift Israel due to Abraham's exceptional logical thinking skills. Locke also argued fervently for religious freedom, making exceptions only for atheists because they didn't believe in a god to punish them for lying under oath and Catholics because they supported to a usurper to the British throne. He pointed out that no government can know for certain which religion is true and that even if it could, political legislation could never force true belief onto someone. Locke also believed that Jesus Christ, having denounced violence and self-righteousness, would never condone coercion in the spread of Christianity. Jefferson, James Madison, and other Founding Fathers all used these arguments when calling for religious freedom.

Out of all of Locke's ideas, his emphasis on democracy proved to be the most crucial to the American Revolution. As most Americans know, the main reason the 13 Colonies declared independence was frustration with British taxation. Duties and tariffs weighing down access to sugar, molasses, paper, glass, tea, paint, and lead upset Colonists and caused them to boycott British goods, a fact that incurred yet more tyranny on the part of Britain, pushing us to the boiling point. British officials tried to justify these taxes by citing recent events: Britain had just fought a massive war against France known as the French and Indian War, which doubled its national debt. Not only that but much of the British war effort during the French and Indian War was spent shielding Colonists from French incursions, so, as London argued, residents of the 13 Colonies had a moral obligation to help pay off the debt. The 13 Colonies responded by pointing out that it wasn't the taxes themselves that were so inflammatory. It was the fact that they had no say in their passage. They wanted representation in their government, which is the central axis on which democracy spins.

In terms of world history, the American Revolution is a pretty recent event. The end of the Renaissance in 1700 is generally cited as the start of the modern era, and the first shots at Lexington, Massachusetts, were fired on April 19, 1775, less than a century after that. People who were alive for the Renaissance saw the outbreak of the American Revolution. Many people who remembered the days of the Renaissance saw the first drops of blood shed amidst the Revolutionary War. Despite this, it has ancient origins. The men stuffing the headquarters of the Dikasteria, Ekklesia, and Boule over 2,500 years ago cast their votes on local issues - geopolitical financial, cultural - without a single clue just how important this daily aspect of their life was. They very well may have seen it fall apart in their lifetime due to constant jockeying against Sparta, but they were mistaken to think that democracy died there. Indeed, their political influence, which was revolutionary for everyone who wasn't an Athenian but totally mundane for those who were, inspired one of the most important wars in world history; a war that would be declared long after their body rotted away. A war that would inspire the French Revolution and the independence of Latin American nations located on continents they never knew existed.