Answer two out of the four questions. Your exam should be 10+ pages and include extensive textual evidence. Quotes should be appropriately cited and unpacked.
- Explain the difference between liberalism and republicanism and the difference between left (democratic) and right (conservative) versions of republicanism using Harrington, Montesquieu, Locke, and Arendt.
- Explain the influence of Puritan and Congregationalist Christian thought on the early American republic, using Ward, Winthrop, Cotton, Williams and Wise. That means dealing with such issues as theocracy and God’s ordained republic, the priesthood of believers as both a community that produces knowledge of divine law (physis) and opinion (nomos), the unanimity and necessity of truth versus toleration for conscience and opinion, the equality and inequality of believers and sinners, and the secularizing impact of the Christian impulse to know/reason, choose/ extend & accept grace, and purify/ progress. An especially good answer will deal with Arendt’s views about Christianity:
A few words need still to be said about the not infrequent claim that all modern revolutions are essentially Christian in origin, and this even when their professed faith is atheism. The argument supporting this claim usually points to the clearly rebellious nature of the early Christian sect with its stress on the equality of soul before God, its open contempt for all public powers, and its promise of a Kingdom of Heaven– notions and hopes which are supposed to have been channeled into modern revolutions, albeit in secularized fashion, through the Reformation. Secularization, the separation of religion from politics and the rise of a secular realm with dignity of its own, is certainly a crucial factor in the phenomenon of revolution. Indeed, it may ultimately turn out that what we call revolution is precisely that transitory phase which brings about the birth of a new secular realm. But if this is true, then it is secularization itself, and not the contents of Christian teachings, which constitutes the origin of revolution. The first stage of this secularization was the rise of absolutism, and not the Reformation; for the ‘revolution’ which, according to Luther, shakes the world when the word of God is liberated from traditional authority of the Church is constant and applies to all forms of secular government; it does not establish a new secular order but constantly and permanently shakes the foundations of all worldly establishment. Luther, it is true, because he eventually became the founder of a new church, could be counted among the great founders in history, but his foundation was not, and never was intended to be, a novus ordo saeclorum [new order for the Ages (on the Great Seal of the USA)]; on the contrary, it was meant to liberate a truly Christian life more radically from the considerations and worries of the secular order, whatever it might happened to be…. Hence, the rebellious spirit, which seems so manifest in certain strictly religious movements in the modern age, always ended in some Great Awakening or revivalism which, no matter how much it might ‘revive’ those who were seized by it, remained politically without consequence and historically futile…. For the fact is that no revolution was ever made in the name of Christianity prior to the modern age, so that the best one can say in favour of this theory is that it needed modernity to liberate the revolutionary germs of the Christian faith, which is obviously begging the question.
There exists, however, another claim which comes closer to the heart of the matter. We have stressed the element of novelty inherent in all revolutions, and it is maintained frequently that our whole notion of history, because its course follows a rectilinear development, is Christian in origin. It is obvious that only under the conditions of a rectilinear time concept [progress towards an end or purpose as opposed to a reoccurring cycle with no end but life] are such phenomena as novelty, uniqueness of events, and the like conceivable at all. Christian philosophy, it is true, broke with the time concept of antiquity because the birth of Christ, occurring in human secular time, constituted a new beginning as well as a unique, unrepeatable event. Yet the Christian concept of history…could conceive of a new beginning only in terms of a transmundane event breaking into and interrupting the normal course of secular history…. Secular history in the Christian view remained bound within the cycles of antiquity–empires would rise and fall as in the past– except that Christians, in the possession of an everlasting life, could break through this cycle of everlasting change and must look with indifference upon the spectacle it offered (Arendt, On Revolution, pp. 15-17).
You might say that, in this passage, Arendt contrasts two sorts of Christianity. One is the modern impulse to secularization, which sees freedom in the possibility of doing and creating something new (especially institutionalizing a new order). Later, Arendt describes this as taking the experience of natural goodness that she associates with Jesus, and giving it a political voice and appearance, a reality that goodness with its compassion can only realize with either pure violence or silence (pp 71-77). The other, which is after “the haloed transformation of Jesus of Nazareth into Christ,” (p. 71), Arendt describes as actually following the ancient Christian impulse to get free from the natural cycle. The question is whether the Christian Founders were doing one, the other, or some weird mixture of both.
- Explain and critically respond to Arendt’s argument in On Revolution. That is, explain her new version of republicanism that she finds in the American Republic, her critique of liberalism (especially the leftist version of the French Revolution), and her ultimate critique of how the American Republic betrayed its own spirit of revolution.
- Explain the arguments for and against the American Independence (readings from Sept 22-24) and explain the extent to which you think they are left republican (Arendt, Harrington), right republican (Roman, Montesquieu), left liberal (Robespierre) and right liberal (Locke). A good answer will not use just the Sept 22-24 readings.
