Little Republics
If one were to move step by step through a philosophical inquiry, one could say that epistemology or what can we know about the nature of reality, leads to ethics. It only makes sense that after determining what one can know that one must then ask, “what good is it?” This, I think, is the beginning of an inquiry into ethics. One of the first questions that leads to an understanding of the good is “what good is it to know what we can know?”
Ethics, then, would eventually lead to politics. Once one can ascertain what the good is, one must then ask, “can one apply this ethics universally?” Politics, at least in a philosophical sense, is a group of people applying their ethics universally among the people living in their society.
The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, wrote books on both ethics and politics (Nicomachean Ethics and Politics). One could read Aristotle and conclude that morality (and by extension, ethics) is enacted within the boundaries of the polis. While some contemporary critics have read Aristotle’s work as being xenophobic in that he believed that the ideal state was one in which the character of those leading the polis should be known by those in the polis. However, Aristotle’s work could also be read as being a localist text in that the best way to govern and to be governed is with a small enough government that one can know those who govern them. In fact, this is a more personal and intimate version of the consent of the governed that John Locke discussed centuries later.
One could almost draw a straight line from Aristotle through the Roman Republic to John Locke and then, later, to Thomas Jefferson. Jeffersonian Democracy owed a lot to Aristotle’s polis. Jefferson saw a country made up of “little republics.” His vision was that the country would be divided up into states and the states would be divided up into counties and the countries would be divided up into townships and the townships would be divided up into individual farms and homes.
It was through this innovative reading of Aristotle and Locke that the West developed the political theory of the modern nation-state. Because of Jefferson’s ideal of “little republics,” Jeffersonian Democracy provided the West with a “Goldilocks” of civic government. With the power located as close to the people as possible and with the various layers of government taking on different responsibilities, the governing institutions would not be too large nor too small to meet the needs of the people.
While both Aristotle’s polis and the Roman Republic were important advances in politics in the West, Christendom sought to reconcile the ethical and political reality of the polis and the republic with its vision of a worldwide society. This led to the Christian thinker, Thomas Aquinas, to propose that our temporal and earthly governments model its laws after the eternal order — the natural laws — in which we all participate.
It was this synthesis of the polis, the Republic, and natural law that the Founders intended the grand experiment that was America to realize. They envisioned a country whose rules would emulate those that govern all of creation. They envisioned a country that would have the flexibility to solve the problems that confronted it through its reliance upon little republics and the subsequent distribution of power among the people that could utilize it to best meet those challenges. Because of their connection to natural law, America’s ideals are universal ideals and would be open to all. Therefore, people from every background could become American by adopting and espousing those ideals.
