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Just as we don't speak much about civic duty today, we don't talk a lot about virtue in today's culture.  Our loss of both concepts is unfortunate.  Developing a sense of civic duty and personal virtue were considered essential aspects of cultivating one's character during the Age of Enlightenment.  A well developed sense of the duty and responsibilities one has to society, the community, and the groups with whom you are a member assured that citizens helped their communities grow and prosper.  Just look at all the public work Franklin undertook as part of his civic duty, everything from establishing the first circulation library in Philadelphia, to starting a fire house, to developing a stove, to acting as an diplomat, to starting the abolitionist society...the list goes on longer than I have here, and I don't want to get away from my main point.  Those in the Age of Enlightenment saw "giving back" and "doing one's duty" as essential aspects of living the good life.  After all, if everyone doesn't invest their time, energy, and thought ("life, liberty, and sacred honor") in helping their communities and governments thrive, then as Franklin said in the "Speech to the Constitutional Convention," which you read last week, we get the despotic government we deserve.

However, an essential component to developing a sense of one's civic duty and responsibilities is developing one's own character and, hence, ability to serve.  Without taking the time to improve your self, then you aren't and can't be in a position to "give back."  This is there the concept of virtue comes in.  Virtue is the opposite of vice.  Virtue is a quality of character or ability which promotes your own well-being and that of others.  Being hard working is a good example of a virtue.  Western thought has traditionally put the most value on the so-called Cardinal Virtues--temperance, prudence, fortitude, and justice.  However, as Franklin's list in the Autobiography and Jefferson's list of moral virtues in his letter to Peter Carr demonstrate, people differ on the virtues they value.  For a more comprehensive list of virtues, visit the wikipedia article on virtues.

Where those of the Age of Enlightenment, like Franklin and Jefferson, differed from those who came before was in the belief that we all started off as "blank slates," and our moral character--defined by a combination of our sense of civic duty and personal virtues--was a product of our education.  They based this thinking on the work of the philosopher John Locke, especially his book, "Essay Concerning Human Understanding."  Locke's notion that we are in control of our own characters and can choose to build and exercise (or destroy) and aspect of our character thought education and the experiences we choose to repeat was revolutionary , and it has become the basis of modern education.  Aristotle said that one's character is built up from that which we repeated choose to do, but the Enlightenment took Aristotle one further, and they argued that we had no character before we began to experience and that God gave man reason so s/he can choose to cultivate the character of one's choice.  Self-help was born, and we're still trying to figure out the methods which work and which don't for acquiring virtue, avoiding vice, and--hence--living the good life.

Over the next several weeks, I want you to experience self-help from the perspective of our founders and the Age of Enlightenment.  This week, I want you to begin by constructing a list of between ten and fifteen virtues which you believe would best promote your own well-being and that of society.  For each virtue, I want you--like Franklin--to write a precept or short, clear definition of what each virtue means to you.  You might get some help on this by looking at the list of virtues written by Franklin and following the links to the wikipedia articles on individual virtues found in the general wikipedia article.  You might also take a look a list called the "Habits of Mind."  Developed by Author Costa, these "Habits of Mind" can be thought of as the necessary virtues of those who want to become critical and creative thinkers.  Indeed, many of the learning outcomes for this course were developed out of Costa's Habits of Mind.

Once you have developed your "Short List of the Virtues Necessary for Well-Being and Living the Good Life," choose the one on which you need the most help to fully develop.  In your blog entry for this week, explain what it as about this virtue and your relationship to it which made it your choice on which to work.

In making your choice, remember: Enlightenment thinkers believed you could actively form your own character.  Religion might help in this quest, but it wasn't considered a necessity. For many in the Enlightenment, like Franklin, your could develop your own character by cultivating personal virtue, but only by focusing your faculties of attention, reason, and will on developing individual virtues. This was a fairly radical idea, though it had much in common with the classical Greek and Roman thought on which it was built.  It was very different from the Calvinist belief of the Puritans that your character was a function of God's will, not your own, and if you were a good person or not was a function of God having decided you were good or not.  According to Calvinist thought, if God didn't save you, you lived your life totally depraved, and society and authority in the form of the church and civil law had a responsibility to control our natural tendency toward sin and dissipation.

Figuring out Rational Methods to cultivate one's character was a very, very Enlightened way of thinking about the self.  It's one reason that diaries, journals, and autobiographies as genres developed and became so popular in the age of Enlightenment, that is, because it was at this point in our history that our own memories, insights and observations about the world, and our ability to create both personal and social progress came to be valued. This is where we came to believe in "Self-Help."  Indeed, just as our founders applied the belief that Social Contract based on self-evident facts, free minds, evidence, and reasoned debate could create a better society in which to live, they also believed that Reason and Rational, self-control of one's behavior and experiences could produce a better self.  Before moving on, note how different Enlightenment ideas about personal development is from Romantic ideas of a Self which is a produce of personal genius, sensibility, passion, and cultivated taste

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This week, we'll make a change to an earlier era of American Literature. You have been reading Romantic literature, and most of what you have read was written from about the 1830s-1860s.  As you've come to know, Romantic literature placed value on emotion, the individual, genius, the individual's sensibility or ability to feel for and with others, and the ability to act through these feelings to bring about positive change in one's own life and in society.  Like the Romantic, the Enlightenment thinker valued the individual, but Enlightenment authors valued the individual's ability to observe, reason, discuss, and debate. In many respects, Enlightenment authors were afraid of emotions and tended to associate high emotion with the religious passions which had led to the religious wars following the Reformation.  They were all about using reason and personal insight to bring about positive personal and social change.    

This week you'll get to know Thomas Jefferson. He is a good, solid example of the best of the Enlightenment.   Many of you grew up in Virginia or have been taught Jefferson all your lives.  As someone who has spent a life studying the man and his thought, let me assure you he is one of the few men whose politics is always on the money. He believes in three things: 1) the potential of humankind; 2) reason; and, 3) fighting to further one and two.

There are reasons Jefferson authored the documents you'll read and celebrate this week.  He only published a few books over the course of his lifetime, so most of his literature comes to us in the form of notes, Acts, Statues he helped to draft, through a few books, like Notes on the State of Virginia, and through a huge correspondence.  Most American Literature anthologies do a poor job of handling Jefferson, and our anthology is no exception, so this week your reading on Jefferson will be online and not from the text.

The best way to get to know Jefferson is through excerpts and small works. Read around in the Jefferson Blog, put together by Colonial Williamsburg, and through the quotations put together by the Monticello Foundation.  These quotes are sorted by topics.  Don't try to read them all.  Find a few topics in which you are interested, read the quotations and discussion, and then sit back and think.  Don't forget the sitting and reflecting part.  The theme for this week is reflection; as you read through Jefferson's first draft of the "Declaration of Independence" and compare it to subsequent drafts, like the one Franklin helped Jefferson author or those authorized by the constitutional convention, you'll see how reflection led to change.  The period of literature we are entering now--the Enlightenment--was all about personal reflection, sharing the results of the reflection with others, and creating change.  And this is the period of greatest change for America.  The Enlightenment is when the American Revolution happened, when our two constitutions were written, and when the West started the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions.  Personal reflection, discussion, almost always leads to positive change, as you will discover when you read the literature of the Revolution and Age of Enlightenment.

As you read Jefferson's "Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom," and pay particular attention to the bottom, where Jefferson points us to a foundation of his thought and that of the founders, namely, a belief that truth can be gotten at if free debate and reason are given free rein.  Think here of all you've learned as you've read the blogs of your peers, wrote yourself, and discussed in the General Assembly forum. We celebrate the Declaration as Jefferson's greatest contribution to the world, but I would suggest that the Statue is his greatest contribution.  It is not only an argument for letting go of centuries of bloodshed and prejudice over religion; it is the first public document to make reason and rational debate--Enlightenment cornerstones--the foundation of public policy and our social contract.  This is the true foundation of our democracy. In my opinion, Jefferson's "Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom" is one of the five most important moments in Western thought.  Unfortunately, it is written in long, parallel, Latinisque, grammar school--the first schools many attended in the colonial era were schools which taught Latin grammar and were, hence, called grammar schools--sentences.  It is not Jefferson's best writing in terms of style, but read the Statue carefully; it's a blueprint for how to solve any public dispute and arrive at truth. It is Jefferson at his best in terms of thinking.

Last but not least, listen to or read the *draft* of the Declaration of Independence and compare it to the Declaration passed by the Second Continental Congress.  Find the links to pursue this exercise below. It will give you some insight into Jefferson's and the nations's complicated relationship to slavery and how he and Franklin, who helped him polish the draft, differed from the other founders.  If Jefferson's owning slaves bothers you, you might also want to look at the latest research on Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings.  Figuring out that great people can do wrong things, still be great people, and still be admired and used for inspiration is one of the final steps in reaching full adulthood.

The main point in your reading this week is to realize that few of the founders--Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison especially--thought the nation they helped to create was perfect, nor did they think the Constitution set in stone.  They thought of the nation and democracy as a process of experimentation, national reflection, debate, and change.  They attempted to create a dynamic equilibrium between social stability and change, one with change built around an educated public and reasoned debate--and occasionally revolution and, as a last resort, violence--and stability disturbed by frequent elections and the ability to throw out those gaining too much authority and power.  Even with its safeguards built in, Jefferson never trusted the Constitution and the powers it gave to legislators, the executive, and the bureaucracy; Jefferson worked to limit power giving to those who are entrusted with administrating the government with the introduction of the Bill of Rights.  As you read in Franklin's Speech, Franklin thought we would have long since replaced our government with something else, either because society had deteriorated to the point where we needed and would accept a tyrant or because reason and further insight would have revealed a much less cumbersome means of government which still allowed personal liberty to be maximized.  

This week is also about reflection and personal observation.  You'll be writing an essay/blog post in which you bring together and explain what you have learned, to yourself, to me, and to your committee.  This is an exercise which smacks of Enlightenment thinking.  You reflect on your own personal growth, and--in the process of sharing your observations--you help me learn about what you are learning (or not), and you help the group learn about others and their selves.


Steve

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Discussion of the week's reading and writing:

Each piece of the reading you have done over the past two weeks offers one response to the major issue of the Early American Republic--the Slavery Problem. The Slavery Problem was the single most difficult problem addressed by the emerging nation. The responses you'll now read extend from civil disobedience, to writing editorials, to writing slave narratives that sought to inform others about the realities of slavery, to an attempt to lead a slave revolt, to an attempt to ferment an armed slave rebellion, to passive resistance, to attempts to find political solutions, to attempts to create  powerful symbols to fight for, and, finally, the last resort, to fighting a civil war.  

In and of it self, each text offers insight into Antebellum America, how Romantics attempted to create art which responded to political problems, various aspects of Abolitionist Literature, and a "how to" case study on the process of American political change.  As you will learn, slavery could not co-exist with American political ideals.  Leaders as early as Jefferson and Franklin recognized how fundamentally incompatible some social beliefs and practices are with our belief in natural, inalienable rights and maximized liberty within a system of just, equally applied law.  

How to expel social practices which were incompatible with the new democracy and maintain the right of the individual to believe as they will has have been a constant problem for America, and as you have and will see, literature has played a fundamental role in forming our solution to such problems. Franklin and Jefferson tried in their draft of the "Declaration of Independence" to attack slavery as a product of outdated European tyranny, but slavery was a battle Jefferson, Franklin, et al chose not to fight.  In the process, they probably--we can never be sure--preserved the new, vulnerable nation long enough, helping to embed the notion of liberty and freedom in the world views of both sides, for the nation to survive the inevitable Civil War, come back together, and retain a shared ideology of freedom.  

The reading over the next weeks addresses one of the fundamental themes of this course or, for that matter, any American Literature course:  "What are the most productive, useful, correct relationships between the individual and a democratic society?"  Embedded in this question are a host of related questions:

1. What allegiance, if any, does the American citizen own the current American government?
2. Is there a difference between civil, moral, and natural law, and what is the citizen to do when she finds herself with different views than those of her community, society, and the government?
3. Is civil disobedience the correct answer? Is it a requirement for our government to work and, hence, a civil duty?
4. What are the best tactics to form group, like minded action?
5. Are there situations in which violence is the right answer?  John Brown arrived at this answer.  He took over a national armory and attempted to arm slaves for a slave revolt.  He was killed as an example, but--as Thoreau's essay and the songs "John Brown's Body" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" show, Brown also became a martyr and powerful symbol for the North and for "correct" national behavior in the face of evil.
6. Are there differences between Brown's solution and that of the North?  Listen to the "Battle Song of the Republic" and "John Brown's Body," both the North and the South saw themselves as acting morally and in ways consistent with their belief in God.  In fact, both Brown and the North invoked the belief that God would stand by them and lead them to victory.  Look at Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" and the "Second Inaugural Address." As Mark Twain pointed out, both the North and the South shared and fostered this view.
7. Which is more important--a state's right to sovereignty or an individuals' right to liberty?  
8. Who gets to decide which liberties are worth fighting, killing, and dying for? How do we make these decisions as a society?
9. What beliefs and attitudes have helped you and others decide these questions?

Answering these questions was, is, and should not be easy.  It is now a cliche to say the Civil War divided brother and brother, but one reason brother could end up fighting and killing brother is that answering these questions comes down to individual beliefs about liberty, right, and honor.  There are times when our individual beliefs will and do put us into conflict with others  Issues like state's rights and slavery have to be resolved, and there are times when spoken discourse fails and the discourse of violence--either implied or actual--begins.

As always, contact me with questions and concerns.