Foundations of Democracy

July 25–31, 2021 | Santa Fe, NM

In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln posed a question: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” What kind of test, what kind of experiment, does American democracy represent? In classical Greek and Roman experience, democracy appeared to be the most unstable of regimes, prone to faction, revolution, demagogues, and dictators. Founding theorists of modern democracies sought ways to secure the advantages of democratic life, while addressing both the weaknesses identified by the ancients and the peculiar vulnerabilities of modern politics. Tocqueville, in his masterpiece Democracy in America, develops the insight shared by the American founders, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and other great modern political philosophers—that in order to secure the best forms of democratic life, we have to understand and protect against the characteristic weaknesses of democratic politics and democratic society. To do so, we must raise difficult questions about the relations between justice and wisdom, between freedom and liberty, between commercialism and individualism on the one hand, and civic, religious, and moral virtues, on the other. We will explore these themes through careful reading of classic texts in political philosophy, American founding documents, and Tocqueville’s reflections on America—texts that should be studied with care by all citizens.