Classical Republican-ism v. Liberal-ism: Stock Definitions
Scholarship often tends to present such debates in literature reviews in cartoonish extremes, partly due to a desire to easily categorize the work of the many academics writing about the founding. Nonetheless, such categorizations can be useful and not without truth. When it comes to classical liberalism, as one recent survey of the literature puts it:
Broadly speaking, this interpretation suggests that the core of the Founder’s political thought is encapsulated in the Lockean variation of the principles of classical liberalism. The Founders, according to proponents of this interpretation, believed men “created equal,” possessed of “natural” rights, and motivated primarily by the pursuit of their passions and interests…
Since men were naturally equal and intractably self-interested, governments should promote stability and personal security, protect individual rights (especially property rights), and promote economic prosperity.
Conversely, government should not try to foster virtue among the citizenry, promote some organic conception of the common good or “good life” . . . governments should divide powers between different branches of the government and use diverse social interests to prevent both governmental tyranny and the tyranny of the majority.
Finally, this interpretation also stresses the acceptance by the Founders of an early form of commercial capitalism.[1]
The tenets of the classical republican view are harder to categorize, but there is common agreement among these scholars that early American political thought did wish to promote an “organic conception of the common good” and sought to “foster virtue among the citizenry.” Classical republicanism holds civic and moral education to be a vital part of good government and views the “commercial republic” of classical liberalism as corrupting influence. In this view, liberty is vital not necessarily as an end in itself but for the sake of allowing civic participation.[2]
Ultimately, at the heart of the notion of classical liberalism is a government that aims at securing or protecting individual rights; at the heart of the notion of classical republicanism is a government that aims at promoting the common good. Republicanism looks at human beings as virtuous or vicious and aims to promote civic virtue through education and/or religion. Liberalism looks at human beings as self-interested and aims to channel and check those interests, in part by promoting a commercial republic and protecting individual rights. Republicanism possibly hearkens back to Aristotle and pre-modern thought through either Machievelli or pre-enlightenment English thinkers while liberalism is said to be an early modern idea arriving fully grown with John Locke and the enlightenment period.
Again, these are conceptual categories (admittedly powerful) as elucidated by modern scholars over the last 40 or so years and argued to apply to the founding of the American regime.
[1] Alan Gibson, Interpreting the Founding (Lawrence,Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2006), pages 13-14.
[2] For more, see my literature review…
“Classical Republican-ism v. Liberal-ism: Stock Definitions”