By Anonymous, Jul 6, 2009 in Questions
Much has been said about the moral requirements of a free society (Tocqueville's "habits of the heart"); my husband (a historian) and I (a philosopher) are planning a colloquium examining the cognitive requirements of a free society (Tocqueville's "habits of the head").
The general questions we want to raise for discussion are: Does liberty repend upon rationality? If so, rationality understood in what way? If free institutions require thinking men to conceive, create, and operate them, what habits of thinking are necessary to found and sustain a free society, and how can one inculcate such habits? Does liberty require that the majority of the people be habitually rational, or only the constitution makers or some ruling "natural aristocracy"?
For this proposed colloquium, participants will read and then discuss primary sources that raise these questions. For the reading list, we are considering excerpts from Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Jefferson, The Federalist, and Tocqueville, among other thinkers. Might anyone suggest specific texts that might be appropriate for our purposes? Thanks for your help!
1 Response to "Cognitive Requirements of a Free Society -- Suggested Reading?"
Lee Trepanier on Jul 11, 2009
It sounds like a good list of thinkers. I would suggest a few of Oakeshott's essays in his Rationalism in Politics book and perhaps a chapter or two from Leo Strauss' Natural Right and History.
It also might be interesting to compare these thinkers' account of rationality with someone contemporary, like Richard Rorty, and see how the American regime favored a certain type of rationality (Dewey's, Rorty's, et al.) over another type (Locke, Federalists, Jefferson, Tocqueville) and the consequences it has for liberty in our republic.