So for the last six weeks in this class, we have been examining the critical fire of the imperial crisis we have been looking at the debates between British Imperial officials an american wig patriots. And that debates has really in many ways come down to one issue which is broadly speaking, what is the british constitution and how does it define relations between the mother country and her colonies. And more specifically, the real question is, what is the political constitutional relationship between the power on authority of the British Parliament and americas colonial legislators . And over the course of about 12 years, between 1764 and 1776, the British Parliament passed a series of laws. It 1764, it began with the sugar act and then a year later the stamp act and at 1767, the townsend act and then tea act and the prohibit tory act in 1775. But standing behind all of these acts of british legislation is one overarching piece of legislation, which i think is the driving force behind all of these particular acts. That was the declaratory act of 1766 which claimed that parliaments authority extended to the american colonies in all cases whatsoever. And that meant that parliament was not only supreme over the colonies, but in fact its power and its authority was absolutely supreme. Right . So it could pass taxes which had never done before, it could pass taxes in the american colonies for revenue. And the most famous of all of these pieces of legislation was the stamp act of 1765 which put attacks on stamp paper which the calmness needed for almost all legal and commercial transactions. So what was the specific constitutional issue . It was where to draw the jurisdictional boundary between the authority of parliament and the authority of the clone eel legislatures. Now with regard to the stamp act, the british act argued that it was legal and therefore constitutional. The americans by contrast argued that the stamp act was unjust and therefore unconstitutional. Over the course of the next ten or 11 years, British Imperial officials and american patriots began a kind of search for principles. The principles first of the british constitution, because they had competing understandings of the british constitution. But for the americans, the debate was not simply over the british constitution. The americans began starting in 1765, they began a search for deeper moral principles. When they argued that the stamp act was unjust and therefore unconstitutional, the real question is, how and in what way was unjust . Over the course of the next ten or 11 years, the americans began this search for new standards, new principles of justice, of liberty, of equality, of rights, of sovereignty. And over the course of these ten or 11 years, they began to see that the principles that had once tied the mother country to the colonies no longer worked. And the americans with their newly developing understanding of what the british constitution was, they began to see that it had to be grounded in absolute permanent universal principles. And that was what they searched for over the course of the years of the imperial crisis. Now in many ways, as john adams argued, in a letter that he wrote to thomas chairman person in 1815, the real American Revolution was not about the war, in 1815 adams wrote, what do we mean by the revolution . The war . That was no part of the revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people. And this was affected from 1760 to 1775 in the course of 15 years before a drop of blood was shed at lexington. Now, think about that. Adams is arguing that the real American Revolution was not military, it was not constitutional, it was not political, it was not economic. The real, the deepest caucus where will find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the American People. And then in 1782, thomas payne, in a letter that he wrote to the abaranault of france this about the period leading up to the American Revolution, our style a manner of thinking have undergone a revolution. More extraordinary than the Political Revolution of the country. We see with other eyes. We hear with other ears. And we think other thoughts that knows we formally used. Think about the meaning of what pain is arguing here, some kind of radical transformation took place in the way that the americans saw the world. The way that they sought about the most important, the most fundamental concepts of justice. And that takes us now to the topic of todays lecture which is the philosophy of the declaration of independence. And so, thus far in this course, over the course of these last six weeks we have mostly been looking at the political and constitutional principles and institutions that were developed by American Revolutionaries. But all of this comes two ahead in 1776. As we talked about last class, the last link between the columnist and the mother country was through their relationship, the colonists relationship with the person of the king. But in january, 1776, with the publication of tom panes common sense. That relationship is forever severed. So there is no intellectually lingering remnant allegiance or loyalty between the call and miss and them other country. Once they have severed their connection with the person of the king, psychologically they are no longer members of the british empire. So that then takes us straight to july 4th, 1776. And to the passage which we talked about last week, last class, of the declaration of independence. What was this declaration of independence . That was ratified on july 4th, 1776. Well, the first thing to note about it is it is a very political and in some ways even, a diplomatic document. It was written in part for george the third. It was written free european diplomats and financiers. And it was written of course, for the American People. It was made to help organize the American People politically. But the declaration of independence was a lot more than just a political document declaring the independence of these 13 colonies. And the calling fourth of new states because thats what they are now. They will no longer be colonies, they are states. Independent, political units that now have the authority to create their own constitutions and their own governments, and of forge alliances with foreign powers. But the declaration was more than that. In 1825, Thomas Jefferson was asked by henry lee what his object, what the purpose was in writing the declaration of independence. And he wrote, quote, this was the object of the declaration of independence. It was intended to be an expression of the american mind. Now, think about what that means. Of the american mind. On the one hand, what it clearly an obviously means is that the declaration is a summing up of all of the principles that the americans had been searching for during the years of the imperial crisis. Its a summing up. So when it says, we hold these truths to be self evident, and then it lays out its self evident truths. These are the principles of the american mind. But as an expression of the american mind, the declaration was also laying the foundation for the new constitutions and for the new governments that were going to be created by the new states. And in fact, what the declaration of course does, is it establishes the moral foundations, not just of these new states but of the United States of america. And that is the great meaning of the declaration. The it provides the moral foundation for this new nation going forward. All right. Before we jump into the declaration, and what were going to do in todays class is we are going to systematically, line by line go through the declaration to elicit the deepest meaning of the declaration. Before we do that though, let me mention something that weve talked about a little bit before in this class which is the philosophical background of the declaration of independence. In my view, the declaration is the embodiment, it is a precis of the philosophical principles of the enlightenment. All of the great enlightenment ideas and principles are in effect embodied in the declaration of independence. And the three great philosophers of the enlightenment worse or isaac newton, john locks essay concerning Human Understanding and locks second treaty of government. What im going to argue is that the ideas, the fundamental core ideas and locks essay or innocence summed up and embodied in the first paragraph of the declaration. The second paragraph of the declaration is a abstracts, an abstract of the core basic principles that you will find in the second treaties of government. So let me just sum up for you quickly the core ideas, the Core Principles of the indictment which i think can be seen as having been transposed onto the declaration of independence. There is an enlightenment project, we can identify a kind of comprehensive philosophy of this period known as the enlightenment, the 17th and 18th century enlightenment. And like all comprehensive systematic philosophies it has four basic branches. It includes four basic branches of philosophy. First is metaphysics. What is metaphysics . It is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of reality. And i can sum up for you in one word the enlightenments view of metaphysics. Nature. The Second Branch of philosophy is epistemological. That is that branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge. And i can sum up the indictments view of epistemological in one word. Which is reason. The enlightenment also has an ethical theory. And ethics is that branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of human action and human relationships. And i think i can sum up in one word the enlightenments view of fa ethics and that is rights. And finally, the indictment has a view of politics, politics is that branch of philosophy that is concerned with social and political organization. If i to sum up the enlightenments view of politics and one word, it would be constitutionalism. All right. Now the question is, how did jefferson and the committee of five who helped him draft the declaration of independence, how did they take those ideas and put them into the declaration . Or to put the question adversely, how can we see those ideas within the declaration of independence . So, what i would like to do now is just start to systematically go through what in effect, ladies and gentlemen, is just the first two sentences of the declaration. Sometimes people call them the first paragraph in second paragraph. But if you think about it, its really just two sentences. Two very long sentences. We are going to parse these sentences and were going to try to pull out of them sort of, their deepest philosophical meaning. So lets take the first sentence, the first paragraph of the declaration which says, within the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of natures god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which compel them to the separation, close coat. What im going to argue is that this first sentence or paragraphs has built into it a metaphysics and and epistemological. And that it draws on from the enlightenment. What do i mean by that . We lets first identify the core ideas of that first sentence. That first sentence has a kind of overarching the magic structure to it. It has a purpose, right . And what is the purpose of the first sentence . It is to declare to the world the, quote, causes which impel us to the separation. The causes which impel us to break from the money mother country. And that first paragraph also has a principle or a standard. In this case, a moral standards. And that moral standard would be the laws of nature and of natures god. And that first paragraph four sentence also implies and action. And the action is the necessity to dissolve a connection between these two countries. Let me just say, in my view, in many ways and i will talk about this at the end of class. The most interesting word for me of this first paragraph, is the word necessary. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bans, etc, etc. The question is necessary . Why necessary . How is it necessary that the American People dissolve their connection to the mother country . To say that it is necessary suggests that it must be. But in human affairs, there is nothing that must be. Right . The fact of the matter is, in 1776, at least a third of all american colonials at that time were loyalists. Self identified loyalists. And a third hadnt made up their mind about whether they supported independence or not. So how is it on july 4th, 1776, the americans argued that it is now necessary . So the question is why necessary . Why not say when in the course of human events its optional to dissolve our political bands . Why necessary . Im going to come back to that question at the end of the top. Because i think the word necessary tell us actually something deeply important about the moral logic and the moral characters of those who signed the declaration of independence. Let me break down what i think are the philosophical ideas, the enlightened philosophical ideas that are contained in that first paragraph. The declaration, as ive suggested, it has a metaphysics that it draws on from the enlightenment. Summed up in one word which is, nature. We say that in the declaration when it talks about the laws of nature in natures god. In the 17th and 18th centuries, natural what were called at the time natural philosophers that we would call scientists, natural scientists, they began to discover certain laws of nature. Scientific or physical laws of nature. And these laws of nature in effect organized the universe, kept it in harmony, kept it as a system governed by certain core laws, like for instance the law of gravitation or newtons three laws of planetary motion. But these laws a physical nature, they were absolute. They are absolute they are universal. They apply throughout the whole universe. And they are permanent. As a result of these discoveries, these discoveries of a scientific nature, moral philosophers in the late 17th and then into the 18th centuries, began to look or try to discover certain moral laws of nature. When the declaration refers to the laws of nature and natures god, it is referring to moral laws of nature. Right . If you remember, if you go back to one of the first classes when we read john adams diary, the young 21yearold john adams writing in his diary about the things that he was learning isnt undergraduate at harvard college. And what he learned was that in the universe, according to newtons laws, that entities that, physical things out there nature have an identity. And that identity was absolute. In addition to having identity, because it has identity, it is governed by certain laws of cause and effect. And the same adams argued for human action as well. It is a much more difficult leap to go from discovering scientific laws to discovering human, moral laws of nature. But that was at the deepest philosophical level. That was the quest, that was the search of 18th century moral philosophers, including the Founding Fathers. And we see in that first paragraph well, im sorry let me back up and also say that the phrase in the declaration is the laws of god and of natures god. It is interesting that it doesnt say the laws of nature and of god. Its his natures god. So for most American Revolutionaries who were the grandchildren, the philosophical grandchildren of the enlightenment, they viewed natures gods not as the same guard of the old testament. Not a kind of omnipresent god who can change the laws of nature at will. But rather, a god who is like a watchmaker clock maker who set the universe in motion and then stepped back. And that is what i think is being referred to their with regard to natures god. And then in the declaration, that first sentence, it talks about the causes which impelled him for separation. This is a kind of youve causation. In other words, to understand how and why there is this declaration of independence and separation, you have to understand the causes. There is a cause which leads to an effect, the effect is the declaration of independence. And the literal separation of the colonies from the mother country. But it has causes. In order to understand the action of separation, you have tinge down the causes which of course is a principled part of what the declaration does, in a second and very long paragraph of the declaration. It lays out its charges against king george the third. Now, the first paragraph also has an epistemological. And in the context of the enlightenment and americas Founding Fathers, that means that its going to in some way praise and promote mans faculty of reason the. And how does it do that in the first paragraph . Well, at the very end of that first paragraph, it refers to a decent respect to the opinions of mankind. In other words, in this declaration to the worlds, the americans in other words are speaking from one mind to another. Theyre speaking to the reason or the powers of reason of all people everywhere. They respect the opinions of mankind. They respect the idea that they can lay out a case, an argument, appeal to the reason of people around the world and that those reasons can be understood. And that is why in this second paragraph, just before the charges are laid out against the king, the declaration says, quote, to prove this, this meaning the absolute despotism of george the third, the tyranny of george the third, as stated in the declaration to prove this tyranny, let that fact be submitted to a candid world. The americans are making they have essentially written an indictment against george the third and indirectly to the British Parliament as well. And it lays out all of the crimes committed by george the third and the British Parliament. The right . And so by laying out those facts, they are laying them out to people everywhere to determine whether the charges are in fact true or not true. And this is why it says, we are submitting it to a candid world. We are appealing to the mines, to the reasons of people everywhere. All right. Lets now turn to the second paragraph. At