Serving God and Mammon: The Lockean Sympathy in Early American Political Thought

Abstract

This paper seeks to revive the old theory of a “Lockean consensus” in early American political thought against the prevailing “republican” view. The language of “virtue” and “slavery,” which was pervasive at the time of the founding, and which many have been eager to take as evidence for the influence of civic humanism, in fact has a perfectly plain Lockean provenance. This is established first through a reexamination of Locke that links his account of virtue to a Christian asceticism (i.e., the Protestant Ethic) rather than republican philosophy. That the founders understood virtue in this way is then established through an exploration of Adams and Jefferson. In both cases, it was a Lockean slavery which they feared and a Lockean virtue which they sought. A Lockean sympathy did exist among the founders; in order to understand it, however, it must be distinguished from modern liberalism, with which it has only tenuous connections.