Commentary on the Constitution from Plato to Rousseau

377 Pages·2011·1.82 MB·English

by  Joshua B. Stein

Commentary on the
Constitution from
Plato to Rousseau

Commentary on the
Constitution from
Plato to Rousseau
Joshua B. Stein
Roger Williams University
Lexington Books
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by Lexington Books
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.lexingtonbooks.com
Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2011 by Lexington Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stein, Joshua B.
Commentary on the constitution from Plato to Rousseau / Joshua B. Stein.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-6759-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-6760-1
(ebook)
1. Constitutional law—United States. 2. Constitutional law—Philosophy. I.
Title.
KF4552.S745 2011
342.7302--dc23
2011020444
` ™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United
States of America.
To my son Sam, from whom I always learn

Contents
Introduction ix
1 Plato on the United States Constitution 1
2 Aristotle on the United States Constitution 19
3 Cicero on the United States Constitution 43
4 Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) on the U.S. Constitution 59
5 Muhammad on the U.S. Constitution 77
6 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Von Hohenstaufen,
Stupor Mundi on the U.S. Constitution 97
7 Dante Alighieri on the U.S. Constitution 121
8 Niccolò Machiavelli on the U.S. Constitution 137
9 Sir Thomas More on the U.S. Constitution 159
10 Desiderius Erasmus on the U.S. Constitution 175
vii
viii Contents
11 Thomas Hobbes on the U.S. Constitution 203
12 John Locke on the U.S. Constitution 231
13 Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
1689–1755 on the U.S. Constitution 263
14 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
on the U.S. Constitution 287
15 Conclusion 329
Works Consulted 343
Index 349
About the Author 357
Introduction
It is indeed high time [for you] to abandon [the British, to give up
on counseling them] and to turn your attention to the free people of
America. . . . It would much oblige us, if Solon and some others . . .
would send up a few observations on the nature of Government in
general which we may use as a compass to steer our opinions in this
wide waste of argument.1
T
he title of this book is an obvious and deliberate contradiction in terms.
A brief look at the table of contents may also cause some confusion. How
can Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau, to say nothing of Plato, Aristotle, and
Cicero, all dead well before its composition in 1787 have commented on
the Constitution of the United States of America? Obviously, they could
not, in the ordinary sense of chronological historical description, but they
can comment if we permit suspension of disbelief and allow them to shout
across time to us. That, after all, is a legitimate historical purpose. We the
living study the actions and thoughts of people long dead, try to explain
them, and then we wonder—how are we better off for knowing what “X”
said or we ponder, why “Z” did something? We have gained knowledge,
and that is always justification enough for historical activity, but if that
were the only purpose for “doing” history we would not engage in the
process of telling the story afresh in each generation. There are rarely new
discoveries of fact about the French Revolution or the progress of the Sec-
ond World War, but the purpose of books about these and other oft’-told
tales is to give the reader the author’s perspective, or the perspective of
ix