Welcome back to the new Thinkery. My name is David Pore with me as always, and that converse is more with the buttock of night than the forehead of morning. Greg McBrayer, how are you Greg? I was doing all right just a moment ago.
Thanks for asking. You're welcome. And our Franco. I didn't say thank you.
Oh, anyway, go ahead. I gave you a little bit of Shakespeare there Greg got it down. You'll brush up on it and you'll follow my insults. I see.
Our Franco Virgin friend Alex Preu, how are you Alex? Doing well. Do you want to know the three things that strong drink does to a man? Yes.
I can't say that because we have to see him to guess today. Oh, really? Alex, I was I was every time you say something that bewilders me, which is quite frequently, I I try and think about your your great person past. And so I pick up Herodotus whenever I want to learn something about you.
I was reading today. Book one, Herodotus says that the person's hold it unlawful to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do. The most disgraceful thing in the world they think is to tell a lie. But I notice when I read some of your commentaries on Plato, you often write the thing that is not.
And so you strike me as one of the most profound liars I know. And is Herodotus getting the Persian soul wrong? Or are you just a bad product? Yeah, I think I'm just that bad.
If you're forgetting the Franco influence, David, it's that simple. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah, that's right.
He's on half version. That's right. So who do we have today? We have a returning guest and we're all quite excited.
Yeah, very excited. We have again, Michael Zugert. We did a speech by Henry, excuse me, by Abraham Lincoln on Henry Clay before. And this evening, we are recording an episode of folks at home on the Gettysburg Address.
Folks at home may know that the 19th of November 1863 is the date that Lincoln delivered this address. And we thought it was fitting and proper to release an episode the week of the anniversary of Gettysburg Address. With Michael Zugert, who once again has a book coming out, can you tell us the title of the book and a little bit about the book before we jump in today? Professor Zugert?
The title of the book is a nation so dedicated, a bit of a paraphrase of a line from the Gettysburg Address. And the subtitle is, Abraham Lincoln and the paradox of democratic sovereignty. And that captures what I see to be the overall theme of the book and of Lincoln's thinking, but some of which is visible in our hope will become visible in our discussion. I know that there are five known copies of the speech in his handwriting.
I'm not an expert on the annual text of the speech. The issue of the edition of the of the speech does raise an interesting experience that I had because I gave a talk on this speech at the Fermi University, or was it the University of Georgia? It was somewhere down there. And the very little evening is the end of the except for this thing I'm about to tell you.
So there was a fairly big audience and in order to accommodate the people who wouldn't be expected to know the Gettysburg Address by part, they had projected behind me on the screen the text of the Gettysburg Address. And now my interpretation of the speech, if we may discover later in our discussion, depends upon noticing that it was divided into three paragraphs. But in the version that they had projected behind me, it was divided into four paragraphs. I was kept getting these weird looks from the audience and I had no idea what that was about because I didn't look at what they had put up with the speech.
So that's the most that I know really about the different editions of the detective. You should have pretended it was an esoteric illusion to the beginning of the tomatoes. Yeah, okay. I didn't know, I mean, it's not until everything was over.
Did I realize what it put it? Yeah. So I know how much you want to speak to this, but sometimes it's good for the folks at home who aren't familiar with this. As before we get into your interpretation of the speech, which I found fantastic, really interesting, some insights there, even bringing in Nietzsche to sort of analyze the Gettysburg Address, which is certainly unique.
Maybe you could just tell the folks at home a little about what should anybody know about? What's the historical setting? What's the occasion? Some of the stuff is probably obvious, everyone knows.
But we see the keynote speaker. Yeah. Okay. So I mean, the immediate occasion was the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg.
Gettysburg, as many of your listeners may know, was the biggest battle in this award. It was the biggest, certainly the biggest battle that had been fought in the North. It was one of the first important victories by the North. And in retrospect, it might be seen as a kind of a turning point in the war, although that wasn't obvious for a little while.
It also was a battle in which there were huge numbers of casualties on both sides. But so the battle occurred in July of 1863, and the address of the dedication of the cemetery occurred in November, as you mentioned, of 1863. Now Lincoln was not the main speaker. The main speaker was a main name Edward Everett, who, too much of the amazement of me anyway, gave a speech that went on apparently for an hour or an hour, or anything like that.
And he had not one single note. He had simply memorized the entire speech. I find completely impressive. Whereas Lincoln speech lasted five minutes, maybe three minutes, maybe.
And he didn't memorize it. He read it. There's a difference between Lincoln and Everett. But of course, in historical terms, Lincoln speeches, while we remember, and Everett's unfortunately forever, it is created into the midst of history.
One of my... So, sorry, just one of my colleagues here, Jason Stephen, that likes to point out, I don't know if it's true, but that Everett's speech was an hour and a half, two hours, whatever. And that when Lincoln's getting up to speak, all the photographers don't have these iPhones back then, right? So it's a little while to change the film and whatnot.
Apparently, they were all changing their film and their cameras. And there's apparently no pictures of Lincoln delivering the guys' pictures. They're like, we'll go on. It was over before they could change it.
Isn't that something else? Yeah, that's pretty funny. Yeah, well, that was the trouble. It was such a short speech.
So anyway, so he's dedicating the cemetery. That's the most immediate purpose. But there's a more significant purpose, really, which is... This was also the year 1863 in which Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
And with the Emancipation Proclamation, the meaning of the war, at least as he was defining it, had changed. And indeed, the meaning of the war changed for the country because he had presented the war. It was understood. It was being fought for the sake of preserving the Union.
That was what the war was about. And indeed, there was a kind of a philosophy state denial that this war was awarded and slavery. But with the Emancipation Proclamation, it became a war about slavery rather than simply about the Union. And so, as I understand it anyway, and I believe as Lincoln intended it, this speech is an attempt by Lincoln to explain the meaning of the war in light of the change of war aims.
And to establish... I would say to establish legitimacy of those of the enemy, this was a controversial move. Not everybody in the North was signing on to the idea of a war to end slavery. And so Lincoln was attempting, I think, to make the case of why there was a legitimate thing to have done.
So I think that's most important to me, contextual settings for understanding the speech. I just have one small point. You're reading your chapter, really brought this out for me. This is funeral orations, July 4th orations, these kinds of things.
These seem to be a case to give a display speech where it's just meant to beautify embellishments or things. But what you draw very neatly, how this is actually much more of a... It still has those elements of course, but it's much more about a speech about the future and about the liberation, about what we ought to do. And it's strange how he's using this occasion to really lay out the case for a deeper meaning behind the war and for what the future holds for that.
So I mean, I definitely think that's true. I would add not really about the future. I mean, turns out to be about the future, but it's the future as connected organically to the past. That's what I think is what makes this significant in what is part of maybe the main park of Lincoln's case for the legitimacy of the transformation of the purpose of the war into a war to end slavery.
And I have a quick question to go about that. If you took this speech in isolation and you crossed out the four score and seven years ago, maybe one or two other identifying aspects, you might not know that it's about America. But why doesn't he use the word America anywhere in the speech? Well, that's a good question.
It connects with what I consider as one of the peculiar features of the speech is that in the middle of it says, we're now engaged in grace of the war, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated to one endure. So it's a speech about this nation, indeed, I mean in very important ways, but it's also a speech about a certain type or genre of nation. And therefore, there's something very generic about it. So I think he wants to, maybe he doesn't mention America because he wants to preserve that universal character of what he's trying to get it.
But again, one of the things that I think needs to be explained in the talk in his speech is how that can be, how can it be that this war in this corner of the universe is so significant that whether this nation or any nation so conceived can long endure it. I mean, that's I think the challenge of understanding what he's trying to get it in this speech. But I think he has to do with your observation, good observation that he doesn't mention America doesn't particularize it in that particular way. I mean, what's interesting is to the extent that he does particularize it is to this tiny battlefield, right?
You could stop at the kind of middle level and say, you know, the United States of America, whatever, but he really just goes this brief moment in this little plot of land and see something of universal significance. Now, after that, you know, you draw this point about the preserving the union and why does that need to be connected with the emancipation proclamation? And one of the things I found really interesting is the way in which you laid out the implications of dedication as some dedication on the field, but also dedication to a principal or proposition, right? So maybe you can say a few things about how dedication requires that the union be preserved only on the terms that the emancipation proclamation, only on the terms of the abolition of slavery.
Well, I think what Lincoln is, partly I would, partly back to the experience of another very famous speech, Lincoln's house divided speech, in which Lincoln makes the claim that the house divided cannot stand, the house divided against itself cannot stand, and that's picking up some of the same theme about whether this nation will survive or not. So I think his point is that if slavery, well, we face a choice, Lincoln believed, and in my book, I try to argue, we'll try to bring out what kind of choice we face. We face a choice of becoming all slavery, all free. That's the choice.
And so if we end up not choosing freedom, if we don't end slavery, then we're going to have ended the nation that we know. I mean, we might, you know, there might still be the United States of America here. It would just be a different country than the United States of America that Lincoln believes was founded in 1776 and 1787. That is, a nation is determined, Lincoln thinks, by what it looks up to, by what it's dedicated to, by what it understands to be, its fundamental truths, what it understands justice to be, what it understands to be, its goals, its own existence.
And if it changes all of those things, it's no longer the same nation. For those classical classically trained listeners out there in your audience, after you have many, many, maybe all of your listeners are like that. It's a little like your, when Aristotle talks about the, the comic course and the tragic course, the matter may be the same, but the form is different and therefore the being, the reality is different. And that's I think Lincoln has a similar kind of idea.
So that's what I think that question takes us. Michael, I have a question. Or maybe you can elaborate upon what are some of the key themes, I mean, Alex has brought up this question of dedication. I'm wondering what other key themes you see in the speech.
Does the structure reveal anything about Lincoln's intention? What are some of the main ideas that one shouldn't take away from this? Yeah. Okay.
Well, first, let me mention the thing about the structure. I already emphasized the three paragraph structure. And the three paragraph structure, I think, corresponds to the three dimensions of time. That is the first paragraph he speaks of a four, four, and seven years ago, that is, clearly speaking about the past.
The second paragraph begins by saying, now we are engaged in a great civil war. So it's about the present. And then the third paragraph talks about what the task of we Americans, you and the audience, and so on, what our task in the future is. So it's a speech organized around past, present, and future of increasing length, too.
Of increasing length, yes. The task is dealt with very quickly, but sort of in a way that echoes through the entire speech, of course. So this first, that is that one of the things he's trying to do here is to speak about the continuity and actually implying some discontinuity, but the ultimate continuity of our task in the future in the present with what was the dedication of the country in the past. But in addition, though, you might say that the major theme, the major theme, would be, now we are engaged in a civil war, now we are engaged in a space of work testing, whether this nation or in the test, the idea of the test, what the test is, how is the test of this nation so conceived and so dedicated, and what it's going to take to pass their test is how you're going to get your 800 on the SHU score, test whatever you're taking.
So yeah, I think the idea of test is the thing that pulls the speech together, you know, that's the theme, that's maybe the dominant theme of this speech, how it is attached to the what we were in the past and what we have to do in the future. That's our thing. So I would say that's definitely, that's definitely the theme. I think that that test aspect connects to a question you brought up earlier, but we really should talk about because I think it's such a, you bring this out early on, I think it's such a good sort of problem or a textual issue to get you into which is how this event, this momentary test or this historical event that's a test can end up having some relation.
Now at some point it seems like you want to say, yeah, this moment does actually prove this generic question about whether any nation, not just this nation, any nation, so conceived could, could, you know, long into it. But then you kind of back off so a little bit later as well. So it would certainly be, as you put it would certainly be a thorn in the side of any future attempts, right? But maybe we'll talk a bit about that connection between the particular events and the sort of generic clear.
Okay, good. This really raises the question, which I look at as maybe the chief theme in my book and the chief theme of Lincoln's whole career is what I in my subtitle, what I refer to as the paradox of democratic sovereignty. And let me spell that out a little bit how I saw that. So quite Lincoln, the prime political truth is that political truth he announces in the first sentence of the year's address that all men are pretty equal.
And that prime political truth, he says, was articulated at the beginning of the nation and the declaration of the inverse word seven years ago. And that is the truth that stands behind, we might call the American way behind America as a machine. And at the same time that Lincoln is persuaded convinced that this is the truth of political rights. He also sees it to be dissolving and a source of vulnerability of this regime or any regime constituted accordingly.
So let me mention three ways in which I think that's particularly the case and that he brings out in the case of the justice stuff. So in the first instance, America is a nation dedicated, founded in a dedication to the proposition of all merit-free equal. Now this is by the way, I mean something that's now being denied or doubted in many circles today. And you know, one can understand why people might doubt that either.
But Lincoln understood that the nation was on the one side founded in a dedication to that principle, but that it had this fatal flaw, this fatal contradiction to that principle from the outset. And so in the first instance, slavery, the nation, the Civil War is a test of the nation dedicated to that proposition. Can we live up to it? Can we live up to it?
Can we in fact live in a nation which is all free? And he understood that there were things about the dedication to the principle that all merit-free equal, that were difficult to live up to because they go from one, they demand of us a certain self-restraint. That is the demand of us that we respect the rights of others, that we respect the equality of others. And he doesn't use this language, but I would say we could translate it this way, that we respect the human dignity of our fellow citizens and other human beings.
But that there were many things in human nature which kind of pushed us in the other direction at the same time. And he was very aware of that, that there was a lot of money to be made in slavery. Cotton was the largest import, or sorry, the largest export in the American economy. It was larger than both the other export goods that America produced at this time.
So there was a lot of money to be made in slavery. There was a lot of ego's satisfactions perhaps in having slaves. So there were a lot of things in human nature which challenged that principle of equality. And so the question is, this might be a truth, but is it a truth that can actually maintain itself?
Is it a truth that we human beings are able to sustain? So that's I think the first way in which the war is a test of that proposition. All right, everybody, before we go any further, I think we should take a minute to step aside and think our sponsor, the ancient language institute. Now, I owe the ancient language institute and our listeners a deep apology after last week's ad I got a lot of emails saying, I don't want to learn my languages from some ancient Institute.
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Secondly, the principle that all men are created equal is a statement in the first instance of the claim that nobody has a natural claim to rule another. And that all legitimate authority derives from consent to the government. Now, that then suggests, I mean, it's in a way, this is Lincoln's way of speaking of the social country, of those other philosophers. Human beings start off in the state of nature.
That's what it means as they all men are created people. Human beings start off in the state of nature and that they overcome it by making government by consent. Now, if you make government by consent, the idea arises naturally, what can you unmake it by withdrawing consent? And that's exactly the argument that the southerners were raising in their effort to succeed.
And so Lincoln's far secession is a natural challenge to this kind of regime, that this kind of regime was always going to be subject to that idea. We see it in some ways. Now, we in our contemporary life about, let's say, vaccine hesitancy or vaccine rejection, you can't tell me how to do you can't tell me what to put in my body. And so on, that is this idea of a kind of autonomy of the individual, which can just withdraw from the society or reject the society's norms.
And so this claim of equality has this vulnerability to it. That's one. A third, I think a third, a way in which the equality principle leads to certain problems is in terms of constitutionalism. As Lincoln understands it, the equality principle points towards a regime of rule of law and a regime of what we call constitutionalism, limited government, government which is restrained by constitutional restraints of various kinds.
He himself, I argue in my book, was somebody who actually was quite solicitous of trying to live according to those restraints, as he accepted those restraints as limitations on his own authority. So for example, he believed that it was not constitutional for the federal government to end slavery in the states that had it. Slavery in the states, slavery was wrong. He had no doubt about that.
Slavery was kind of the deep principle of the regime. He had no doubt about that. But yet, the authorities in this regime were degenerated and authorized only to do what the Constitution and the authorizes them to do. That's what it meant to have a regime based on the consent of the government.
That's what the government had consented to in the government that they had established. And so he, as president and nobody else in the other job, had a right to go beyond or outside the Constitution. And so Lincoln accepted the limitations that the Constitution imposed and the idea of constitutionalism, that accepted it. So then the question arises, can you fight a civil war respecting those kind of limitations?
And this was an issue which Lincoln constantly faced. The big issue, one of the issues, which is frequently raised in this regard, is the issue of Hagia's Congress. So Lincoln waived Hagia's Congress privilege. He suspended the right of Hagia's office.
And he is often said to have exceeded his presidential authority in doing so. Now, I argue in the book, he argued, and I try to bring out, expand the bit that he made. That indeed, what he did was constitutional, that is he didn't want to accept, certainly, the defense that often is provided for him, that this was an necessity, and he just had to do what he had to do. Lincoln tried to make the case, and I believe successfully tried to make the case that he did indeed get the power, the right of constitutional power, and do circumstances do what he did.
But the war in general raises this question, can you fight this kind of civil war, respecting Constitution? As he asked in one of his others in 1861, July 4th address, must a nation be in order to fight this kind of war be too strong for the rights and of the people. And so the work is a challenge or a test to the aspiration to constitutionalism, and therefore to the which is itself a product of the equality principle that's he understood it. So those are three ways in which the war stood as a challenge or a test of the principle.
So do you think he's a six to the more general, sorry, I'm sorry. Do you want to go? Let me just look at this. I think that he's really in line with this, which is Lincoln as obstetrician.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because I think the notion that there's a lot of as you point out right, birthing metaphors, there's the birthing of the original founding and then the new birth of freedom, which I think can act at least to the second and third point, right? Yes. And so I thought maybe maybe you can expand upon how this imagery, right? Because one of the points that you make, I do want to get to more specifically, but it's maybe too specific, is is that actually this is requires some adjustment in how we view our regime, right?
So it's in a way a new birth, right? There's a new relationship, particularly you draw the attention to federalism, that's going to happen. But then also it's a problem in the original birth, right, that has to be somehow adjusted in the light of the dedication, this is the word dedication. Yeah, yeah.
Well, so in the original birth, there's I'd say, so the original birth sets up a regime in which the in which federalism is I'd say the dominant feature. I mean, I'm going to go a little bit opposite, I'm myself don't quite entirely believe that, but let's just say that to start with federalism is the dominant feature in which there are separate state units, which are free to govern themselves internally, more or less as they desire. And there are certain, you know, common matters that on which they're joined and in which certain principles retail, but that for the most part, the regime is founded on the notion that the individual state units are free to govern themselves as they choose. And so some of them have chosen to govern themselves with slavery and some of them have chosen against slavery.
That's the nation, the house divided against itself, which Lincoln believes cannot stand, which others argued by the way, why not quite like this, the end is not all these years, why can't we stand even longer. So Lincoln, I think the big change they had to be made, I mean, I think he saw that there was a kind of dividedness in the principle of the nation, the dividedness having to do with on the one side a super beating principle of all manner created equal that is the declaration of independence is to say more broadly, the principles of the declaration equality and natural rights mostly, and this principle of the states having a sort of freedom to go against that principle, if they chose. So as Lincoln saw, but that defeatedness in principle was going to have to be overcome. It was going to be overcome one way or the other.
In the course of the development of the nation, it was going to either overcome it by overcoming the declaration of its principles or by overcoming slavery and its principles. So and that is going to be visible and manifest in the constitutional change that was going to have to come, whether it did come towards the end of the 13th Amendment, in which we now say we now commit to the idea that slavery is not legitimate in the United States period. So states no longer are going to be free to define themselves, define their own local institutions as they choose in this way. So the original Constitution, what was one of the major features of it is going to have to change.
That's I think one of Lincoln's thoughts that the new birth of freedom is going to involve a substantial modification of what the old system had been. Not to say it's a complete revolution or complete transformation. I don't think he thinks he values as many times. He values federalism.
He just thinks that it needs to be modified in this way for a way. Is that great David? You got a question? Yeah, it's a small one.
Thanks. You may have answered this already, Professor Zuber, but it's because Lincoln wants to hue so closely to the spear of the Constitution that he doesn't use the word slavery instead uses all men are created equal. So slavery doesn't pop up in this speech either. So let me rephrase that.
What's the anger lost by not being specific? I mean, I think he's specific. I mean, look at the context. The context of the question was such that there can be far from anybody's mind.
Anybody who is there knows that now slavery is the issue. And when at the end of the speech, he talks about the new birth of freedom, that's a pretty clear reference. Also, the beginning spoke of all men are created equal. At the end of the speech with the new birth of freedom.
That seems to me to be pretty clear. And it's a good question. So why doesn't he mention the word slavery in this speech? Maybe it's the reason the Constitution didn't mention the word slavery.
Yeah. That's right. I mean, because you don't want this awful thing to be a blemish in the future where we finally got rid of it, which is the way Madison understood the lack of that word in the Constitution itself. Maybe Lincoln was wanting to imitate that.
Yeah. Yeah. You can lead a listener along gently. Yeah.
Yeah. Two is thought. I have a question. I'm more positive.
I'm more positive. I'm more positive. It's going to be emphasized about civiness. Yeah.
I have a question. I'm going to read the first paragraph of the Gettysburg Address folks at home. And after reading it, I'll just use something out that I think is really interesting and it relates to something you made just a little bit ago about something like some kind of refounding, some kind of reverse and not changing. And especially the emphasis on the idea that the founders were to exaggerate social contract theorists, right?
And that the all men are created equal. Declaration of Constitution are very clearly man-made products. So I just want to draw out something reading the first paragraph here and try to relate something point you said in your chapter. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
So in that paragraph, I think one can detect clearly the social contract you're teaching. But as you point out, when also detects an I think Alex's question implies a kind of natural quality to the nation. Even the choice of the word nation strikes me as leaning toward natural. You mentioned nation-concentrworth.
Yeah. Yeah, nation-concentrworth, right? Exactly. So I guess I see reason.
I see, you know, sort of enlightenment reason. I see nature. I also see religion four score and seven years ago, our fathers, right? And so I just, what's interesting to me is I don't know if this is a qualification of or a correction of the founding, but it seems as though Lincoln is trying to draw upon reason or, or let me try something, he's trying to draw upon social contract theory, nature, and religion here in this.
In other words, the state is not simply the product of human convention. It's natural, but it's also conventional and it's also quasi-religious, it seems to me. This is a theme that persists throughout, it seems to me throughout the address. And it's consistent with your, the remarks you made earlier on the perpetuation speech where this at least attends in that direction that something like religion has to be part of what's going on here.
Yeah, I see in this regard, I see days with addresses, so sort of halfway house between the Lincoln's earlier thought, which tended to be pretty secular, didn't have to, in other, in the perpetuation address, when he calls for a political religion, he doesn't really have in mind something like, you know, there's a God in peace watching us and all of that. He really has in mind, we should make respect for the law, we should honor respect the law religiously. That is, is it something really important that we, that we do and we, we feel a sense of deep, of a deep obligation to that principle. That's the way he's using it.
And there's very little actual theology or anything in that early speech. So that's where he was really on it. By the way, you know, he, this is fairly well-known about him. He had a reputation in his younger days for being a free thinker.
He was very influenced by pain and other free thinkers of their type and over time he, as we say, he got rid of that reputation. And so the Gettysburg address, I think, clearly has echoes of religion and a no question the fourth of the biblical fourth of the years ago, our fathers, you know, all those kind of, well, almost echoes of the King James Bible that we see in the speech. On the other hand, when we compare it to the second inaugural address, this is a very tame, very theologically tame. There's very, you know, it's kind of, so for example, he doesn't invoke a pro-financial God in this speech to get a very good address, but he does very clearly do so in the second inaugural address.
So when he, who brought forth this nation, the founders did it, is human beings like us. So there's a step into this more theological dimension, but it's just a baby step. It's not, I don't think it's a major step. So I think the second inaugural really carries it beyond it might be my check on the second inaugural.
I try to talk about that a bit. You know, why is it that Lincoln is driven beyond the greatest address in the second inaugural? And subject for another podcast, perhaps. So I think what he's attempting to do here, as he does in, is in a way to, to cloak the regime with some of the emotional power that Christianity had for his, for the American people in the 19th century.
I think that's more, and he's, he's, he's very conscious about how far he goes in a genuine, the, the last direction here. So that, I mean, this way I see it. It's a little, it's a little big and he does, of course, the one thing he does do is they had in this under God passage, supposedly actually that he either didn't read or didn't read or he had it later on. So that's the one place where he steps a little bit further into it.
Yeah. Yeah. And Michael, you know, one thing, just to talk about the effect the speech has on the listener or even a reader is it sentiments are conveyed in a kind of manly honesty or courageously even he doesn't address, for instance, mothers who have lost sons. And so there's, it's totally free from a kind, not misplaced sentiment out, but maybe the question is, yeah, that one would normally find during a funeral oration.
Yeah, because I think finally, what he's trying to do is saying, is trying to say what, you know, what they did that show great was they, they died in this dedication to this thing. And what we need to do is not dwell on their doing that. I mean, we should appreciate it. We should honor them for it.
But in the other hand, I decided to carry forward that dedication, the way to honor them properly is to carry forward the dedication that they died on behalf of. And so I think he's not going to be Marcus as well in this. He doesn't speak. That essentially does make up mothers for wives, those who have been who have lost in the second and only interestingly, he speaks more, he speaks more than he does than he does here.
So good. If I can maybe return to the federalism question, reading this is right before you get to the conclusion, as you're commenting on the third paragraph. Yeah, I think this is just, if I can read it, I maybe this would get into copyright issues. If it doesn't clear that this task is in principle, a continuation of that of the founders, even while it requires a renunciation and remaking of much of what they had made as Lincoln and most other Americans before the Civil War always insisted, a chief principal of the founders' political order was the right of the states to order themselves internally as they were so long as they remained Republican and formed.
Lincoln understood that rights include the right to have slavery, but that did not derogate from the fact that slavery was contrary to the founding dedication. The nation was truly divided against itself. I think this is not truly there. The task you're providing for the new birth was going to require them that some important pieces of the father's work would need to be doing.
Federalism, for example, can no longer allow such a degree of state economy as a bid to the antebellum rule. It strikes me that this is a, I recently read George Anastopol's book on the Constitution and he makes much of federalism as it seems like a kind of founding compromise and how there's this kind of move towards less and less state autonomy. So I guess my question is to what extent is this really a new birth? Is this a change?
To what extent is this actually fulfilling Anastopol, for example, points to things like the necessary proper clause? To the fact that certain provisions around slavery, they're not called slavery or to end in time. Congress can start limiting this. The idea that there will be a general erosion of states' rights over time.
Do you think that was intended by the founders and whether Lincoln was fulfilling that or whether it really was a break from the founders? Okay, so I read the founding differently from George. So there's that. I think he reads it very much in the way that Martin Diamond, for example, did who sees a federal thing as a best to compromise, sort of incoherent to compromise, which had this dominant principle of nationalism.
I don't read it that way. I think they were in fact more committed to federalism than George or Diamond argued. So there's one place where I would differ from his assessment of it. I think that, so I mean, I'm going to differ from, like, for example, the necessary proper clause, I don't think they saw the necessary proper clause as something that was going under mind slavery.
I don't think they saw, I don't think that, I mean, almost any generalization you make about a group of that many people is going to be wrong for somebody. But on the whole, I don't think they saw the federal government as an instrument for ending slavery in America. The people who were eager to end slavery, and I included that in Madison, I included not even Jefferson. I mean, it's a bit of a bit of a, I don't want to say it's a stretch, but I mean, you know, Madison, Jefferson's kind of ambiguous.
And now that he's been removed from the New York public, New York, what do you say you move from the New York State, the State House, right? Yeah, some official that he's been removed from. It's hard to, you know, people aren't willing to concede the degree to which he had serious reservations or that's too weak, reservations, hostility to slavery. And the fact that he didn't do anything louder, of course, is a relevant fact, no question about it.
But I still say he also has an opposition to slavery in his hard of hearts. But none of those people looked at the federal government as the instrument for ending slavery in America. It was going to be done, it was going to be done by states, and it's going to be done by the individual slave owners. And that's how they saw it.
Nobody foresaw that the federal government would have powers. Madison, who, Diamond anyway, and maybe, you know, I don't remember exactly what he says about Madison, but Diamond and, you know, it's not why I don't think maybe they over, they don't appreciate the way to which Madison wasn't get committed to federalism all along, not just, not just later in his career, but all along he was committed to federalism. So yeah, I would say, so different, I would say is a bit of change. But the other thing is, yeah, a good segue, that's a good segue to another question we had in the run of show, something that you bring out in your chapter here.
Since you mentioned, you know, I'm a stopload diamond, I was wondering if you could maybe draw out some ways in which you are understanding of the Gettysburg Address differs from some of the other, I don't know, respectable scholarly accounts like Gary Will's and then The Row, Willem Kendall. Okay, well, I didn't, I didn't clutter up my chapter or actually much of my book with a lot of skirmishes with the scholars. That's why I thought that these guys, since you singled them out, I thought they must have something there because you don't, you don't do that typically. That's right.
Yeah, right. So, so, Gary Will's and well, they see all three of them are, I don't want to say famous, maybe Will's famous for having done this. Our famous for him is he was famous for having argued something like, making the Gettysburg Address is claiming to be hardening back to the founders and their commitment and what the nation was at its outset. But in fact, it's a massive transformation of what it was and that they were never committed to this equality principle in the way he says.
Now, in my opinion, the most respectable version of this position is the one that Glenn Thoreau took in his very nice little book on Lincoln and civil religion, in which Glenn Thoreau made this very interesting, I think very interesting argument. He noticed that the, in the Declaration of Independence itself, Declaration of Independence is we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Linen says, of course, we're in seven years old, our fathers brought forth upon this condemnation because even liberty and dedicated, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. So Jefferson and the Declaration declared that they have claimed all men are created equal to be a self-evident truth.
And Lincoln claims that it's a proposition. Now, Glenn Thoreau interprets this difference in terms of Lincoln's well-known admiration for Euclid. You know, Lincoln used to ride a circuit when he was a lawyer in Illinois. He used to have to follow the court around riding horseback.
He'd be reading Euclid while he's riding horseback. It's hard to tie a picture, really, but there it was. And so he was obviously quite interested in geometry. And so Thoreau says he's using these terms in a Euclidean way so that self-evident truth is the same as an axiom and a proposition is the same as a, what we call the Euclid theorem that is something that is to be proved.
So a self-evident truth is a given truth from which one can begin and cannot prove. And a proposition is something to which one moves and which is proved to be proved. And so he once argued that what Lincoln does is he transforms the equality claim from being a claim of a sort of factual claim from which we start to being a something which must be proven in a sense of established, in fact, established as a going institutional practice in order to be true. And so he sees that what Lincoln is doing is rechecking that Jeffersonian beginning point and saying instead what we have is a kilos, a kilos for our society to make, to prove that all in a way that doesn't necessarily mean equal in all respects.
Lincoln, like Jefferson, like everybody in sensible realizes that there are certain inequalities among human beings which are going to persist. But there's some are bald and ugly and some are lazy and some are lazy and others are ugly and smart. So yeah, so but there are some ways in which human volume beings are equal. That's what they're trying to say and they're interested in identifying what those are and what their political implications are.
So there's a difference, Lincoln is rejecting the founders way of doing it and thinking about this other thing. And I want to say that, well, I'm not sure I don't think that's quite correct for a couple of different reasons, but there is something that he's picked up in the idea of dedication. That is Lincoln's idea of dedication carries on something of that idea that the commitment to equality that was present at the beginning is not something that can just be taken for granted. It's something to which we need to be dedicated, that is we need to commit ourselves to ever renewing and ever tending and ever making it work.
So as we see in the three ways in which I mentioned that the war was a test that is the usual slavery is a constant challenge to that to that principle and to that dedication. The issue of secession is a constant temptation or possibility in this kind of regime and the temptation of the need to maintain constitutionalism is a constant need that needs to be tended. If we, you're not very day are discovering over a decade, right? It's more evident this year than it has been some other years in American history.
So that's how I would maintain that there's some good meaning to what there's some meaning to what Zorro says, but I don't think finally he gets it right that this is a movement away from the founders. In some ways, I think he was too influenced by Harry Jaffa's account in which Jaffa wants to argue that Lincoln is kind of the good Aristotle against the bad lucky founders in his first book, the Crisis of the House Divided. I think Glenn Zorro is giving an alternative version of that argument, a chamber version, but nonetheless it's been influenced by Jaffa. So we have a lot of good questions from Twitter.
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, before we do that though, I can confess that I teased on Twitter that you would speak about other philosophers whom you mentioned in this chapter on Lincoln. I was surprised.
Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, in an analysis of the Gettysburg address. So I feel like we would be doing this service at Phoset Homp. You just tell us a little about how you use these philosophers to understand this each. Yeah.
Can I point out something to Greg? Lincoln had a beard without a mustache. Nietzsche had a mustache without a beard. It's a pregnant silence, right?
Yeah. So I mean, I'm not making a claim that Lincoln read Nietzsche. I just want to make that clear right now. It's a great mark.
Okay, so but I think he's forced something that has something in common with one of Nietzsche's more famous things, which is his essay on history. He uses a disadvantage of history for life. And so in that essay is probably most of your listeners know, Nietzsche identifies three different types of history, the fundamental history, the critical history, and the antiquarian history. And I argue that there's a kind of parallel in Lincoln's own work and in this speech for them, the first paragraph is a kind of antiquarian history that looks back to what our fathers did, and with an idea of conserving it or preserving it.
The second paragraph raises the question, well, this war is a test of what our fathers did. That is, it's a gesture in the direction of critical history, that's here in the limitations of what our fathers did. We can't just redo what they did, because what they did finally is coming, not quite coming apart, maybe coming apart. And then the third paragraph is, I think, an echo back to my email history, that is the new task, a new founding, a new achievement by us, the prison generation.
So I think that there's a kind of parallel in that that Nietzsche's discussion is helpful for seeing what some more Lincoln's friends say. But the difference, I argue between them, is that Nietzsche's these three kinds of history is separate and different from each other, whereas Lincoln wants to see them as connected to each other. The critical history part is still attached to that initial founding of the initial position and the task that we face for the new future is that monumental task. That's also has a continuity with what came before.
It's not to say our task is a smaller task because the task of overcoming slavery in America, it's still with us. I mean, it's still with us. We haven't really achieved this yet. And so we might say, well, that's no small business.
And so I guess my point would be safe. So but Lincoln's history here has, it's illuminated, I think, by Nietzsche's categories, but it's actually, he gives it his very own twist. Now, if you had written my book, which unfortunately none of you has, my choice. No, we should be clear, not out of a lack of desire.
I don't like it. Yeah, no, no, no. In my chapter on the temperance address, Lincoln's temperance address, I make the case that Lincoln in fact develops a kind of abstract version of the point I was just making about the about the Gettysburg dress itself. It's the Gettysburg dress filled in something of what he was talking about in the temperance address.
So in the temperance address, one of the things he's trying to do in the temperance address is to find a better solution to the problem that he had raised in the perpetuation address. So in the perpetuation address, he raises the following problem. How do we perpetuate the regime when there are none of outstanding ambition and talent and ability who can no longer achieve the glory that they seek by getting a seat in ours or becoming president? This is it's no, it's a small achievement in their minds to walk in steps that others have already followed.
And so we're not going to be satisfied with this. So there are those people of great ambition who will arise in the course of time and who have escaped and overturned the regime. So this is one of the things, how can we maintain the regime when there were people, great people, great talent who are going to arise to want to overturn it? And in the perpetuation address, Lincoln given the solution, which I think he himself shows to be faulting, that is this political religion of reverence to the law.
So I think he shows that that's not that's a nonstarter. I believe that in temperance address, he returns this very question and he shows another solution. And the other solution is this, that the regime has within it possibilities of new, new, new not new, new, new, new, new, new. New achievements of the of the magnitude of what the founders did, but which remain true and rooted in what the founders did.
And so I think of Lincoln and self is the most obvious case in point because Lincoln is the is the clear case, I think it was reason to achieve the level of fame that the founders achieved. Maybe eclipsing them, on the one hand. But there were others who have come close, I think Franklin Roosevelt would be somebody who's close. I would say he's not a political man, Robert, but Martin Luther King has done something of the same status.
These are people who have one kind of glory, magnitude thing, whatever you want to describe it, which does begin to rival data founders and we satisfy this man of tremendous ambition. Now, one of the things I argue, so that may get up. So when we can mix the point though, that the possibility of these great achievements to be both that they can be good for the person who does it, that's by his own ambition, but they can also be good if they are in continuity with the founding principles themselves. Because the founding principles haven't showed their whole hand as to what they imply about human freedom inequality.
And so the the the the temperance address is partly about the temperance reform movement, but more generally it's about reform movements in America. In the first third of the 19th century in America, there are all these amazing reform movements in link us in pressure with that. Why is it that there are so many of these movements in America? And so he's that's a bit of time analyzing that.
Why does this why does this occur in America? And why is this like a new thing in the world altogether? Anyway, so he so he he develops that theme and I think in the Gage redress, he's pointing towards that same phenomenon that is possibility of new things, which are not overturning the regime, but which are expanding it. It's called just extending it.
And so that's what I think he sees himself engaging it. Not not something different from what the founders did, but a new birth of what they did, a new birth of freedom. That's really good. I mean, in a way, this brings a full circle, right?
So you're opening sort of question, right? How is this particular event going to be tied to this generic proposition, right? Yes, yes, they did. Great individuals who are able to instantiate and continue it further in ways that founders may not have conceived or may have conceived, could not have actually right.
Yeah, I mean, take example of, well, a lot of them conceived at the end, I mean, they saw that although they didn't conceive of a way to do it. But also, I mean, women, the equality of women, you know, Lincoln, I want to play a space about equality of women, then let's a drop in one of his video, historical biographers said, well, he's joking or something. I think he was actually serious about it. I mean, he doesn't make it his agenda item, but nonetheless, he sees this as a possible future achievement for somebody in this regime to bring women into the regime in a more, in a more thorough way than they have in the rights of labor.
Lincoln was a great believer in the rights of labor. And to establish those rights of labor, that's something I think he could see as also an extension of the regime of the principles of the regime. So there were lots of tasks that could be done in the law of death. He didn't anticipate.
I mean, he knew he didn't know what the future would the future help. He didn't believe, he sort of believed in the end of history and that he believed that this principle of the American town, he was right in true principle that finally was present in the world, but he didn't know everything that implied. Right. So do you look to tell Bill for that implication then with the sweep of democracy in the language of the law?
Well, you know, it's interesting. Lincoln has a speech that's again one of his less, less admired and less studied speeches on discoveries and indentures. Yeah, that is a speech on the history of speech. It's a great speech.
Yeah, it's a great speech. It's a very good gene. Gene Miller has a very good article on it, I think. And I talk about it.
Gene was my professor actually in University of Georgia. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, I think his essay on that is very good. And I try to, you know, personally, a question as well in a chapter I am on it.
And in the chapter, Lincoln does this interesting thing about trying to show how it is that the March, March, anyway, the historical development of discoveries and inventions led to the discovery of human equality. That new inequality was the end result that the ultimate result was the American Revolution and then beyond that, whatever other implications the American Revolution has. And I think that there's something in common with Tocqueville's analysis, especially in his introduction to Democracy in America where he talks about, I mean, I think it's a different mechanism that they have in mind. But for hopefully it's the social differentiation that occurs over time.
That seems to be that is the main vehicle for the march of progress or march of equality and history. But there's something definitely there's something definitely common to the two. Yeah, great. Okay, so we're a little over an hour now and I want to get these Twitter questions.
So maybe there's a lot of them. There's a really good one, some kooky ones, but maybe we can go to the cookie ones. So the first one is from at Addis, a graduate student in Classics, actually the University of Chicago. He says, why is the language of fatherhood so prominent on the occasion of death?
Perhaps conceived in Liberty shows Lincoln's hand that he believed war is the father of all quitting Heraclitus there. Yeah, I'll leave it at that one. He has a bunch of questions, so I thought that was treated. But we talked about the birth stuff, but why birth on the occasion of death?
Well, I mean, I think the issue is clearly that Lincoln is trying to say the meaning of this war, if we do it right, is a new birth is something positive. And he wants to something positive that happened in our past. So that's, I mean, I guess I don't know, it doesn't seem like very solid answer, but that's the best that comes from it. I'll try to say something that not this is directly as responsive.
This is sort of in talking about this speech with some of my friends here. You mentioned the three paragraph structure. Yeah, what's interesting is the I think it's he's trying to turn death into birth, which makes maybe this is a little bit weird on a stretch analogy here, but in the first paragraph, we get the father's conceiving. And in the final paragraph, we get a new, a new birth.
And so in the middle, you get something like labor pains, I guess the war is sort of the labor pains of or the any event like the bloody mass and then you actually maybe please we have a children listen to the show. We don't know. But the weird thing is that you know, birth itself is a kind of violent thing. I suppose I'm pointing to it.
So it is trying to just try to capture that violence, but turn it into something uplifting rather than the order. I you mentioned this very point in the right, right, right. I mean, to build off that a bit, if there is, as you've been describing like all this tension between sort of historical circumstance and the dedication or the principle or the proposition to which you're dedicated, that doesn't apply a kind of fundamental struggle human life, right between us. Yeah, that's yeah.
Yeah, definitely hit us with another hot question from Twitter. Have those pre-adopolis. Oh, I'll close. If you can't tell us Greek.
Yeah. He teaches that was Wyoming Catholic, I was just saying Wisconsin was before I was yelled at Twitter. But he wants to know, are Lincoln's prophetic tone and biblical voice and Gettysburg and the second inaugural development of a break from or not at all different from his prescription and the lyceum address to rely strictly on cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason. I would say they're definitely but development, I suggest that earlier it's not the same position I think at all as in the lyceum address.
And I say it's a development. I mean, it's a little it's a question that's much, I'm not saying much debate about someone debated in Lincoln literature. To what degree do we see here a genuine movement in Lincoln's thinking and his faith commitments? So there are those who argue that Lincoln over time moved from this kind of free-thing for guy to to a really serious Christian with maybe not Orthodox faith, but a really deep faith.
So that's one that's one way of reading it. And there are others who are a little more dubious their things in the second inaugural that are a little bit questionable as statements of Orthodox faith. I myself, I take the easy way, not the easy way out, but the easy way out in my book. And I say, I don't know what leacons in or our feelings were or what's were on this.
I'm going to look at these speeches as rhetoric. I mean, as that they see whatever whether they speak for his heart of hearts or not, they still fulfill a certain function for him as a statesman. And that's what I'm more interested in bringing out. And I even read the second inaugural in those terms without meaning to dismiss the idea that this is genuine, you know, genuine with the generosity that we're seeing here, right?
Only God can tell with this, you know, I can't anyway. Can I know? Yeah, I just want to take some small issue with Pavlos's question, which, you know, of course, on one hand is correct, right? Lincoln talks about cold, calculating un-passioned reason, furnishing all the materials for our future sporting defense and perpetuation speech.
But the very next sentence he says, we need to have a reverence for the Constitution. So immediately, even in the perpetuation speech backs right up off of the cold, calculating reason and speaks of some, it's sort of like, I think, Allison Dansch I'll talk about a sort of reason being enveloped by reference, framed by reference. So anyway, it's there in that it's in the perpetuation speech too. There's this going back and forth reason and reverence, right?
Right. There is right there is in the Gettysburg Address, right? Even as it has its prophetic tone, it is the fulfillment of a proposition, the application, attempt to reconcile particulars. Yeah.
Well, so what's the reasoning on all of it there? Yeah. Stylight. So I think, you know, whatever, you know, what could be meant by cold calculating reason must get us to all the materials.
I think the answer, I think what he means by that is, if we, if we were a nation of philosophers, we could understand, we could understand the social contract philosophy, and we would see that obeying the law is crucial for all of our, for our moral and our personal goals. That would be cold calculated reason, we'll give us all that. But I believe, as Lincoln moves along, he realizes this is not the way people work. And so in, I have a chapter basically on the Peoria Address and his thinking around that time, it's the time at which the declaration of penance actually emerges as Lincoln's main rhetorical appeal, that's which he appeals, because in the early early appeals to the constitution, he appeals to the abstract law, but he doesn't appeal to the declaration until this period, this period.
And one of the things is that Lincoln is trying to, doesn't have faith anymore, that cold calculating reason could possibly do this for a society, anyway, but maybe for him, but not for a society. And so we need something like, a kind of faith in our, in our, in our proposition, this, this document that we produced, that is for his hours, you know, that it's not universal, it's, although he has the universal proposition, that's the interesting thing about the declaration of declarations, ours in particular, isn't, and yet it's universal at the same time. Anyway, in that chapter, I developed some links, what Lincoln moves to the, he has, he has a variety of arguments, it turns out to be mostly arguments against slavery, and the way in which he melds together an argument, a rational argument, and an argument from the faith of our fathers, and that's when the faith of our fathers becomes the major theme of his work. So you have to read that chapter.
Sorry. Well, I'm looking for you. Well, here's the last question, this is a big one. Yeah.
Okay. It's from a guy named Zetetic and his handle, don't blame me on this, his handle is at Gaze Dicipus. I don't know what that means. I'm only, you know, publicizing that somebody can maybe write in and tell us.
But anyways, Gaze Dicipus asks, is Lincoln philosophic? What the hell? I mean, I would say yes, but I guess we can. Let me give a little bit of what Jeff, Jeff famously, right, wanted Abraham Lincoln to be in the big purple Strauss-Cromcy book and he was rejected.
And I think it's difficult because you read links, I read your work, I read, I saw Dan Shaw present on it, you read a lot of stuff, people really pick apart the language and they find things that seem to be really there. It's really carefully written. It's obviously political rhetoric as you, I think, use this phrase at one point, use it in the S about, I think you've used it in our conversation, it's almost like a little poem, right, that gives me a little bit of interest. There's an immense amount of thought in it.
So I think there's something to this question, right? So however you choose to understand the question. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess it depends on how hardcore you are and how you define philosophic.
I mean, I'm thinking of philosophic as, yeah, it's something like deeply thoughtful, being deeply into the truth of things. But I don't have a particular set of tools of things that one must see into the philosophic. So I would say in an sense, it's philosophic. I don't know if this will satisfy Mr.
C-Tatic. I think on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, that's a great note to end on. Everyone with a new thinkery was pleased to say Professor Zuper to saying, Abraham Lincoln is philosophic. I think what higher grades can be played in a different thing, a great state's in addition to.
Would you say this is the greatest speech in American history or no? It's very hard to, it's a great speech, but I think, you know, I think it's hard to appreciate how great it is, unless you know all the other stuff that you've been saying, Farron, filling in the blank, so to speak. I think the second inaugural is certainly a bible to it. Yeah, it's a hard one because different speeches have different virtues, and this one is some virtues, obviously, just have other virtues.
I guess, for example, yeah, I was just thinking, how were you in a dress to be in this online? I was just going to say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm going to talk for the second inaugural. I think it's great. I really appreciate the opportunity to come talk to you guys about Lincoln.
I'm very grateful. Yeah, it's a great question. Now, what do you like to do with you guys before? I have one lightning round question.
I answered very quickly. Which political philosophy podcast is better? The New Thinkery or Enduring Interest? Enduring Interest is the right data one?
Yeah, yeah. I think the first one of my players is a student right? I can't. I don't know who you have to teach to answer.
Okay, that's all you have to do. That's all I'm going to mention. You're that flag? You're that flag?
Yeah, he's our family. We have a friendly rivalry. I didn't know that. My cousin and I were on a, I don't know if he's heard you do time on a stoops.
You heard about that. Yeah, okay. So, as he played it, yeah, it's a bit. Coming out this week.
Well, the week of our recording. So, it'll already be on the process. We'll find it on the Enduring Podcast. We'll meet you to our audience.
I'd like to actually listen to that. See what we said. All right. Thank you again for joining us.
Thank you for having me. It's been great fun. And yeah, see you all.