James Madison: Philosophical Pluralist
D A N T E
I SHALL ARGUE that there are two senses in
which the term pluralism may be understood-the pragmatic and the philosophical-and that Madison was not a pluralist in
the first sense, but that he was one in the
second. Furthermore, I shall contend that,
far from being a mere quibble about terms,
the resolution of the question of what kind of
pluralist James Madison was has enormous
relevance for the kind of country we want to
be today.
In his great book, The Pragmatic Reuolt in
Politics, William Yandell Elliott traced the
origins of what he called “anti-intellectualistic pluralism” in a variety of irrationalist
currents in twentieth century political
thought.’ While I should not wish to endorse
every aspect of his interpretation, I hold
Elliott’s book to be indispensable reading for
everyone who wants to understand the “pluralism” of recent and contemporary political
science. Following Elliott’s lead, I shall call
this pluralism “pragmatic.”
Pragmatic pluralism must be credited
with having widened the sphere of politics to
include what Hegel had called “civil society.” T h e aridity of much of earlier American political science which had concentrated
on “the state” and its formal legal enactments was exposed for all to see by the
pragmatic pluralists. However, the weaknesses of the pragmatic approach have
. become increasingly evident. I do not propose
here to dwell on all of those weaknesses-for
my paper is more about Madison than about
contemporary political science-but
I do
wish to underscore what, with Elliott, I
consider to be the harnurtiu, or tragic flaw, of
pragmatic pluralist political science: viz., its
irrationalism about ends.
According to pragmatic pluralism-or to
what some would call interest-group liberalism-the
problems of politics may be
reduced to the competition of organized
groups representing the various “legitimate”
G E R M I N O
interests in a modern, developed society for
influence on public policy. There is high
contempt for philosophy expressed in such
an approach: the success of the system is
allegedly proved by the fact that it “works.”
Out of the free play of interests, a certain
equilibrium is said to be established for a
time. One need not bother one’s head about
such “abstractions” as justice or the common
good, because these terms have meaning only
in relation to the groups interpreting them.
There is no intersubjective basis for the good;
terms of moral discourse are relative to those
using them. Good, the pragmatic pluralists
would say ironically with Hobbes, is what
men call good. Pragmatic pluralism, then,
attempts to sweep substantive problems
about the ends and priorities of government
under the rug. T h e “just” and the “right”
are matters to be settled procedurally, they
claim.
Recent scholarship has demonstrated conclusively that the Madison whom contemporary interest group theorists hail as their
progenitor is no older than H. Allen Smith
and Charles Beard. In an article remarkable
for its succinctness, the historian Paul
Bourke has pursued the fortunes of the
Tenth Federalist in twentieth century social
science. H e concludes that contrary to what
the pragmatic pluralists have thought, it was
actually “a retreat from the intellectual
world of Madison’s Tenth Federalist which
characterized the development of modern
T h e concluding, acid-tongued paragraph
from Bourke’s article, “The Pluralist Reading of James Madison’s Tenth Federulzst” is
worthy of quotation in its entirety.
For men whose political sensibility was
shaped initially by the process of revolution, tempered by the sense of governmental failure in the 1780s, and revived in the
act of constitution-making, a central goal
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’
was necessarily the politicization of a
whole community around concepts of the
public interest and the expression of that
process in constituted assemblies. We need
to recall the hope which suffused the
debates over ratification, especially in The
Federalist, that a “rational and more energetic system of civil polity” would replace
the chaos of Confederation, the belief that
communal political education in terms of a
public interest was in train; the prediction
that consolidated government would gradually bite deeply into the lives of a republican citizenry. These aspects of eighteenthcentury discourse, so plain as to be cliches
of historical understanding, may take on a
new historical importance when we realize that it was the belief that such aspirations were no longer relevant or efficacious
that sharpened the search for political
forms and new theory in the 20th. It was,
in short, an apparent retreat from the
intellectual world of Madison’s Tenth
Federalist which characterized the development of modern p l u r a l i ~ m . ~
Robert J. Morgan has argued convincingly that Madison’s political theory “bears
little resemblance” to the world of the pluralists in contemporary political science. Madison “sought to free the individual from the
constricting embrace of traditional social
structures which the modern pluralists have
revived in sligh-tly revised form. They seek to
insulate the individual from a political world
which, i t is alleged, he neither understands
nor controls. This protection is a reaction
against the ideal of personal independence
which was the very foundation of American
republicanism. T h e extension of this ideal
into the constitutional order was the bedrock
of Madison’s theory of factional control,”
Morgan concludes.
Morgan goes on to argue that pluralists
such as Arthur Fisher Bentley, Robert Dahl,
David Truman, and others neglect the basic
reality of force in political life. “It is precisely
this reduction of force into pressure, the
subordination of the individual to the group,
and the transformation of government into
the harmonizer rather than the creator of
social conflict that renders the pluralists’
interpretation of the Tenth Federalist unintelligible to its author,” he emphasize^.^
Even an eye untutored in Madisonian
matters could not help but be struck by the
ubiquity of such phrases as “the public
good,” “the rules of justice,” “the common
good,” “justice and the public good,” “patriotism and love of justice,” and “the true
interest” of the country-terms which are
scarcely “operational” in the vocabulary of
pragmatic pluralist political science. F a r
from extolling group competition as the summum bonum of republican government,
Madison likened it to a necessary evil (necessary, that is, if liberty is to be preserved)
requiring the control of a natural aristocracy
of public-spirited representatives who had
been selected out of the aspirants for office in
an extended republic. “Faction” itself for
Madison was hardly the neutral term it is for
a behavioral political scientist: it was a “dangerous vice,” a “mortal disease,” and the
like. Factions were not simply groups exercising their rightful liberty to advance their
“interests”; a faction was “a number of
citizens . . . who are united and actuated by
some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or
to the permanent and aggregate interests of
the c o m m ~ n i t y . ” T
~ h e latter part of the
definition (beginning with “adverse”) is generally ignored by interest-group political
scientists.
Madison’s natural aristocracy of elected
representatives would “refine and enlarge
the public views, by passing them through
the medium of a chosen body of citizens,
whose wisdom may best discern the true
interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be the least likely
to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”
While I agree fully with those scholars
who have exposed the way in which Federalist Ten in particular has been mangled
almost beyond recognition by pragmatic pluralist political science, I nonetheless think
that in the proper signification of the term,
James Madison was a pluralist. Rather than
get rid of the term pluralist because of the
way in which mainstream political and social
science has misused it, I would, if necessary,
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to save pluralism, get rid of mainstream
political and social science.
The problem, then, has not been with
pluralism but with some of its interpreters.
In the proper signification of the term,
Madison was a pluralist, because he was a
humanist-and by this I mean a student of
the humanities. Madison never forgot (as
social scientists tend to do) the partiality of
our perspectives as individuals. Even as we
might search to be members of the publicspirited cadre of citizens seeking the common
good, we should constantly be aware of our
own predilection for self-interest and selfcongratulation. As Madison reminds us in
the Tenth Federalist:
As long as the reason of man continues
fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it,
different opinions will be formed. As long
as the connection subsists between his
reason and his self-love, his opinions and
passions will have a reciprocal influence
on each other; and the former will be the
objects to which the latter will attach
themselves.6
That is, the core of the knowledge which a
philosophical-as distinct from a pragmatic-pluralist claims to have concerns precisely his own tendency to bias and self-love.
T h e philosophical pluralist could never subscribe to the naive but eternally recurring
belief among many social scientists that an
“objective” science of “public policy” can be
achieved. An example of such pathetic naivet i is the recent suggestion by sociologist
Amitai Etzioni that a “science court” made
up of “a bunch of experts unmoved by
political ambitions” should be established to
decide which economic theory should be
applied by the Reagan administration.’
T h e “objective” knowledge to which
Madison urged that we all aspire was
grounded on the insight that each of us views
political reality subjectively. T h e human
condition presents us with a world of intractable problems which must be approached in
a spirit of tolerance, give and take, empathizing with different viewpoints. Public representatives betray their duty when they
become caught up in a spirit of apodictic
fanaticism.
T h e danger of faction does not arise from
the reality of diverse perspectives, Madison
contended, but from the tendency of each of
us to idolize his own perspectives as that of
the whole. Madison was a pluralist in the
genuine philosophical, humanistic sense of
being a participant who revels in the variety
of human faculties.To quote again from Federalist Ten:
T h e diversity in the faculties of men, from
which the rights of property originate, is
not less an insuperable obstacle to an
uniformity of interests. T h e protection of
these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and
unequal faculties of acquiring property,
the possession of different degrees and
kinds of property immediately results; and
from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of society into
different interests and parties. T h e latent
causes of faction are thus sown in the
nature of man. . .
.’
Madison saw government’s task to regulate,
not to mirror, the interest-group struggle.
“The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of
modern legislation,” he declares.
Yet, how can there be true regulation if
everyone is caught up in “the spirit of party
and faction”? T h e answer given in Federalist
Ten is essentially the same as that later given
by Thomas Jefferson: in an “extended
republic” a natural aristocracy would issue
from the purifying process of choosing repres e n t a t i v e ~T. ~h e effect of the electoral process
established by the constitution would be to
elevate to high public office those “whose
wisdom may best discern the true interest of
their country, and whose patriotism and love
of justice,” will render them least likely to
“sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”
At first glance, Madison’s assurance that
in an extended (as opposed to a simple)
republic, a natural aristocracy of virtue and
talent will probably emerge seems to contradict his insistence on the ubiquity of faction.
T h e contradiction is resolved, I think, by
keeping in mind Madison’s commitment to
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what Professor Morgan rightly calls the
ideal of “personal independence.” In the
mass, as groupies as it were, men behave
badly; as independent human beings with the
requisite political education, they are capable of restraining their impulse to avarice. In
an extended republic with an overwhelming
variety of interests, “the suffrages of the
people . . . will be more likely to center in
men who possess the most attractive merit,
and the most diffusive and established characters.””
What does it mean, this phrase referring
to (‘character”? A character which was “diffusive” was capable of appreciating an
extended range of experiences and perspectives, while one that is “established” was
unlikely to be moved by “intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first to obtain the
suffrages, and then betray the interests of the
people.”” Character was a disposition of
mind toward a life open to the order of moral
reality transmitted by a civilization.
What at Philadelphia Madison called “the
security of private rights” must be kept in
mind as we read such phrases as justice, the
common good, and the public wealth. T h e
purpose of all regulation and of all publicspirited conduct was the better preservation
and enhancement of the private sphere.
Despite claims that Madison followed
closely Hume’s “Ideal of a Perfect Commonwealth,”” I can discover in the Madisonian
imagination no blueprint for a “perfect”
society of any kind. Instead, it seems to me,
Madison sought a (relatively) more perfect
union than the confederacy precisely because
he thought that left to themselves some of the
states might indeed threaten or destroy the
goal of personal independence.
T h e private vision of men of diffusive and
established character required as its complement the public image of a society committed
to the superior worth of the distinctive individual mind. Faction was evil, not only
because it threatened stability, but also
because it tended to absorb the individual
into the conformity of the group, to level him
to the mediocrity of the majority, to reduce
his creativity, and to destroy his charity.
T h e monism and single vision of today’s
so-called “pluralism” in political and social
science contrast markedly with Madison’s
genuinely pluralistic approach to man and
society. What the University’s second rector
did was to provide a profound restatement of
philosophical pluralism. Today’s social
science pluralism would recognize that
Orange County, Virginia, is not Boston, and
in that fact presumably claim to found its
own celebration of “diversity.” Madison,
instead, (loyal as he was to his native Orange
County) would found his concept of diversity
on the capacity of distinct, unique individual
human beings, whether in Orange County,
or Boston, to rise above their factional “interests,’’ and endorse such regulations as are
necessary for further promoting the end of
personal independence.
John Adams once wrote that “I study war
that my children may study politics that their
children may study poetry.” Such a statement offers an order of priorities. Although
he was too busy with politics to study much
poetry, Madison left us with a politics open
to the poetry of personal experience. An
abiding aversion to sameness marks the mind
of our founder. At the same time, one finds in
him the recognition that diversity thrives
only in a moral context committed to it. That
moral context, which protects and defends
our inviolable dignity under our Constitution, nourishes and sustains the public vision
of what it means to be an American.
If space permitted I should have liked to
consider the history of pluralism in the philosophical sense.I3Then, I think, James Madison’s stature as a political thinker would be
even more impressive than it is usually taken
to be, for he made an original contribution to
it. Such an examination of the history of
pluralist thought would also show what a
wrenching break pragmatic pluralism has
made with that history.
Instead, let me conclude with a brief summation of the intellectual crisis in which we
find ourselves and why, more than ever, we
need the wisdom of the man who was perhaps our finest political thinker.
T h e principal manifestation of our intellectual crisis may be found in the language
we use. Although some of the terms are the
same, their significance is not. Whereas
Madison assumed such terms as the public
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interest, etc. to have meaning in the context
of a shared moral world-a world which was
shared because it was moral and not moral
because it was shared-we in the universities
today assume that such terms are merely
“values” which are radically distinguishable
from “facts.” Whereas Madison’s pluralism
flourished in the context of what was experienced to be a single moral reality of the
human condition, today’s social science
flounders in the context of an infinity of
“values.” It is assumed that “history” (i.e.,
success in the power struggle) will somehow
validate values for us and assign priorities to
them. Lacking metaphysical anchorage, the
power of critical judgment by an individual
on the “values” held by different groups in
society looms as nothing compared to the
power of the groups themselves.
There is no reason that the present intellectual climate has to continue indefinitely.
Following Madison in asserting our personal
independence of all “positionism” in political
thought, we can recover what has been lost
and put an end to the monism of the Waste
Land of “factionalism” (in the Madisonian
sense) in American political thought. T o live
according to the spirit of philosophical pluralism means to recognize the plurality of
perspectives opening out upon the same
order of moral reality, an order which subordinates power to spirit. We can discover
again the experiential basis for believing
what we believe and we can at least aspire to
become as eloquent in our day as Madison
was in his in using the creative power of ideas
to defend and promote the American dream.
The pluralism of America is that of the
independent spirit in search of truth about
the human ~0ndition.I~
In the currently predominating version of
pragmatic pluralism, the scrappy, salty society has been replaced by a computerized
calculation of bureaucratically organized
“interests.” Some of the excitement of conflict is still there, but the fight is taken out of
everyone as all tend to share in the same
deadly vision of what Charles Reich once
called the “Corporate State.””
How would James Madison fit into our
present age? Uneasily, at best. In his long
career in practical politics, he learned the art
of craftiness and of appearing to be on both
sides of some of the great public issues at the
same time. However, Madison is distinguished from most politicians of the present
day in at least two respects: (1) there was a
genuinely philosophical dimension to his
thinking in addition to his action-oriented
disposition, and (2) he had clearly in mind a
paradigm of a genuinely pluralistic society as
the ultimate desideratum. These two considerations distinguish his political thought
irrespective of the effect of the enormous
weight of technological change which has
occurred since his day. That is, even if he
were alive today, these two considerations
would still obtain, regardless of the magnitude of the changes from a predominately
agrarian to a predominately scientific and
industrial society.
T h e adjective “philosophical” has been so
corrupted in contemporary language as to
render its original signification in Plato and
Aristotle unrecognizable. The media proclaim of the President’s “philosophy” of
interest rates, taxation, foreign aid, labor
relations, the budget, or the Presidency itself.
In the eyes of its Greek progenitors, however,
philosophy was something altogether different from a general view or conccpt: it was
a way of life, marked by a “turning around”
(periagoge) from the domain of everyday
concerns toward what is lasting in Being. For
the Greeks, philosophy had very little to do
with interest rates and a great deal to do with
wisdom-the wisdom of contemplation for
its own sake.
Much as he was a practical politician,
Madison was also open to the truth of philosophy. In the language of Aristotle, Madison
was a thinker-as well as an actor-who
knew what it meant to be a spoudaios or fully
developed, mature human being. As Eric
Voege1i.n has phrased the matter in his magisterial essay on Aristotle’s “Right by
Nature” (physei dikaion), while all men
have the potential to act on the basis of
reason and deliberation, “most of them allow
their action to be determined by their lusts.”
Thus, “while all men desire what is good . . .
their judgment of what is good in truth is
obscured by
Whether or not he ever read him-and to
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me it is a fallacy to assume that there can be
no continuity in the history of philosophy
without a previous philosopher having
directly influenced h i s successor-or
whether he got it from the “Scottish School”
of the eighteenth century-Madison
had
acquired much the same insight which Aristotle had about ethics. To quote Voegelin
again, what the philosopher knows and what
we today have forgotten, is that
ethics is not a matter of [abstract] moral
principles, nor a retreat from the complexities of the world . . . but a matter of the
truth of existence in the reality of action in
concrete situations. What matters is not
correct principles about what is right by
nature in an immutable generality, nor the
acute consciousness of the tension between
the immutable truth and its mutable
application (possibly even with tragic
overtones), but the changeability . . .
itself. . . .I7
Man’s action (if ethical) was the end point of
a process which had its origin in God, the
unmoved Mover. Like Aristotle, Madison
recognized that the test of the ethical quality
of an action lay in the concrete decision and
action of the participants. This ethical quality could be enhanced by taking thought
about it in the larger context of reality rather
than following our lusts for power in the
immediate parochial context. Philosophy
helped us to stand back and deliberate on
what it means to be fully human; philosophy
was highly relevant to creating an independent citizenry.”
Besides displaying a genuinely philosophical turn of mind, Madison’s writings also
contain a paradigm of the pluralistic society
that today deserves consideration by those
committed to freedom all over the world. In
this respect, Madison’s thought differs from
that of Aristotle, bound as he was by the
compactness of the polis experience. Talk of
Madison as a representative of the republican tradition of “civic virtue,” while true
enough in its way, misses the main point.
Madison’s notion of “the public interest”
was in part meant to draw the individual out
of his shell of selfishness, but his end was that
truly creative and varied kind of individu-
alism that is the heart of pluralism. In reveling in the variety of interests abounding in
the American “extended republic,” Madison
appears to acclaim what William F. Buckley, Jr. has eloquently called “the need for
superordinating the private vision over the
public vision.””
Madison’s genius was to have seen that it
is in the public interest to preserve, protect,
and defend the private vision of each unique,
potentially creative human being. Here is the
mark of authentic pluralism and here is the
dividing line between real pluralism and all
forms of collectivism, no matter how they are
named. James Madison opposed with all the
might of his intellect the idea of imposing a
monolithic “public vision” upon society.
Madison’s insight that the “public interest”
and the “public vision” were fundamentally
different symbols pointing to fundamentally
different experiences of reality is capable of
infinite development by those who seek a
genuinely pluralistic society everywhere in
the world.
For too long, it could be argued, the Free
World has depended too much on armed
might and too little on ideas. Madison’s
creative pluralism offers such an attractive
paradigm for society that it makes pale into
nothingness the slogans of all collectivist
ideologies. Of course, this authentic pluralism must not be regarded as a counterideology itself.
Preoccupation with the Whig, AngloSaxon roots of Madison’s thought may
obscure its universal dimension and the
openness of his creative, individualistic
brand of pluralism to the contribution of
Americans from all parts of the world. While
each American retains his anchorage in ethnicity, in a pluralist America, everyone
should count above all for his individuality
alone. Despite the pressures for standardization in modern societies, there is no reason
why the America of today cannot be even
more diverse and pluralistic than that of
Madison’s time, for the diversity of cultures
and peoples is greater. Neither the melting
pot of homogeneity nor the ghettoization of
collective particularity should be the pattern
of a pluralist America but the vision of each
distinct, unique human being. Such is the
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implication of James Madison’s philosophical
To conclude: there are two versions of
pluralism, not one as is often assumed. Prugmutic pluralism, which has dominated
American political science since the 1950’s, is
often claimed to be the offspring of Madison’s analysis of faction in Federalist Ten. In
truth, as Paul Bourke and others have
shown, the reverse is the case: Madison’s
analysis of faction is antithetical to the interest-group or pragmatic pluralist conception
of politics.
If Madison was not a pragmatic pluralist,
he was a philosophical one. T h e flavor of
philosophical pluralism may best be captured in William F. Buckley, Jr.’s, happy
concept, the “superordination of the private
over the public vision.” Whereas pragmatic
pluralism tends to monism by supporting
conformist, reductionist pressures in our
public life through its emphasis on the group
and on material objectives, philosophical
pluralism supports the expression of genuine
individuality in the context of a reality
shared by all who open themselves to the
rnonmetric as well as metric aspects of the
reality in which they commonly participate.
Each individual has a unique perspective on
this common reality. Hence, the symbolization of that reality must take on a plurality of
modes. Pluralism is too valuable a resource
to be left to the pragmatic (so-called) pluralists. F a r from constituting a threat to social
order, individuality provides the authentic
underpinning of that order. Individuality,
diversity, and openness to experience all
come together and reinforce each other in
philosophical pluralism, the only pluralism
worthy of the name.*
*Based on a paper delivered at a symposium on
“James Madison, Polity and Pluralism,” at the University of Virginia, March 16-17, 1981.
did not depend solely on this hope. In Federahsl 5 I , he
wrote: ‘But what is government itself but the greatest of
all reflections on human nature? If men were angels no
government would be necessary.’ Yet he was fully aware
that men are not angels; rather mankind lives in a Fallen
state.” “In Federalist 10 Madison noted that ‘enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.’ So upon
whom, or what, was he depending? H e was depending
upon institutionalism, understood in the fullest sense of
the word. For Madison, the fullest sense is not simply
establishing ‘Institutions’ as in a behavioralist’s utopia.
His complex arrangement had (and still has) its crucial
base in the separation of powers.” “The sharing of
authority between the national and state governments
(Federalism) is a crucial aspect of the system (see Fed.
45), but we are more concerned here with the national
separation of powers into the three branches of executive, legislative and judicial. When enlightened statesmen are present the three branches will function
smoothly. Yet when good governors are not available the
separation of the powers will result in ambition counteracting ambition. Liberty will be preserved because each
branch will jealously guard its prerogatives against the
other two branches. Bureaucrats will protect their
power from encroaching Congressmen, just as the Congressmen will worry about the bureaucrats and the
judges. As Madison wrote (see Fed. 51), ‘Ambition must
be made to counteract ambition. T h e interest of the man
must be connected with the constitutional rights of the
place. . . . T h i s policy of supplying, by opposite and rival
interests, the defect o/ better motives, might be traced
through the whole system of human affairs.’ (Emphasis
added)” “Madison also hoped to bring virtue into
government. For example he expected that the high
demands of national ofice, especially the Presidency,
would help a man of undistinguished character to rise to
‘(New York: Macmillan, 1928). *Paul Bourke, “The
Pluralist Reading of James Madison’s Tenth Federafid,” in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds.,
Perspectives in American Histo+y (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 271295. “In modern political science it has become a cliche
that Madison in the Tenth Federalist anticipated rnodern interest-group analysis and group theory, both
caught in that elusive word ‘pluralism’.” Ibzd., 272. I
wish to thank Professor Robert Rutland for bringing
this reference to my attention. ’lbid., p. 295. ‘Robert J.
Morgan, “Madison’s Theory of Representation in the
Tenth Federalist,” 36 Journal o/ Poiiizcs (November,
1974), pp. 852-885, at 882-883. ’These and other
ensuing quotations are from Madison’s Tenth Fcderulist paper, reprinted in Marvin Meyers, ed., 7he Mindoj
the Founder: Sources o j t h e I’oLitical X‘houShi of Jnmes
Madison (Indianapolis, Ind.: T h e Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973), pp. 122-131. ‘/bid., p. 124. ‘Quoted
in a letter by F. Dennis Williams to the WashingLon
Post (February 17,1981). ‘Meyers, ed., The Mindojfhe
Founder,pp. 124-1 25. ’The phrase “natural aristocracy” appears first to have been used by Edmund Burke.
Jefferson used it in a letter to John Adams, October 28,
1813. See L. J. Capon, ed., The Adarns-Jeflerson Letters
( 2 vols., Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of
North Carolina Press, 1959), 11, pp. 388-389. I do not
mean to imply that Madison neglected institutional
arrangements. As Ms. Laura Ingraham, a careful student of the Virginia philosopher, has written: “Madison
hoped that in an extended republic there would arise a
natural aristocracy suitable for governing. However he
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the occasion and properly fill the office. But he realized
that men are not angels and so tried to preserve liberty
and stability by a complex mixture of natural aristocrats, strong institutions and separated powers.” I am
grateful to Ms. Ingraham for permission to use this
unpublished comment here. “Meyers, ed., The Mind of
the Founder, p. 129. “Quoted in Martin Diamond,
“What the Framers Meant by Federalism,” in Robert
A. Goldwin, ed., A Nation o/ Slates (Chicago: Rand
McNally, 1963), pp. 24-41. Madison was concerned in
the constitutional debates with “the necessity of providing more effectively for the security of private rights and
the steady dispensation of justice.” (Quote from Madison in C. C. Tansil, ed., Documenfs Illusfrafiveof the
Union o/ f h e United States (Washington, D.C.: US
Government Printing Ofice, 1927), p. 121, quoted in A
Nation o/ Stales, pp. 28-29. ”In Explaining America:
The Federalist (New York: Doubleday, 1981), Gary
Wills claims in effect that Madison plagiarized from
Hume: such and such a passage in H u m e “becomes”
such and such in Madison. See pp. 212, 257, and
passim. This is a very dubious way of proceeding, to say
the least. The critical acclaim which this book has won is
all out of proportion to its merit. It is sloppily written,
and, despite its veneer of scholarship, should be classed
as political journalism. It is interesting that even one of
those scholars most intent on finding echoes of other
thinkers in Madison is forced to concede that “unfortunately, Madison seldom discussed or even referred to
previous thinkers.. . .” Roy Branson, “James Madison
and the Scottish Enlightenment,” X L journal o/ the
History of Ideas (April-June, 1979), 235-250, at 235.
”John Chapman, in his “Voluntary Association and the
Political Theory of Pluralism,” in J. Roland Pennock
and John W. Chapman, eds., Nomos X I : Voluntary
Associations (New York: Atherton Press, 1969), 87118, has made a promising beginning in this regard.
I4John Chapman (see preceding note) went too far in
holding that “pluralism is the name used by all to label
and summarize the type of political thinking that has
come to the fore in the West.” Nonetheless, he is correct
in saying that “As social and political theory, pluralism
has its origins deep in our Greek and Judaeo-Christian
heritages.” H e is equally correct to insist upon contrasting pluralism with those doctrines that insist upon
viewing social and political activity as “an engineering
project, the purpose of which is the realization of a single
and manifestly supreme value. . . .” T h e failure to recognize the distinction between social engineering and
moral reasoning is presumably at the root of Robert
Dahl’s bizarre conclusion that “perhaps in no other
political writing by an American is there a more compactly logical, almost mathematical piece of theory than
Madison’s The Federalzsf No. 10” from A Pre/ace to
Democratic Theory, quoted in Wills, Explaining America, p. xiv. Even more bizarre is Dahl’s contention that
Madison produced a “protective ideology for the minorities of wealth, status, and power,” from Pre/ace, p. 39,
quoted in Wills, / 6 d . Dahl’s pluralism or “polycentrism,” itself appears to be a variety of pragmatic
pluralism in which the question of ends or priorities is
never faced. Thus, he claims that Madison compromised
the “republican principle to protect the few,” producing
a “protective ideology for the minorities of wealth,
status, and power.” /bid. What Dah1 is saying is that
Madison did not take seriously his own analysis of
faction and regarded his claim to the possibility of the
development of an independently-minded citizenry
moved by something other than the lust for power and
for gain to be spurious or hypocritical. Again, one
witnesses the pragmatic pluralists’ high contempt for
philosophy. They doubtless would condemn Plato and
Aristotle as apologists of the upper classes. Such a
ruination of philosophy in our time indicates the magnitude of the problems we face in “recovering what has
been IOSI.” Eric Voegelin’s essay on Aristotle’s theory of
the spoudaios and the Right by Nature in Gerhart
Niemeyer, ed. and trans., Anamnesis would be a good
beginning for such a recovery. ”The Greeninp. ofAmerica (New York: Random House, 1970), Chap. V. I6Eric
Voegelin, “What is Right by Nature?” in Voegelin’s
Anamnesis (trans. by Gerhart Niemeyer, Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), pp. 55-70 at
65. ”Ibid., p. 63. Aristotle experienced man as open to
the divine ground or the unmoved Mover. In acting
ethically, man was the end of a “movement” of Being
begun by God. “Rather than getting into the quagmire
of speculation about Madison’s theology, it might seem
more fitting to compare Madison and Thomas Reid of
the Scottish School on ethics. See Eric Voegelin’s discussion of Reid and “common sense” in Anamnesis, pp. 21 1
n. However, I prefer the Aristotelian comparison
because as Voegelin notes, Reid’s idea of common sense
connotes “the habit of an Aristotelian spoudaios minus
the luminosity of his knowledge of the [Ciceronian]ratio
as the source of his rational judgment and conduct.”
Although he does not use the technical terms, it seems to
me quite clear that Madison had noetic, philosophical
knowledge as well as the “civilizational habit” of common sense. See Voegelin, p. 212. “From his speech to
the 15th anniversary dinner of the National Review,
December 1, 1970, pp. 1263-1265 at 1265. I am
grateful to Mr. Buckley for calling this passage to my
attention. ”1 wish to acknowledge the gracious assistance of-but not the responsibility for!-M. E. Bradford and George Carey in doing the background reading
for this paper. Bradford’s masterful sketch of Madison’s
life, soon to be published, provides a corrective to any
tendency to view Madison hagiographically. Bradford’s
book, A Better Guide Than Reason: Sfudies in the
American Reuolution (La Salle, Illinois: Sherwood
Sugden and Company, 1979) is important for its
emphasis on the experiential component of the founders’
idea of reason. George Carey’s two articles on Madison,
“Federalism: Historic Questions and Contemporary
Meanings-A Defense of Political Processes,” in Valerie Earle, ed., Federalism: InJinile Variety in Theory
and Pruclice (Itasca, Illinois, 1968), pp. 42-61 and
“Majority Tyranny and the Extended Republic Theory,” in Modern Age are essential to understanding
Madison. I have also found Martin Diamond, “What
the Framers meant by Federalism,” in Robert A. Goldwin, ed., A Nation of Slates (Chicago: Rand McNally,
1963), pp. 24-41 and Robert C. Grady, “InterestGroup Liberalism and Judicial Democracy,” in VI
American I’olilics Quarterly (April, 1978), 213-235
very helpful. T h e latter article provides an able critique
of Theodor Lowi’s critique of interest-group liberalism.
Modern Age
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