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The Dialogic Community: Education, Leadership, and Partcipation in James Madison's Thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Abstract
Some interpretations of James Madison tend to treat him as an enemy of “community,” or as indifferent to that concept. These interpretations also tend to base their argument on selected readings from the Federalist Papers. This approach is mistaken because it relies on a part of the Madisonian corpus to define the whole of the Virginian's thought. This mistake leads to a distortion of Madison's treatment of community. Close scrutiny of Madison's life, letters, and essays reveals a theorist-politician committed to building and nurturing community in the new United States, a community linked across time and miles by shared values, common institutions, and ongoing public dialogue.
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References
Notes
1. All citations to the Federalist Papers are to the volume edited by Wills, Garry (New York: Bantam Books, 1982).Google Scholar These citations will be noted in the body of the article.
2. We have developed this argument elsewhere. See Kobylka, and Carter, , “Madison, The Federalist, and the Constitutional Order: Human Nature and Institutional Structure,” Polity 20 (Winter 1987): 190–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Similar conclusions have been drawn by others as well. For example, see Yarbrough, Jean, “Republicanism Reconsidered: Some Thoughts on the Foundation and Preservation of the American Republic,” Review of Politics 41 (1979): 61–95;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWills, Garry, Explaining America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980);Google Scholar and McCoy, Drew, The Elusive Republic (Williamsburg, VA: Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1980)Google Scholar and The Last of the Fathers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
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5. Ibid., p. 44, emphasis added. Drukman rejects Madison's notion of property. In a 1792 essay on that subject, Madison wrote “a man has property in his opinions and the free communication of them” (National Gazette, 29 March 1792).Google Scholar
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15. Ibid., p. 18.
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20. This passage, as well as others in his text, demonstrates that Madison does not hold to a universalistic Hobbesian perspective on questions of human nature. See, for example, his 1792 essay, “Who Are the Best Keepers of the People's Liberties” where he writes “the people ought to be enlightened, awakened” (Hunt, Gaillard, The Writings of James Madison, 9 vols. [New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1902–1910], VI, 120, 121).Google Scholar Subsequent references to this work appear as (Hunt, volume, page) in the body of the article.
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24. The phrase “dialogic community” is borrowed from Eva Brann's “Introduction” to Raymond Larson's translation of Plato's Republic (Arlington Heights, IL: AHM, 1979), p. xliii;Google Scholar see also Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1967),Google Scholar chap. 1. Bailyn does not use the term “dialogic” but his argument embodies that concept.
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26. Even some scholars less critical of Madison see his thought to channel people away from public involvement. Note, for example, Yarbrough, “Republicanism Reconsidered”: “since the Founders promoted stability by encouraging the people to devote themselves to private enterprises, the requirements of stability actually undermined the civic spirit necessary to the preservation of republican government” (p.88).
27. Ibid., p. 8. Cf. Appleby, Joyce, Capitalism and a New Social Order (New York: New York University Press, 1984), p. 78:Google Scholar “The Republican organization that triumphed is 1800 was unprecedented. … The Republicans created a movement that was national in scope and universal in its ideological appeal. They did it with words—those printed words that had for so long been owned and exchanged by the world's elites. — The Jeffersonians unified ordinary voters through a vision of classlessness. … Their utopia was a society of aspirants bound together by a common need to liberate themselves and human nature from the implicit slurs of elite doctrines.” It is interesting that Schuman and most other critics of Madison fail to note Madison was part of that triumph and also fail to note that Madison was Jefferson's appointed successor in 1808.
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30. In his 1787 essay “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” Madison anticipates and expounds the argument he would make in Federalist, No. 10. “Little republics” he argues, are a threat to individual liberty: “the society becomes broken into a greater variety of interests, of pursuits of passions, which check each other, whilst those who may feel a common sentiment have less opportunity of communication and concert” (Hunt II, 368). In part, Madison's argument for an enlargement of the sphere, for new institutional arrangements, is to allow for interchange of ideas and enlargement of sentiment; even more importantly it puts a premium on rational discourse that unites across disparate interests.
31. Yarbrough, , “Republicanism Reconsidered,” p. 86.Google Scholar
32. It is here where we disagree with Yarbrough's analysis. From her perspective, Madison sought to “channel the civic spirit which the revolution unleashed into private activities, instead of devising some means of perpetuating it” (p. 87). It is our argument that his understanding of education and political dialogue and action were premised on a politically active citizenry striving to govern for general and common interests.
33. Eckenrode, H. J., The Revolution in Virginia (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964), p. 297;Google ScholarHunt, Gaillard, “James Madison and Religious Liberty,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association (1901).Google Scholar It is possible that the success of this strategy led to Madison's appeal to the citizens of the various states in the Virginia Resolutions (1798) and Report (1799).
34. In 1783, Madison was concerned that the work of Congress was not understood in Virginia: “The state of darkness in which the people are left in Va. by the want of a diffusion of intelligence is I find a subject of complaint” (Hunt I, 330). His solution: a newspaper.
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40. See various letters in Hunt IX, 346, 351, 383, 444, 478, 488, 495.
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61. Hunt V, 138, records this speech by Madison to the Virginia ratifying convention: “A government which relies on thirteen independent sovereignties, for the means of its existence, is a solecism in theory and a mere nullity in practice. Is it consistent with reason that such a government can promote the happiness of a people? It is subservient of every practice of every principle of sound policy, to trust the safety of a community with a government totally destitute of the means of protecting itself or its members.” See also Onuf, Peter “State Sovereignty and the Making of the Constitution,” in Conceptual Change and the Constitution, ed. Ball, T. and Pocock, J. G. A. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1988), p. 86.Google Scholar
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64. Schuman, , Preface to Politics, p. 17.Google Scholar
65. Note his comments to this effect in Federalist, No. 55, 284.
66. See Madison's letter to Thomas Jefferson on the texts for the law school at the University of Virginia, Hunt IX, 218; see also Hunt IV, 183–87; V, 271–75, 370–89; VI, 70.
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72. Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
73. Appleby, , Capitalism and a New Social Order, p. 78.Google Scholar
74. Ibid., p. 80.
75. Ibid., p. 97.
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81. McCoy, , Last of the Fathers, p. 198.Google Scholar
82. Cf. Drukman, , Community and Purpose in America, p. 18.Google Scholar See also Madison's speech on imports, 21 April 1789, in the House. Even in dealing with such a forthrightly economic subject, the speech bears out his assertion of national interest and principles—interests that include foreign relations and defense procurement and not simply economic advantage (Hunt V, 349–51).
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