Since Charles Beard first focused attention upon the tenth Federalist, James Madison’s famous essay has been rivalled only by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself as the most important political writing of the American founding. A set of specific claims forms the basis of its still-vaunted status. These include uncontested claims for its eloquence and lucidity, its theoretical novelty and brilliance, the uncanny prescience of Madison’s depiction of the structure of modern American society, and his farsighted projection of the workings and challenges of the American political system. Nevertheless, these claims also include now deeply disputed assertions about its influence in the adoption of the Constitution, its place at the vital core of Madison’s political thought, and its plausibility as an expression of the underlying philosophy or understanding of the original Constitution. This essay elides the specialized debates that have grown up around each of these claims. Its goals instead are to revisit the debate over the meaning of Madison’s theory, propose a straightforward reading of Federalist 10 that integrates and eclipses previous interpretations, and provide a foundation for future scholarship addressing the numerous disputes that still govern the interpretation of Madison’s classic.

The very existence of The Federalist is due to the roiling dissents that greeted the Constitution in the weeks following its publication. By late September 1787, informed Americans knew that three prominent members of the Philadelphia Convention – Elbridge Gerry, George Mason, and Edmund Randolph – had refused to sign the document and that they would likely make the reasons for their opposition public. The fiery “Centinel” began publishing essays in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer on October 5. Two weeks later, the articulate defender of the middle class, “Brutus,” started a series of essays in the New York Journal arguing the Constitution threatened self-government. This is close to the date that Alexander Hamilton wrote Federalist 1. Critics of the Constitution appeared in nearly every state. James Madison worried in a November 18 letter to George Washington that initial enthusiasm about the Constitution in Virginia had starkly subsided, “giving place to a spirit of criticism”. Madison’s first contribution to the collaboration, the now-famous Federalist 10, appeared in print only four days later.

The eleven essays published by “Publius” between March 11 and April 4, 1787 jointly constitute the most famous defense of presidential power in the American constitutional tradition. It is here that Alexander Hamilton extols “energy in the executive,” along with the canonical litany of “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch.” Such energy, for Hamilton, requires “unity” in the chief magistracy, the focus and coherence of a single mind (Fed. 70, 471–472). But it equally demands “firmness” – a readiness to exert oneself in defense of the “constitutional powers” of one’s office – which can only be expected from those whose “duration in office” is sufficiently long. “It is a general principle of human nature,” Hamilton explains, “that a man will be interested in what he possesses, in proportion to the firmness or precariousness of the tenure, by which he holds it.” Only a magistrate who regards his office as truly his own will subject himself to danger or opprobrium in order to secure the system of which it is a part – and this he must routinely do. For while “it is a just observation that the people commonly intend the PUBLIC GOOD,” they do not, alas, always “reason right about the means of promoting it.” An effective, energetic executive must accordingly wield his prerogatives to tame their episodic folly; to “withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.” The republican principle may require deference to “the deliberate sense of the community,” but it “does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests” (Fed. 71, 481–82).

This chapter examines the reception of Augustine’s “Confessions” in the Enlightenment through three major lexicographical works: Pierre Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary; Chevalier de Jaucourt’s entry in the Encyclopédie, “Church Fathers”; and Voltaire’s Questions on the Encyclopedia. All of them deliberately misappropriate Augustine's account of his life as a sinner in order to undermine aspects of his theology, and, by extension, the theology of Jansenism in their own era.

When Augustine tells us in Books 7 and 9 of the “Confessions” that he saw “that which is,” he is not claiming to have seen God as a whole or one of the divine persons, each of whom is equally God, but that he understood an eternal standard that God is also eternally understanding, thereby achieving a union with God in the knowing of one divine idea. This is a union that provides momentary intellectual possession or “embrace” of an intelligible beauty, because the Forms are intelligible beauties in Platonism.

Augustine directs his readers’ attention to the soul as an inner world, an interior space of the self that is not literally a place, but rather a dimension of being in which truths may be found, including God as the eternal truth that has always been present both within and above the soul as its creator. Yet, the self comes late to God within itself, because as sinners we keep turning our attention outward, trying to find happiness in external things.

This chapter focuses on the metaphilosophy of the “Confessions.” All the places of this work in which Augustine speaks explicitly of philosophy, of the philosophers, and of their writings are taken into consideration. An analysis of these places reveals the way in which Augustine, at the time he wrote his “Confessions,” recalled and judged the role played by philosophy until his baptism at the age of thirty-two.

Whether Augustine is eager to increase knowledge of God in his “Confessions,” to refute heterodox ideas – even ideas that he himself once espoused – about God the creator of matter, space, and time, or whether his aim is to heighten a particular awareness of God, he always tries to convince his readers that God is present in creation and in themselves (cf. Books 1–10), and is close to humankind (cf. Books 11–13). But as a person who is incomprehensible to human beings, God is always as much hidden as he is near.

In Augustine’s “Confessions,” the central point of pride – the root of sin – is excessive and arrogant complacency. Humility as self-knowledge, in contrast, includes four principles: creatureliness, sinfulness, confession, and grace.

This chapter presents an overview of the earliest transmission of “Confessions” and discusses the different hypotheses that have been proposed with regard to the stemmatical relations between the work’s oldest manuscript witnesses. It also offers a systematic overview of the existing critical editions and English translations.

Just as his narration in the “Confessions” has no other source than the bottomless and treacherous memory, Augustine has no other way of dealing with time than human speech. Both memory and speech attempt to concentrate time into a kind of unity, which is enabled by the extentionless unity of the eternity where the temporal processes are included in an atemporal way.

This chapter presents reading scenes in the “Confessions” as models for an individual’s reading as a social or intersubjective act, and places Augustine’s work in the cognitive ecology of the late Roman Empire.

This chapter analyzes the various avenues of the reception of the “Confessions” in the Middle Ages, based on extant manuscripts, medieval florilegia, and handbooks such as Peter Lombard’s Sentences. While the “Confessions” was one of Augustine’s best-known works, surprisingly there is very little evidence of direct reception, and Petrarch, who was an avid reader of the “Confessions,” rejected its basic premise of conversion in and devoting oneself completely to God, although the work did serve as a major source for medieval biographies of Augustine. The reception of the “Confessions” in the Middle Ages mirrored that of Augustine himself, whereby what we find upon close analysis is an ambiguous reception that is far less than the influence Augustine had in general.