The Metaphysics of James Wilson

Benjamin Phibbs

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls tried to develop a conception of the social contract that does not rely on metaphysics. According to Allan Bloom, that experiment has failed. For Bloom, as for traditional contract thinkers, “metaphysics cannot be avoided” in political philosophy. 1 Government is inevitably concerned with ends; thus, in order to develop a political system that is most conducive to man’s happiness, one must begin with a proper understanding of who man is. Rawls’ critical mistake is his confidence that metaphysics has no relevance to the creation of government. The political philosophy of American Founder James Wilson provides a counterexample. It is because Wilson believed that metaphysics does affect government that he devotes much intellectual energy to developing a proper understanding of philosophy prior to political theory. This essay outlines Wilson’s metaphysics and shows that it does indeed result in a different form of government than that envisioned by other thinkers of his time.

Wilson grounds his metaphysics in God as the source of law. Before he asserts anything about reason or man, he begins with the understanding that God exists, that He has created the universe, and that He interacts with His creation. 1. Allan Bloom, “Justice: John Rawls Vs. The Tradition of Political Philosophy,” The American Political Science Review 69, no. 4 (June 1975): 651.

For Wilson, God is law. Indeed, the first and most foundational feature of Wilson’s metaphysics is that God is orderly and that “he himself works not without an eternal decree.” 2 And if God is an orderly Creator, then certainly the laws that govern nature and man will reflect who He is. As Wilson suggests, “[I]s it probable that the Creator, infinitely wise and good, would leave his moral world in this chaos and disorder?” 3 This much is not surprising: Wilson follows a long and rich tradition of political thinkers who all begin with God as the Supreme Governor of man. 4

But for Wilson, God is not only the source of law in the sense that His dictates govern nature and men, but also in the sense that He alone may allow men to rule over one another. In this sense, God is the source of political power. This principle relies on a second feature of Wilson’s metaphysics: that superiority must precede the exercise of power. After all, if two beings are equal, then “nothing can be ascribed to one which is not applicable to the other.” 5 Rather, “to constitute superiority and dependence, there must be an essential difference of qualities, on which those relations may be founded.” 6 Since He is by nature omnipotent, God is superior to man and is the source of all power; but God has also ordained government by men over men. This raises a very important question for Wilson: what man is superior—and thus qualified to exercise power over others—and how did he become so?

Wilson’s answer depends on his view that God has revealed the law to all men. This is essentially the inevitable outcome of the first and second features of his metaphysics. God, being orderly, has revealed His order to man and obligated him to conform to it. This is His right to do, and it is His creatures’ duty to obey, because He is superior. For this reason, Wilson says that “His just and full right of imposing laws, and our duty in obeying them, are the sources of our moral obligations.” 7 But these obligations are not found with reason. They are felt, impressed by “the moral sense or conscience.” 8 Because Wilson believes that all men possess the moral sense, and thus have equal knowledge of their rights and obligations under the law, his answer to the question of superiority is that all men are equal. Interestingly, instead of appealing to the divine image in man, Wilson’s foundation for equality is more Ciceronian. He says that “with regard to all, there is an equality in rights and obligations; there is that ‘jus aequum,’

2. James Wilson, Lectures on Law, in Collected Works of James Wilson Vol. 1, ed. Kermit Hall and Mark David Hall (Carmel: Liberty Fund, 2007), 465. 3. Ibid., 505. 4. Namely Cicero, Hooker, and even Hobbes and Locke. 5. Wilson, Lectures on Law, 501. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 508. 8. Ibid.

that equal law, in which the Romans placed true freedom.” 9 The reason for the equality of rights and obligations is further explained below, but the immediate explanation is that God is omnibenevolent and has given the law for man’s happiness, and so “virtue is the business of all men.” 10 Regardless, it is enough to say that Wilson is setting equality on broad ground.

Wilson’s metaphysical views about God lead him to conclude that man is made for community. As Creator, God designed man for community, and this is evinced in two ways. First, God has given man “social intellectual powers,” 11 which include language and moral perceptions. Wilson starts by pointing out the way infants presume the intelligence of adults, which gives rise to one of the most natural features of language: questions. Questions imply that answers will be given, and thus expression, the communication of information, is also a social power. 12 For Wilson, the more a society participates in these acts, the more it refines itself and progresses.. Society is also marked by moral perceptions: they form the bases for cooperation, veracity, and confidence, without which “society could not be supported.” 13 The performance of promises is a basic and important feature of society for Wilson. He even goes so far as to point out that “it is not considered how much, in every hour of our lives, we trust to others.” 14 Moreover, Wilson believes that the moral perception from the natural law that restrains one from harming the innocent is a communal sentiment. If men naturally communicate with one another through questions and expressions, and perceive that they have moral duties to honesty and justice in their interactions with one another, it would seem that God designed them for community.

The social intellectual powers show that God designed men for community, and so do their “passions and affections.” 15 Perhaps the most important of these passions to Wilson are those that give men pleasure. Wilson observes that people desire to share their feelings and experiences with each other—not only their pain, but also their joy. His use of a thought experiment from Archytas, the Greek philosopher, is particularly noteworthy: “‘If a man were to be carried up into heaven, and see the beauties of universal nature displayed before him, he would receive but little pleasure…unless there was some person, to whom he could relate the glories.’” 16 People also share their joy through acts of kindness, whether by giving money, favor, or advice, and they likewise receive joy from

9. Wilson, Lectures on Law, 638. 10. Ibid., 513. 11. Ibid., 624. 12. Ibid., 625. 13. Ibid., 627. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 628. 16. Ibid., 632.

doing so. 17 The desire to share does not make sense to egoist man. This desire is only natural to society. The same is true for esteem. 18 Egoist man does not receive satisfaction from the regard of others, nor pleasure from admiring the good conduct of others. All these natural passions only make sense in community.

Wilson spends so much time on metaphysics because it has real implications for liberty. 19 His two fundamental principles—that God is the source of law and that community is natural to man—set his social contract theory apart. One implication from these principles is that equality is rooted in the propagation of the natural law to all men. With this conclusion, Wilson attacks not only rule by force and excellence, but also the greatest political threat of his time: the divine right of kings, which was “the political weapon used, with the greatest force and the greatest skill, in favor of the despotic claims of Great Britain over the American colonies.” 20 Another implication from these principles is that the good is knowable. This confidence will put Wilson’s view of government at odds with modern contract thinkers like Hobbes and Boucher, who are skeptical that we can know what is good for man. Of course, much of Wilson’s confidence is inspired by his epistemology. But perhaps the most interesting theme that emerges when Wilson’s metaphysics are applied to government is the impact of the classical tradition on liberty.

Because Wilson believes that all men have equal knowledge of and obligation under the natural law, he maintains that strength and excellence are insufficient justifications for sovereignty. As noted above, Wilson’s concept of equality harkens back to Cicero, who asserts, “‘That first and final law…is the mind of God, who forces or prohibits everything by reason.’” 21 This law “‘applies to all men, and is unchangeable and eternal.’” 22 As Beitzinger points out, the propagation of natural law to all men led the Stoic to conclude that all men should be considered equal. 23 This does not make much difference for Wilson regarding the classic position on rule by force. In fact, his appeal to the conscience and will

17. Wilson, Lectures on Law, 633. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 472. “Despotism, by an artful use of ‘superiority’ in politics; and skepticism, by an artful use of ‘ideas’ in metaphysics, have endeavored…to destroy all true liberty and sound philosophy.” 20. Ibid., 483. 21. Cicero, De Legibus, cited in Wilson, 508 n.3. 22. Cicero, De Republica, cited in A.J. Beitzinger, A History of American Political Thought (Eugene: Resource Publications, 1972), 5 n.3. 23. Beitzinger, 5.

as the source of obligation is quite Platonic. As he says, “we may suffer all the external effects of superior force; but we feel not the internal influence of superior authority.” 24 But Wilson’s Ciceronian position does conflict with Aristotle’s view that the excellent man has a title to be king, primarily because of the impracticality of discerning among degrees of excellence. 25 This is how truly self-evident Wilson believes the natural law to be. All men know their obligations and know they are equal.

It is also interesting to see the way Wilson’s classical position interacts with divine right theorists. For one thing, it is helpful to notice that Wilson’s arguments against rule by force and rule by excellence both deal with classical sources, but Wilson deals only with modern sources when debating divine right. This seems to suggest that the divine right theory itself is a seventeenth-century invention. Regardless, Wilson provides two arguments against the divine right of kings. First, he contrasts the universal knowledge of the natural law with the universal ignorance of the divine right. The strength of Wilson’s argument for equality under natural law is that no man can honestly deny his moral sentiments. God clearly propagates His law for man, and so “had it been the intention of Providence, that some men should govern the rest, without their consent, we should have seen indisputable marks distinguishing these superiors from those placed under them.” 26 Because there are no such indisputable marks, Wilson calls claims to a divine right “pretensions to superiority.” 27 Second, in a reductio ad absurdum, Wilson shows that if God has not made some men greater, then the only justification for divine right is if other men somehow become lesser. 28 Thus, the divine right is simply a masquerade for tyranny.

Wilson sets his political philosophy apart from other contract thinkers because he believes that the good is knowable. Again, Wilson follows the classical tradition here, for as Bloom explains, while the ancients were able to rally around an idea of the good life, modern contract thinkers could only agree that man is selfish and needs protection. 29 But Wilson’s confidence in the good comes from his epistemology, which acknowledges common sense as a valid faculty for discerning first principles. Whereas modern thinkers elevate reason as “the supreme arbitress of human knowledge,” 30 Wilson sees no problem in trusting unprovable intuitions. Indeed, this is the strength of Wilson’s political philosophy. By validating common sense, he allows for the possibility of self-government, which 24. Wilson, Lectures on Law, 502. 25. Ibid., 477. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 487. 29. Bloom, 653. 30. Wilson, Lectures on Law, 603.

makes his social contract look quite different from that of Hobbes and Boucher.

Wilson readily acknowledges the first principle that consciousness exists. This is a problem for modern thinkers like Descartes and Hume, who maintain that knowledge is only that which can be proven. 31 But it is not a problem for Wilson for three reasons. First, unless there are first principles from which to reason, knowledge is simply an infinite regression of proofs. 32 For Wilson, reason is a method by which one judges between ends, but reason cannot find the end itself. 33 Second, Wilson uses defeasibility, not incorrigibility, as the standard for knowledge justification. In other words, if nature has imbued all men with common, discernable sentiments as a “matter of fact,” 34 then the burden of proof is not to show why these cannot be doubted, but why they should be doubted in the first place. As he says, “If it exists; why is it to be deemed fallacious?” 35 Moreover, even if our common sentiments were fallacious, one could not discover this by using reason, which is natural to us. For, “if [nature] is false in every other instance, how can we believe her, when she says she is a liar?” 36 Finally, Wilson points out that even thinkers like Descartes assumed consciousness without proving it, and that this was in fact a first principle for them. 37

Because Wilson feels justified in believing in consciousness, he also feels justified in believing in moral sentiments. Indeed, Wilson believes that man can know the good simply by examining “what passes in our own breasts,” 38 for consciousness is an “internal sense, which gives us information of what passes within us.” 39 This view has important benefits for Wilson. First, it allows him to avoid the problems of radical skepticism, namely the eradication of the whole universe. 40 If sentiments cannot be trusted, neither can the senses. Second, it allows him to maintain an objective conception of moral principles, for “so long as we find men pleased or angry, proud or ashamed; we may appeal to the reality of the moral sense.” 41 Finally, Wilson’s epistemology is the reason why he grounds his metaphysics in sentiments. This in fact makes sense of his choice to use the propagation of natural law as the source of equality. The same is true of his discussion of the social intellectual powers and passions that draw man into community.

31. Wilson, Lectures on Law, 594-5. 32. Ibid., 603. 33. Ibid., 508, 514. 34. Ibid., 602. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 595. 38. Ibid., 505. 39. Ibid., 594. 40. Ibid., 609. 41. Ibid., 510.

For Wilson, the moral and communal sentiments are, at bottom, reflections of the way that God designed creation, and this critically affects his political philosophy. As Bloom explains, any social contract theory must begin with “a comprehensive reflection about the way things really are,” 42 and the sentiments provide that basis for Wilson. They show that God intended for man to live morally within community and that this would secure his happiness. Thus, in this way, community is prior to government. This picture is dramatically different from the one that modern contract thinkers like Hobbes and Boucher envision. Importantly, the difference is the result of philosophy. Hobbes and Boucher deny that man can know the good, or at least, if he can, that he can act upon it. 43 Their pessimism paints the state of nature not as a community of sociable, morally cognizant creatures, but as a state of war among sinful, selfish, isolated individuals. 44 The result for such thinkers is that there is no orderly pursuit of the good prior to government—only fear.

These contrasting views result in two different ideas of liberty. For Wilson, liberty is the power to act on the moral and communal sentiments for one’s own happiness, provided that he does not harm anyone. 45 This liberty is not purely selfish. As Wilson explains, the “generous affections” of men, rooted in the moral sense, suggest that “in our voluntary actions consist our dignity and perfection.” 46 This means that even in the state of nature, men have a desire to pursue the good—again, a classical idea. More importantly, this is why Wilson believes men are capable of self-government—that, even without government, they are capable of good. For this reason, depriving men of all their liberty would be worse than allowing them to use it freely, even if they might abuse it. 47 Hobbes and Boucher do not share the same confidence. For them, the state of war presupposes that man is perpetually abusing his liberty, which is why he lives constantly in fear. Moreover, because he is ruled by his passions, man requires the “terror of the laws” to restrain him and thus to live in peace with others. 48 For Hobbes and Boucher, then, man is not capable of self-government, and true liberty is not found apart from the reign of government.

On the other hand, Wilson’s metaphysics leads him to the climax of his

42. Bloom, 651. 43. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, in Classics of Moral and Political Theory 5th ed., ed. Michael Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011), 618; Jonathan Boucher, “On Civil Liberty, Passive Obedience, and Non-resistance,” in The American Republic Primary Sources, ed. Bruce Frohnen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 164. 44. See Hobbes, 619; Boucher, 167. 45. Wilson, Lectures on Law, 638. 46. Ibid., 639. 47. Ibid. 48. Boucher, 167.

political philosophy: that the greatest foundational principle of government is consent. Because his epistemology validates moral and communal sentiments, Wilson is able to build a metaphysical framework wherein God has made all men equal by universal propagation of the natural law and given man a desire to pursue happiness in community. This means that no man may arbitrarily claim supremacy over another, and that community is prior to government. Thus, if man decides to form a government, he freely consents to give up his liberty only for the improvement of the society that already exists. It should be noted that Wilson finds precedent for this idea in common law. 49 Perhaps most importantly, man does not give up all his liberty when he consents. 50 He only surrenders as much as he thinks is necessary to improve his condition. For this reason, during the debates over the ratification of the Constitution, Wilson maintained that “everything which is not given, is reserved.” 51

But the metaphysics of modern contract thinkers reserves no freedom for the individual once he is under a government. For Hobbes and Boucher, consent is simply an acknowledgement that, in order to have peace, the sovereign must be absolute. Again, the difference is a result of philosophy. Their epistemology does not allow them to construct a society that is prior to government because man cannot know the good. The only thing he can know is that he is equal in power to his fellows and that he must preserve his life. This results in a state of fear, war, and isolation. Such a condition necessitates that one man claim superiority over the others, and that community is only possible after government. Thus, man either chooses to surrender all his rights and powers to the sovereign, as Hobbes says, or is placed under a sovereign by God, as Boucher says. 52 Regardless, the submission is total because man is not capable of self-government under these theories.

Beitzinger’s maxim that “metaphysics always buries its own undertakers” 53 may be helpful advice to Rawls. But in the same way, Wilson’s political thought demonstrates that metaphysics rewards those who pay it heed. Before espousing any principle of government, Wilson begins by setting straight the principles of philosophy. His two philosophical foundations—that God is the source of law

49. See Wilson, 565, discussing Edward I and “quod omnes tangit.” See also 570, discussing Blackstone’s recognition of custom as evidence of consent. 50. Ibid., 557. 51. Wilson, “State House Yard Speech,” in Hall and Hall, 172. 52. Hobbes, 634; Boucher, 167. 53. Beitzinger, 404.

and that community is prior to government—lead directly to a view of government based on consent. The result is a government of “true liberty.” 54 Wilson also demonstrates the consequences of establishing government on wrong philosophy. Indeed, the result of wrong philosophy is tyrannical government. Thus, Wilson testifies to the importance of strong philosophy to political theory. If one arrives at a government of freedom apart from metaphysics, Wilson’s thought suggests that one simply “began from what is wanted here and now and then looked for the principles that would rationalize it.” 55

54. Wilson, Lectures on Law, 472. 55. Bloom, 649.

Beitzinger, A.J. A History of American Political Thought. Eugene: Resource Publications, 1972.

Bloom, Allan. “Justice: John Rawls Vs. The Tradition of Political Philosophy.” The American Political Science Review 69, no. 2 (June, 1975): 648-662.

Boucher, Jonathan. “On Civil Liberty, Passive Obedience, and Non-resistance.” In The American Republic Primary Sources. Edited by Bruce Frohnen, 159-178. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. In Classics of Moral and Political Theory, 5th ed. Edited by Michael Morgan, 578-708. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011.

Wilson, James. Collected Works of James Wilson, vol. 1. Edited by Kermit Hall and Mark David Hall. Carmel: Liberty Fund, 2007.