Natural Rights Philosophy and the Declaration of Independence

The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence contains a philosophical argument of extraordinary density and ambition. In roughly 150 words, Thomas Jefferson articulated a theory of human equality, natural rights, the purposes of legitimate government, and the right of revolution—a theory that drew upon centuries of political philosophy and that would shape American political life for generations. The Declaration’s philosophical foundations did not emerge in a vacuum; they reflected the circulation of Enlightenment ideas through colonial American intellectual networks, from university libraries to tavern conversations, from pulpit sermons to newspaper essays.

The Lockean Foundation

Locke’s Political Philosophy

John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1689) was the single most important philosophical source for the Declaration’s natural rights theory. Locke had written the Two Treatises during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–1681, intending to justify resistance to the potential succession of the Catholic James, Duke of York; he revised and published them in 1689, framing them as a vindication of the Glorious Revolution that had deposed James II and established parliamentary supremacy in England. His argument proceeded from a hypothetical “state of nature” in which all humans were free and equal, governed by a “law of nature” that obligated them not to harm one another in their “life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

Locke argued that individuals in the state of nature possessed natural rights that preceded and transcended any human government. These rights were not granted by kings or parliaments but were inherent in human nature, discoverable by reason, and enforceable by every individual. The principal defect of the state of nature was the absence of an impartial judge to enforce the law of nature, leading individuals to enter into a “social compact” by which they established government to protect their rights more effectively.

Government, in Locke’s account, was a trust created by the consent of the governed for the specific purpose of protecting natural rights. When a government violated this trust—when it acted to destroy rather than protect the rights it was created to secure—the people retained the right to “alter or abolish” it and to establish a new government. This right of revolution was not a right to be exercised lightly; Locke specified that it was justified only after “a long train of abuses” had made the government’s destructive intentions clear.

Locke’s Influence on Jefferson

The parallels between Locke’s language and the Declaration’s are unmistakable. Locke wrote of “life, liberty, and estate (property)”; Jefferson wrote of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Locke described government as instituted “for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates”; Jefferson described government as instituted “to secure these rights.” Locke argued that when government becomes destructive of its ends, the people have a right “to alter or abolish it”; Jefferson used virtually identical language.

The extent of Jefferson’s direct borrowing from Locke has been debated by scholars. Some historians, including Carl Becker in his influential Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922), argued that Jefferson essentially paraphrased Locke and that the Declaration’s philosophy was derivative rather than original. Others, including Garry Wills in Inventing America (1978), have argued that Jefferson’s philosophy owed more to the Scottish Enlightenment than to Locke and that the substitution of “happiness” for “property” represented a significant philosophical departure.

The most balanced assessment recognizes that Jefferson drew on Locke’s framework while adapting it to American circumstances and incorporating ideas from other sources. Jefferson himself acknowledged the derivative nature of the Declaration’s philosophy, writing in 1825 that the document was intended to be “an expression of the American mind” rather than an original philosophical treatise.

The Scottish Enlightenment

Francis Hutcheson and the Pursuit of Happiness

Jefferson’s substitution of “the pursuit of happiness” for Locke’s “property” has generated more scholarly debate than any other phrase in the Declaration. One influential interpretation, advanced by Garry Wills, traces this language to the Scottish moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), whose Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) and System of Moral Philosophy (1755) argued that the moral sense was oriented toward the pursuit of happiness, understood as the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Hutcheson’s moral philosophy was widely read in colonial America. His works were available in the libraries of the College of William and Mary, where Jefferson studied, and in the collections of the Library Company of Philadelphia. The Scottish philosopher’s emphasis on benevolence as the highest virtue and his argument that governments existed to promote the happiness of their subjects resonated with the republican ideals circulating in colonial political culture.

Other Scottish Influences

The Scottish Enlightenment produced a remarkable group of moral philosophers whose ideas circulated in colonial America through books, lectures, and the teachings of Scottish-educated clergy. Thomas Reid’s common-sense philosophy, which argued that certain truths were self-evident to all rational minds, may have influenced the Declaration’s assertion that its truths were “self-evident.” David Hume’s skepticism about natural rights was known to Jefferson, though he rejected Hume’s conclusions. Adam Ferguson’s emphasis on civic virtue and the importance of active citizenship resonated with the republican political culture of the colonies.

Jefferson’s engagement with Scottish philosophy was mediated by his reading, his conversations with educated contemporaries, and the intellectual atmosphere of colonial education institutions. The College of William and Mary, where Jefferson studied under the Scottish-born professor William Small, was a particular conduit for Scottish Enlightenment ideas. Small introduced Jefferson to the works of Hutcheson, Reid, and other Scottish philosophers, shaping the intellectual framework that would later inform the Declaration.

The English Radical Whig Tradition

Algernon Sidney and the Right of Revolution

Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (1698), written as a rebuttal to Robert Filmer’s defense of absolute monarchy, provided another important source for the Declaration’s political theory. Sidney argued that all legitimate government rested on the consent of the governed and that the people retained an inalienable right to resist tyranny. His work was widely read in colonial America and was cited by revolutionary writers throughout the 1760s and 1770s.

Sidney’s influence is particularly evident in the Declaration’s assertion that the people have not only a right but a “duty” to throw off a government that pursues a design to reduce them under “absolute Despotism.” This language echoes Sidney’s argument that resistance to tyranny is not merely permissible but morally obligatory—a position that distinguished the radical Whig tradition from more cautious defenders of the Glorious Revolution settlement.

Cato’s Letters and Republican Ideology

The Cato’s Letters of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, published in the 1720s and widely reprinted in colonial newspapers, articulated a republican political ideology that emphasized the corrupting tendency of power, the importance of civic virtue, and the need for constant vigilance against governmental encroachment on liberty. These ideas permeated colonial political culture and provided the moral framework within which the Declaration’s arguments were understood by ordinary colonists.

The republican ideology transmitted through Cato’s Letters and similar works shaped the way colonists interpreted British actions in the 1760s and 1770s. What might have been seen as routine political disputes were instead interpreted through a lens that saw every exercise of power as potentially tyrannical and every concession as potentially deceptive. This interpretive framework, which the historian Bernard Bailyn called the “ideological origins of the American Revolution,” made the Declaration’s arguments intelligible and compelling to a broad colonial audience.

”Self-Evident” Truths

The Epistemological Claim

The Declaration’s assertion that its truths are “self-evident” is one of the most philosophically loaded phrases in American political history. The phrase, substituted by Benjamin Franklin for Jefferson’s original “sacred and undeniable,” shifted the epistemological foundation of the Declaration’s argument from religious authority to rationalist philosophy.

A “self-evident” truth, in the philosophical usage of the eighteenth century, was a proposition that required no external proof because its truth was immediately apparent to any rational mind. The concept derived from Euclidean geometry, where axioms such as “the whole is greater than the part” were considered self-evident. Scottish common-sense philosophers like Thomas Reid extended this concept to moral and political propositions, arguing that certain ethical truths were as self-evident as mathematical axioms.

The claim that human equality and natural rights are self-evident has been challenged by philosophers from Jeremy Bentham to contemporary critics, who argue that these propositions are neither self-evident nor universally accepted. The persistence of slavery, the subordination of women, and the dispossession of Native Americans in the very society that produced the Declaration suggest that these truths were far from self-evident to many of the document’s contemporaries.

The Equality Proposition

The Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” has been the subject of more interpretive debate than any other phrase in the document. In its immediate context, the proposition served a specific argumentative function: it established that no person or group possessed a natural right to rule over others without consent. This was a direct challenge to the divine right of kings and to the hereditary aristocracy that structured European political life.

The scope of “all men” in 1776 was contested even at the time. Some revolutionaries, including Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, understood the principle broadly and opposed slavery on its basis. Others, including Jefferson, understood it more narrowly, as applying to white males of European descent. The contradiction between the Declaration’s universal language and the reality of slavery, explored further in discussions of the Revolution and slavery, would haunt American politics for generations.

Abraham Lincoln, in his June 1857 Springfield speech responding to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, argued that the Declaration’s equality principle was an aspirational standard—a “standard maxim for free society” that was to be “constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated.” This interpretation, which Lincoln elaborated further in his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas and reaffirmed in the Gettysburg Address, has become the dominant understanding in American constitutional culture.

The Right of Revolution

Philosophical Foundations

The Declaration’s assertion that the people have a right “to alter or to abolish” a destructive government and “to institute new Government” drew upon a long tradition of resistance theory in Western political thought. This tradition extended from medieval theories of tyrannicide through the resistance theories of the Reformation, the political philosophy of the English Civil War, and the Whig justification of the Glorious Revolution.

Locke’s formulation of the right of revolution was the most direct philosophical source, but Jefferson’s version was in some respects more radical than Locke’s. Locke had emphasized that the right of revolution could be exercised only after “a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices” had made the government’s destructive intentions unmistakable. Jefferson incorporated this caution through the Declaration’s insistence that “governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes” and through the detailed list of grievances that demonstrated the systematic character of British oppression.

Prudence and the Case for Independence

The Declaration’s philosophical argument is structured as a syllogism: legitimate governments are instituted to secure natural rights and derive their powers from consent; when a government becomes destructive of these ends, the people have a right to alter or abolish it; the British government under George III has become destructive of these ends; therefore, the colonies have a right to separate from Britain. The list of grievances serves as the factual predicate for this argument, demonstrating that the British government’s violations were not isolated incidents but constituted a systematic “design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.”

The Declaration’s invocation of “prudence” as a guide to political action reflects the influence of classical political philosophy, particularly Aristotle’s emphasis on practical wisdom (phronesis) as the virtue appropriate to political life. The document presents the decision for independence not as a rash or impulsive act but as the product of careful deliberation and patient endurance—a last resort undertaken only after all peaceful remedies had been exhausted.

The Circulation of Ideas in Colonial America

How Philosophy Reached the Colonies

The philosophical ideas that informed the Declaration did not reach colonial America through a single channel. They circulated through a complex network of institutions and practices: the libraries of colleges like Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary; the personal collections of educated gentlemen like Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin; the sermons of revolutionary clergy; the essays and letters published in colonial newspapers; and the oral culture of taverns, coffeehouses, and town meetings.

Printing and propaganda played a crucial role in disseminating these ideas beyond the educated elite. Pamphlets like Paine’s Common Sense translated Lockean political theory into language accessible to ordinary colonists. Newspaper essays, sermons, and broadsides circulated revolutionary arguments through the communication networks that connected the colonies. The committees of correspondence, established to coordinate resistance to British policies, also functioned as vehicles for the transmission of political ideas.

The Role of Religion

The religious culture of revolutionary America provided an important conduit for natural rights ideas. The Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s had emphasized individual conscience, the equality of souls before God, and the right to resist religious authority that violated scriptural principles. These religious ideas dovetailed with Enlightenment political philosophy, creating a powerful fusion that gave the revolutionary cause moral urgency.

Many colonial clergy, particularly among the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, preached sermons that explicitly linked natural rights philosophy to religious duty. The concept of a “covenant” between rulers and ruled, drawn from Reformed political theology, paralleled Locke’s social contract theory and made the Declaration’s arguments intelligible within a religious framework. The Anglican clergy, by contrast, generally remained loyal to the Crown, reflecting the Church of England’s institutional connection to British authority.

The Declaration’s Philosophy in Historical Perspective

Contemporary Reception

The Declaration’s philosophical arguments were received differently by different audiences. Educated colonists recognized the Lockean and Enlightenment sources and debated their implications. British critics, including Jeremy Bentham and the utilitarian school, dismissed the concept of natural rights as philosophically incoherent. European intellectuals, particularly in France, embraced the Declaration’s principles and saw them as confirming the universal applicability of Enlightenment philosophy.

The global impact of the Declaration was shaped in part by the accessibility of its philosophical framework. The concept of natural rights, grounded in reason rather than in the particular history or culture of any single nation, could be adapted to diverse political contexts. From the French Revolution to Latin American independence movements to twentieth-century anti-colonial struggles, revolutionaries have invoked the Declaration’s principles while adapting them to their own circumstances.

Modern Philosophical Debates

Contemporary philosophers continue to debate the soundness of the Declaration’s natural rights theory. Critics from the utilitarian, positivist, and historicist traditions have challenged the concept of pre-political natural rights, arguing that rights are social constructs rather than inherent features of human nature. Defenders of natural rights, drawing on the work of philosophers like John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum, have argued that the Declaration’s principles can be grounded in contemporary philosophical frameworks even if the specific Lockean metaphysics are no longer widely accepted.

The Declaration’s philosophy remains, in this sense, a living document—not merely a historical artifact but an ongoing argument about the foundations of legitimate government and the rights of human beings. The tension between the document’s universal aspirations and its historical limitations, between its philosophical ambitions and the messy realities of political life, continues to generate scholarly debate and political controversy, ensuring that the natural rights philosophy embedded in the Declaration will remain a subject of contention for as long as the document itself endures.

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