Research
Book Project
Fostering Freedom: Judgment in Early-Modern Educational and Political Thought
This project seeks to locate an alternative to personal autonomy—as a guiding standard of liberal education theory—that accommodates the limits of human cognition and the demands of liberal citizenship. To do so, it addresses a neglected early-modern discourse on individual freedom that privileges judgment as a civic-educational outcome. I examine three thinkers—Locke, Rousseau, and Smith—who each develop a framework for the cultivation of judgment that focuses on the individual’s ability to make informed judgments and engage in self-directed behavior. The concept of judgment that emerges from this study can serve as an alternative benchmark for self-government in liberal education theory.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Timothy Tennyson and Michelle Schwarze. 2024. “An Honest Man? Rousseau’s Critique of Locke’s Character Education.” European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 23, No. 4: 435-456.
John Locke’s educational program has long been considered to have two primary aims: to habituate children to reason and to raise children capable of meeting the demands of citizenship that he details in his Two Treatises of Government. Yet Locke’s educational prescriptions undermine citizens’ capacity for honesty, a critical political virtue for Locke. To explain how Locke’s educational prescriptions are self-undermining, we turn to Rousseau’s extended critique of Locke’s Some Thoughts on Education in his Émile. We argue that Rousseau explains why such an education allows a natural desire to dominate to flourish, rendering children who receive it dishonest and incapable of self-government. Rousseau’s critique exposes how a liberal education focused solely on autonomy cannot produce the kinds of citizens a Lockean politics requires.
Tennyson, Timothy T. 2022. “Cicero’s Romulus and the Crafting of Historical Exempla.” History of Political Thought, Vol 43, No. 1: 1-30.
I examine Cicero’s use of Romulus as a historical exemplum in support of his theory of the ideal statesman. I compare Cicero’s characterization of Romulus in De Republica to the Romulus accounts advanced in Livy’s History of Rome and Dionysius’ Roman Antiquities to better understand the character and composition of this historical exemplum. An examination of Livy’s and Dionysius’ more comprehen- sive Romulus accounts reveals Cicero’s omission of character traits and actions that contradict his stateman ideal. By crafting an image of Romulus that largely conflicts with his portrayal in the collective cultural memory, Cicero attempts to re-shape the ‘traditional’ archetype of Roman statesmanship.
"Adam Smith on Education, Inequality, and Class Division in Commercial Society." (Forthcoming at Polity)
Contrary to his popular image as a champion of laissez-faire economics and government non-intervention, Adam Smith was conscious of flaws inherent to commercial society and the need for government intervention to address negative externalities and market failures. In the past half-century, an explosion of revisionist scholarship has transformed this once controversial claim into somewhat of a truism. Nevertheless, there is still significant disagreement on the character and depth of Smith’s criticisms of commercial society and his prescriptions for addressing its limitations. Several interpreters, for example, cite Smith’s endorsement of state-funded parish schools as evidence of his concern for issues of inequality and distributive justice. According to this view, Smith intends not only to rectify the cognitive effects of the division of labor but also to bridge class divides by promoting more equal outcomes in intellectual and moral development. As I argue, these interpretations exaggerate the egalitarian aims of Smith’s educational proposal. Previous treatments of Smith’s educational thought have paid insufficient attention to the deep class divisions in his educational prescriptions. By accepting these divisions, Smith’s proposal does not address the sympathetic gap between classes that he himself identifies as a dangerous source of “corruption” in commercial society.
Working Papers
"The Twilight of Probability: John Locke on Education for Judgment"
(Under Review)
In this article, I argue that the cultivation of probabilistic judgment is a primary aim of Locke’s educational treatise, Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Scholars have yet to appreciate the extent to which Locke’s pedagogy is structured by his concern for the role of judgment in practical thought and action. If we read Some Thoughts through the lens of Locke’s treatment of judgment in the Essay, we can observe his prioritization of the faculties that contribute to judgment (memory, reason, and will), his attention to common sources of error in judgment, and, most importantly, his turn to the practice of judgment in late adolescence. This argument supports recent attempts to defend Locke’s commitment to a meaningful standard of individual freedom in Some Thoughts beyond the negative liberty of the Second Treatise. As I will show, the self-government prioritized in this text, when read alongside the Essay, is best understood as an ability to think and act responsibly, under conditions of uncertainty, without direct oversight or interference. This modest, yet aspirational, freedom is made possible by the development and guided practice of judgment.
"Giving the Vices Their Due: Civic Vice and Democratic Citizenship."
When political theorists discuss civic character, they overwhelmingly focus on civic virtues—positive dispositions of thought or behavior that are required to realize a particular ideal of “good citizenship.” Without denying the value of theorizing about civic virtue, I suggest that the category of “civic vice” has received insufficient attention in contemporary citizenship theory. My argument in this article is two-part. First, civic vice is a meaningful category of analysis in normative theorizing about democratic citizenship. By neglecting the vices, we risk overlooking serious challenges to responsible citizenship faced by ordinary people in non-ideal democracies. Second, the most effective strategy for addressing civic vice is not necessarily the pursuit of, or fixation on, civic virtue, a demanding task for most citizens. Instead, we should focus on diagnosing civic vices, assessing their influence on citizens’ conduct, and developing strategies to mitigate their influence. I start by defining civic vice, distinguishing it from civic virtue, and explaining why the study of civic vice matters for democratic citizenship theory. Then, I discuss possible strategies, individual and collective, for dealing with civic vice. In particular, I draw from research on “debiasing” to develop interventions for addressing civic vice. Finally, I turn to Judith Shklar’s treatment of “passive injustice” in The Faces of Injustice as an example of a common civic vice. I show how her focus on passive injustice illuminates certain challenges to responsible democratic citizenship that treatments of “justice” as a civic virtue ignore or obscure.
"Pity, the Sense of Injustice, and the Problem of Inequality in Judith Skhklar's Moral Psychology," with Michelle Schwarze.
This article examines the positive role of emotions in the work of Judith Shklar, a 20th-century liberal political theorist renowned for her “liberalism of fear.” Despite her skepticism toward public passions, Shklar recognized the necessary function of emotions as safeguards against the ordinary, yet pernicious, vices of cruelty and injustice. In particular, pity and the sense of injustice provide the affective support necessary to direct attention to victims and motivate intervention on their behalf. Yet, as we argue, these affective processes threaten to undermine Shklar’s secondary commitment to equality. Shklar’s liberalism insists that citizens be equal enough not to fear or experience oppression and to have their claims heard in the democratic process. But this substantive equality is compromised by pity and the sense of injustice, which create relations of inequality between victims considered “less than” and pitiers or sympathizers aware of their superiority. These affective ties generate sticky relations of inequality, especially in situations where individuals or groups are likely to be treated as perennial victims.
"Rethinking Machiavelli’s Civic Religion," with Dan Kapust.
This article reexamines Machiavelli’s account of Roman civic religion in The Discourses in light of his engagement with Lucretius’s De rerum natura. Machiavelli is typically thought to have a positive view of civic religion’s role in Roman republicanism and imperial expansion. Yet, this sits somewhat uneasily with his attention to Lucretius’s psychology of religion and critique of Roman religio, which famously decries religion’s role in making people fearful, discontent, and easily manipulable. For Machiavelli, elite manipulation of religion does promote civic cohesion and imperial expansion, but often at the expense of undermining the pleb’s role as “guards of freedom” against noble domination. If Machiavelli’s praise of Roman civic religion is unequivocal, we would not expect examples of the manipulation of religion in service of the nobility’s private ambitions and at the expense of republican liberty. Yet, we find several of these examples in Machiavelli’s treatment of the Roman civic cult. Thus, we argue that Machiavelli’s position on Roman religion in The Discourses is more ambivalent than scholars have typically assumed. Moreover, we suggest that this argument is compatible with, or explainable by, oligarchic, republican, and democratic interpretations of Machiavelli.