The Good Citizen
Kojève and the Founding Fathers
There is much confusion in the United States today about what it means to be a good citizen. Some liberty-focused Americans find the exercise of their own rights, so long as they do not infringe upon their fellow citizens’ rights, to be a satisfactory philosophy for good citizenship. Others hold that we must allow government agencies and adjacent institutions to operate “as they please” and with little oversight or criticism.1 Often, the latter perspective is supported by context-stripped Scripture verses such as “‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’” (Matthew 22:21), “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God” (Romans 13:1), and others. The former perspective is borne from a vulgar and simplistic prioritization of the freedom of individual activity.
Furthermore, an invocation of “good citizenship” imports a certain perspective on rationality and choice. This must not be overlooked. It is not merely the responsibility of the individual to abiogenetically generate good citizenship within themselves; it is equally the responsibility of the entire populace and of the state to mutually cultivate these qualities throughout its interconnected self. The current essay intends to address how an individual might begin to consider and engender “good citizenship,” meaning that the statecraft and governance aspects will be left for another discourse.
Thankfully, one does not need to look in obscure places to find a cohesive grounding for good citizenship. As Americans, our own Founding Fathers had much to say on this matter, and they placed special emphasis upon three characteristics: education, virtue, and religion. Of course, these three aspects are deeply intertwined. In a letter to John Adams on December 10th, 1819, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
No government can continue good but under the control of the people … Their minds were to be informed, by education, what is right & what wrong, to be encouraged in habits of virtue.2
During the Quasi-War with France (1798-1800), John Adams wrote the following in a letter to the first brigade of the third division of the Militia of Massachusetts:
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.3
Despite modern efforts to escape this fact, religion is the core of human civilization.4 One may not necessarily need to “be religious” themselves to be a good citizen, but they must understand and metabolize the value of religion and its virtues. Galatians 5:22-23 describes the “fruit of the Spirit,” which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” A good citizen must learn to embody these traits – not out of obligation, but out of a deeply-rooted desire to be and do good.
But, without a love for education, how can a citizen learn of the Founding Fathers, or the history of religion, or the value of practicing virtue? The Founding Fathers knew this, and they envisioned education as a well from which wisdom is drawn for proper behavior and interaction. In particular, the good citizen must be a life-long learner of history. Everyone knows the idiom “those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it,” and while it is helpful, it is apparently not sufficiently compelling, since most people do not heed its advice. Something is missing, and the unsung French statesman and philosopher Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968), who was involved in the formation of the European Union, offers a solution.
Between 1933 and 1939, Kojève delivered a series of lectures about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit. Titans of Western thought like Georges Bataille and Jacques Lacan attended these lectures in person. In 1980, an abridged edition of Raymond Queneau’s notes on the lectures was published in English. The following quote is a footnote from that collection.
It is in the lack of historical memory (or understanding) that the mortal danger of Nihilism or Skepticism resides, which would negate everything without preserving anything, even in the form of memory. A society that spends its time listening to the radically “nonconformist” Intellectual, who amuses himself by (verbally!) negating any given at all (even the “sublimated” given preserved in historical remembrance) solely because it is a given, ends up sinking into inactive anarchy and disappearing. Likewise, the Revolutionary who dreams of a “permanent revolution” that negates every type of tradition and takes no account of the concrete past, except to overcome it, necessarily ends up either in the nothingness of social anarchy or in annulling himself physically or politically. Only the Revolutionary who manages to maintain or reestablish the historical tradition, by preserving in a positive memory the given present which he himself has relegated to the past by his negation, succeeds in creating a new historical World capable of existing.5
To be a good citizen, one must diligently study the history of themselves, their people, their nation, and the whole world. This practice is a project – it has a goal. The point of studying history is to develop a substantive critique. A good citizen cannot be satisfied with their nation’s current state of affairs. They must aspire to its improvement. Kojève’s stance is quite clear: the (revolutionary) improvement of a nation must be grounded in the dialectical preservation and an active memory of history.
In summary, the following action items are obligatory for the good citizen.
Study history with vigor and excitement, and with an attitude of impartiality.
From this study, endeavor toward an integrated appreciation and implementation of virtue and conduct, as well as a knowledge of their source, which is God.
Construct a critique built upon this foundation of study which aims to pursue the best interests of one’s nation and people.
František Gajdoš, “Posolstvo,” 1986.
I listened to the following albums while writing this piece:
Selbst – Despondency Chord Progressions (2024)
Mourir – Disgrâce (2022)
Thantifaxath – Sacred White Noise (2014)
In addition, I’d like to thank my younger sister Rebekah for asking my thoughts on good citizenship. She is responsible for my conception and composition of this essay.
Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Mariner Books, 1976.
Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit. Cornell University Press, 1980. Page 233. Bold emphasis my own.