There is almost no human action…that does not arise from a very general idea that men have conceived of God, of his relations with the human race, of the nature of their souls, and of their duties toward those like them. One cannot keep these ideas from being the common source from which all the rest flow.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)

In politics we conceive and attempt to achieve the common good. The determination and pursuit of this common good, a good invested with the solemn and effectual authority of law, is necessarily bound up with our personal conceptions of life’s purpose. Therefore political issues, considered fundamentally, necessarily involve the ultimate questions of philosophy and of religion.

In a free society the public sphere, in which the people considered as a whole exercise self-government, is ordered and limited so as to allow a wide range of choices in the private sphere, in which individuals, families, and private associations exercise their free self-government. But the question of the common good can never become obsolete; the very definition of the sphere of “private” freedom always involves an appeal, explicit or implicit, to a shared understanding of the meaning of our humanity.

In political debate and deliberation in a free society, we tend to adopt the language of rights in addressing issues large and small. Nevertheless, while few dispute the idea that human beings have rights, the definition of such rights is inevitably controversial. To address controversies surrounding the meaning and limits of human rights thus requires us to think about who human beings are, to raise hard questions concerning our nature and destiny. The philosophical and religious traditions of the West, traditions rooted in the legacies of Athens and of Jerusalem and expressed in literature and art as well as in systematic treatise and doctrine, are precious and inexhaustible resources for exploring such questions.

Today many influential voices urge the virtually limitless expansion of certain “rights” (inevitably to the detriment of “rights” favored by others); such voices would define “rational” debate so as to exclude traditional philosophical and religious resources from the realm of legitimate public discourse. But to exclude a reflection on human nature and purposes from discussions of the character and limits of our rights is very far from rational.

The John Adams Center for The Study of Faith, Philosophy and Public Affairs aims to resist this narrowing of the notion of “reason” to the blind expansion of certain purported “rights.” Drawing upon philosophical and religious insights into human nature, we propose, not, to be sure, to settle fundamental questions of the character and limits of rights and responsibilities in a free society, but to explore philosophical and religious dimensions of public issues so as to enrich individual understanding and public debate. Thus we hope to contribute to the moral self-government of individuals and of society as a whole.