About
John Adams’s Discourses on Davila, written in 1790, examines ambition, emulation, envy, and the desire for distinction as permanent forces in political life. The group will consider Adams’s use of French history, his defense of balanced government, and his claim that free political order depends upon the discipline rather than the denial of human rivalry.
What to expect
The group will proceed through the text in six evening meetings, beginning with Adams’s account of the desire for praise and distinction, then turning to faction, inequality, aristocratic influence, popular jealousy, and the dangers of unbalanced power. Each meeting will move from Adams’s historical examples to his larger judgment about constitutional order.