Dr Philip Pettit

YOUNGSTOWN — Upon the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman what kind of government had been created, to which he famously replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Asked to comment on what Franklin meant, Dr. Philip Pettit, one of the world’s foremost scholars in ethical and political theory, said, “Whenever you have competing motives (for governmental power), there’s always an element of the danger of one of the competing sides wanting to capture the rules.” Because of that tension, he said, that’s why (a democratic republican system of government) is fragile.

“It is a well-placed qualification,” Pettit said of Franklin’s warning.

Pettit was the featured lecturer at Thursday’s Fall 2025 Shipka Speaker Series event in the auditorium at Youngstown State University’s Williamson College of Business Administration. He is the L.S. Rockefeller Professor of Human Values at Princeton University. He is also a distinguished professor of philosophy at the Australian National University in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory.

Pettit, a native of a village near Galway in the Republic of Ireland, divides his time equally between the United States and Australia with at least one visit per year to Ireland.

In a 45-minute lecture that was followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer period, Pettit looked at the subject of democracy from the perspective of “The What, the Why, and the How.”

Early in his lecture, Pettit made the surprising observation that until about the mid-19th century in the United States, “democracy” was not regarded with the same virtue with which we associate it today. In fact, it was a “bad word,” he said, explaining that our founders argued against democracy in the Federalist Papers before adoption of the Constitution (particularly James Madison in Federalist No. 10).

Pettit made it clear, though, that the type of democracy discussed prior to 1830 was based on a concept embraced by political philosophers and strong monarchists like England’s Thomas Hobbes in which the entire citizenry of a country (predominantly land-owning men) would vote on and enact laws under the gaze of a monarch — a so-called “pure” democracy.

“It is not ‘democracy’ in our sense,” he said. The Founders, per Pettit, rejected the Hobbesian form of democracy in favor of the more feasible representative form — the elected-representative “republican” system we know today.

In preparing for his lectures on democracy, Pettit said he keeps a world view.

“Inevitably, because I’m from Europe and live half the year in Australia and the other half in America, I reflect on different systems and the ways they do or don’t measure up,” he said. “You would have to say that at the moment, America is the obvious focus because it is departing from its institutional traditions on such a wide range of fronts.”

“In order to think clearly about many of these things,” he said, “you have to put aside emotion and passion. I grew up in a country where there was a long tradition of not discussing politics and religion at the dinner table because they would arouse passion. I try to put (personal feelings) aside for that reason, but (you) will know what I think by virtue of what I hold up as ideal, traditionally grounded, or philosophically vindicated.”

The lecture was well attended by students, YSU faculty, and others. Pettit was introduced by Dr. Alan Tomhave, associate dean and professor of philosophy. Prior to the lecture, Tomhave said that Pettit has been a desired speaker for the Shipka Lecture Series and was delighted by Pettit’s availability, indicating it is not always easy to get a speaker of his caliber.

Pettit is the author or co-author of nearly two dozen books,including “Republicanism” (1997), “Group Agency with Christian List” (2011), “On the People’s Terms” (2012), “Just Freedom” (2014), “The State” (2023) and “When Minds Converse: A Social Genealogy of the Human Soul” (2025).

The Dr. Thomas and Albert J. Shipka Speakers Series brings internationally respected scholars to YSU to present lectures on a variety of topics.