We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident: The National Guard and the Categorical Imperative

Anne Armstrong, from her position at the National Guard Library, has rescued the philosophical background of the National Guard from obscurity. From my own perspective as the great grandson of General Charles Dick, one of the founders of the National Guard, I commend the Vernon Press for publishing this masterful survey of the Kantian imperative and the Guard’s eighteenth-century origins. General Dick was a firm believer in the necessity of a national guard as represented historically by the Garde Nationale of General Lafayette and of the early militias of George Washington. The relationship of these popular militias with the eighteenth-century thought of Immanuel Kant is a subject unexplored until now. Dr. Armstrong has applied her own rigorous thinking to the subject and produced a book that will be of great interest to military historians, followers and members of the Guard and historians of philosophy.

Charles Tharp

CTA Associates LLC