I have heard about McDermott and he has a point. His arguments are clearly borrowing from J.G.A. Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment where he argues that the Florentine Republic (Catholic of course) served as a political model for Jefferson and Madison. However, the ideas that formulated the synthesis which created the Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution, came from the Scotish Enlightenment (Berkeley) and of course John Locke (though many historians wish to efface him from the formula all together). Other influences were Lord Bolingbroke who received quite a large amount of affection by Jefferson and I have to toss in Montesquieu. Rousseau should not be forgotten entirely either. Locke covered the arguments of natural law quite well saying that moral law is paramount to the vitality of virtue and necessary for government to be efficacious. Natural law would fit more into Machiavelli’s world and the world of Thomas Hobbs. Of course Aquinas would have made a good Calvinist since he found Predestination and Providence to be complimentary aspects of the human condition. The synthesis could also include David Hume where human inquiry is involved, but this is much harder to prove. I think Calvinism and evangelicalism played a crucial role by the time of the Constitutional Convention, but perhaps not so much for the Declaration of Independence.

For constitutional arguments that led to the Declaration of Independence, see John Phillip Reid. He has a book on the Constitutional Arguments of the Revolution which basically proved that the colonists felt their charter remained in the hands of the king and that Parliament held no claim to them. Also, Reid argued that the colonists were still clinging to property rights instead of title rights as Parliament was so doing. In other words, the colonists viewed their rights rested in material possession (and so with the king who owned all of the land), whereas Pariament held the title of the sovereign via the Commons which "virtually" represented colonists 3000 miles away. Good stuff really....check him out.

I can imagine that the Stoics owe a lot to Plato. I flipped through an old copy of Plato’s Symposium that I had read years back (a good read) and I can definitely see the similarities there – particularly Socrates’ resistance to temptation and to the inebriating effects of wine.

But I didn't mean to suggest that Marcus Aurelius had a particular connection to Hegel's philosophy. It was just that a quote or two of MA's sounded like it had Hegelian elements. For instance: