This extensive study suggests that, despite being one of the largest slaveholders in Virginia, Jefferson was consistent in his advocacy of human rights.
This is the first book to systematize the philosophical content of Thomas Jefferson's writings. Sifting through Jefferson's many addresses, messages, and letters, philosopher M. Andrew Holowchak uncovers an intensely curious Enlightenment thinker with a well-constructed, people-sympathetic, and consistent philosophy. As the author shows, Jefferson's philosophical views encompassed human nature, the cosmos, politics, morality, and education. Beginning with his understanding of the cosmos, part one considers Jefferson's philosophical naturalism and the influence on him of Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke. The next section critically examines his political viewpoints, specifically his republicanism, liberalism, and progressivism. The third part, oJefferson on Morality,o analyzes Jefferson's thoughts on human nature, his moral-sense theory, and his notion of onatural aristoio (best or most virtuous citizens). Finally, oJefferson on Educationo reviews his ideas on properly educating the people of the new nation for responsible, participatory citizenry. Jefferson conceived of the United States as a ogreat experimento-embodying a vision of a government responsibly representative of its people and functioning for the sake of them. This book will help readers understand the philosophical perspective that sustained this audacious, innovative, and people-first experiment.
Jefferson's moral and political thought are more complex than they appear at first glance, consisting of two Jeffersons, and evolving from a natural law, universal Enlightenment ethos to a more cultural relativist perspective. RIGHTFUL LIBERTY explores themes and events overlooked by other Jefferson experts, such as his response to the English abolitionist Thomas Branagan; the formative influence of Montesquieu on the young Jefferson's opposition to slavery; a comparison of his attitudes to slavery and abolition with those of Edward Coles; his relationships with Black slaves and freedmen other than those of the well-known Hemings family; and a more nuanced perspective on his view of the Missouri Compromises of 1820 and 1821 than is found elsewhere. As speculations about Jefferson's personal life, often based on little evidence prevail, this volume examines him from a more wide-ranging perspective, discerning his moral, political, and religious thought in relation to his actions.
Revisionism has been the historical vogue for well over two decades concerning Jeffersonian scholarship. This movement has been an attempt to neutralize the avowed “hagiographical” scholarship on Jefferson by aiming to offer an all-too-human Thomas Jefferson. The regrettable result has been a depiction, iterated and reiterated uncritically by scholars, of a less-than-human Jefferson, presenting him as an inveterate hypocrite and racist. Thus, Jeffersonian scholarship, as argued here, has become an exercise in useless, fatuous repetition of the same claims that has impeded attempts by serious scholars to gain fresh insights into the mind of one of the greatest Americans. This book offers a stimulating, provocative challenge to the stale revisionist claims on Jefferson concerning his hypocrisy and racism. It will appeal to mavens of Jefferson, as well as scholars intent on moving forward with Jeffersonian scholarship. The book will also appeal to those persons who believe it is time to resituate Jefferson on his little mountain.
This extraordinary primer offers a superb survey of Jeffersonian thought. It features writings on political and economic philosophy, morals and religion, intellectual freedom and progress, education, secession, slavery, and more.
Was Thomas Jefferson a Lockean liberal or a classical republican? In The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, Garrett Ward Sheldon aims to reconcile two opposing camps of an ongoing scholarly debate. Offering a revised account of Jefferson's political theory, Sheldon shows that Jefferson's thought comprised a rich constellation of theoretical traditions--including British liberalism, classical republicanism, Scottish moral philosophy, Christian ethics, and Lockean theory. Examining Jefferson's views on democracy, rights, freedom, and slavery as well as the cultural and economic context of his ideas in the Virginia gentry class, this book not only offers a concise introduction to Jefferson's political philosophy but also makes a thought-provoking contribution to a current historiography controversy.
Much of the scholarship on Thomas Jefferson characterizes him as a consummate immoralist. Yet he had a keen interest in morality and most of his reading--when he was not immersed in politics--was for moral study. Jefferson once told his physician, Vine Utley, that he seldom went to sleep without first reading something morally inspiring. Some Jefferson scholars consider him at best a moral dilettante with incoherent views. Others see him as a Stoic, interested in virtue as measured by both intentions and outcomes, who in later life became an Epicurean, weighing pleasure versus ends. Drawing on a careful reading of his writings and an examination of his known readings on morality, this study argues that Jefferson developed early a consistent moral sense--Stoical in essence and focused on his own moral improvement--and maintained it throughout his life.
This book is a companion to the author’s previous volume, Thirty-Six Short Essays on the Probing Mind of Thomas Jefferson. It provides the reader with new short essays on Jefferson thoughts on political philosophy and religion and morality. There are, in addition, 10 essays on Jeffersonian historiography, as Jefferson, it is commonly complained, is an exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, task, for any historian. The book is crafted both to entertain—the essays are brisk and lively—and to enlighten. The essays are provocative and critical, and take the reader deep within the recesses of Jefferson’s large mind, while also highlighting that Jefferson is still quite relevant today.
Although scholars have adequately covered Thomas Jefferson's general ideas about human nature and race, this is the first book to examine what Maurizio Valsania terms Jefferson's "philosophical anthropology"--philosophical in the sense that he concerned himself not with describing how humans are, culturally or otherwise, but with the kind of human being Jefferson thought he was, wanted to become, and wished for citizens to be for the future of the United States. Valsania's exploration of this philosophical anthropology touches on Jefferson's concepts of nationalism, slavery, gender roles, modernity, affiliation, and community. More than that, Nature's Man shows how Jefferson could advocate equality and yet control and own other human beings. A humanist who asserted the right of all people to personal fulfillment, Jefferson nevertheless had a complex philosophy that also acknowledged the dynamism of nature and the limits of human imagination. Despite Jefferson's famous advocacy of apparently individualistic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Valsania argues that both Jefferson's yearning for the human individual to become something good and his fear that this hypothetical being would turn into something bad were rooted in a specific form of communitarianism. Absorbing and responding to certain moral-philosophical currents in Europe, Jefferson's nature-infused vision underscored the connection between the individual and the community.
A revelatory new biography of Thomas Jefferson, focusing on his ethical and spiritual life “Set aside everything you think you know about Thomas Jefferson and religion, and read this book. This is the definitive account. It is well written, well researched, judicious, and entirely convincing.”—Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity. In this book Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions, including an unapologetic focus on the issue where Jefferson’s idealistic philosophy and lived reality clashed most obviously: his sexual relationship with his enslaved woman Sally Hemings. In doing so, he offers a unique perspective on one of American history’s most studied figures.