Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure
when we have removed their only firm basis, a
conviction in the minds of the people that these
liberties are of the gift of God? TJ, Notes on VA (iv)
1993 Preface
Unlike Franklin (quaint, sententious) or Washington (monumental, superhuman), Jefferson (b. 13 Apr 1743, d. 4 Jul 1826) remains vital (as prophet, architect). Woodrow Wilson said in 1916 that his immortality lies not in any particular achievement, but in his attitude toward mankind. During WWII, the Jefferson Memorial was dedicated with his own words: "I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" (vii). His chosen epitaph listed 3 items: authorship of the Declaration of Independence and Virginia Statute for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia, reflecting "his triple faith - in the right of people to govern themselves, to choose their own God, and freely to search for knowledge" (viii). These ideas are more relevant and urgent then ever in this age of 'belligerent chauvinism and religious fanaticism' (viii). While the Lost World (i.e. mindscape of ideas) described in this book may be gone (e.g. frontier, pre-industrial), his triple faith and supporting institutions remain. "The roots of many of Jefferson's enduring beliefs - in equality, in self-government, in toleration, in freedom of thought, in the pursuit of knowledge - prove stranger than we think" (viii). The author singles out Julian P. Boyd's editorship of Jefferson's papers and Dumas Malone's biography.
1948 Preface
"The search for the values of our civilization is a ... [good thing, but we must] face the hard fact that each generation must confront the perennial problems of man in its unique way" (xi), not merely mining the past for "crude slogans and facile answers." The author tries to "get inside the Jeffersonian world of ideas" but not to recount in detail their application to form social and political history (see Henry Adams for that). Also, he wants more to recapture the mindscape rather than perform an autopsy on it (intellectual genealogy). The Jeffersonian tradition "has provided our principal check on the demands of irresponsible power" (xiii). This preface signed DJB, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, January, 1948.
Introduction
1: 'The Influence of America on the Mind'
This is the title of talk given in 1823 by Charles Jared Ingersoll to the American Philosophical Society (APS) in Philadelphia. He contrasted the 'literary and contemplative' [we could add dogmatic, doctrinal, theoretical, scholarly, legalistic, even scriptural] nature of European thought with the 'practical, economic, scientific, mechanical' nature of American, due primarilly with the latter's need to tame its wilderness (i.e. struggle with nature, "quaint juxtaposition of culture and barbarism - the Bible in the wilderness" 3). "This discord between man as maker and man as thinker has accounted for much of the restlessness in American political and intellectual life ... Puritanism, Jeffersonianism, Transcendentalism, and Pragmatism have all testified to man's inability to turn his back on philosophy. Yet, each in its different fashion, these American movements have ended in a refusal to follow philosophy when it might paralyze the hand of the artisan or the conqueror ... Except perhaps for Puritanism (which was after all the least characteristically American), until now American thought has produced philosophies to restrain philosophy" (4) [e.g. my 1980s career statement to family 'do now, think later', avoid 'analysis paralysis']. In 1743, "the English-speaking population of North America consisted of about a million settlers huddled along the Atlantic seaboard" (5), its future ambiguous. By 1826, its destiny had become clear, "the United States had become a nation of 10 million ... a constitutional federal republic had been established, and a national political tradition had begun to emerge ... in the 200 years from the early 17C to the early 19C [America was transformed] from an untamed savage wilderness - the scene of European man in 1000 B.C. - to a developed national capitalist economy, his European scene in A.D. 1800" (6).
This meant not only that intervening stages were leapfrogged (unlike Europe, which includes many such vestiges), but much actual American rebellion against the past. "But the past against which they were rebelling was foreign, distant and vague" (7), unlike the French revolutionaries, whose enemies were domestic, local and clearly and systematically articulated by royal and clerical forces.
The Jeffersonian pragmatic attitude "was itself of course a kind of philosophy, in which the desire to get things done predominated over the need to be at peace with God and oneself" (7). It defined evil as selfish ambition vs. good as corporate improvement, but significantly omitted self-scrutiny, -definition, -comprehension. Because Jeffersonianism was conveyed in discrete, practical ways (vs. "spacious treatises" 8), it has a) led many to equate the plan of action or political program for the philosophy and b) "acquired both a brittleness and an amorphousness" (8) which has caused misunderstanding (e.g. everyone claims Jefferson as their inspiration).
2: The Jeffersonian Circle
Just as St. Augustine's vision of an eternal city in City of God "provided much of the theology and the political theory on which medieval Europe built its alternative to the earthly city" (9), the (admittedly much more fragmentary) writings of the Jeffersonian Circle "had a scope and function quite analogous" (9), conveying their vision of the earthly city of American civilization. "The intellectual energies of this circle were organized by an institution framed on republican principles - the APS" (9). Founded by Ben Franklin in 1743, it borrowed its rules from the Royal Society of London. It focused on practical vs. merely speculative knowledge. "Including an intellectual elite from every corner of British North America, the APS was truly continental in catholicity and influence ... [between 1790 and 1809] the South showed no comparable intellectual metropolis. New England was on the intellectual periphery; those were dull days for Harvard College and for the theology which she represented. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (the Boston counterpart of the APS) founded by John Adams in 1780 never attained the stature of a rival. It surely was in the Jeffersonian spirit that the center of American action [i.e. Philadelphia] should be the center of thought" (11). Philosophy was to be observant and inventive rather than profound and reflective (12). "The investigations of Rittenhouse, Ruch, Barton and Priestley - and the popularizations of Paine and Peale - will all be seen focused through Jefferson himself on the central issues of man and society" (12).
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790): the precurser, preeminent American philosopher in the generation before Jefferson's, "never doubted that a healthy and prosperous America would also be wise and moral" (12), the "last age of our colonial existence" (12), founder of APS, whose mantle Jefferson assumed as "the leading mind of the first age of our national life" (12).
David Rittenhouse (1732-1796): Jefferson's idol, unschooled but extremely clever, astronomer, built planetarium, elected Franklin's successor as president of APS, one of Jefferson's "trio of American genius" (13), with Washington, Franklin.
Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813): physician, humanitarian, Rush's 1811 letter reconciled Jefferson and Adams, Princeton educated, chemistry specialist, abolitionist, Rush suggested Paine write pamphlet titled "Common Sense."
Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815): botanist (esp. medicinal), nephew of Rittenhouse, natural history, cultural anthopology (Indians).
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804): chemist, discoverer of oxygen, open advocate of French Rev, physicist, essayist in history, politics, abolition, education, nonconformist minister (Unitarian), wrote A History of the Corruptions of Christianity which Jefferson deeply admired.
Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827): popularizer, illustrator and showman, portraitist (incl. Washington), slaveowner turned abolitionist, founded early zoo/museum, interests: natural history, dentistry, engineering.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809): well-known popularizer, publicist, inventor, engineer, author of Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, discussed politics, economics, theology, natural history...
Note: Its interesting to observe that Boorstin structures this book on Jeffersonian thought similarly to a theology book, using some of the 6 customary divisions of theology: the doctrine of God (theology), man, Christ (christology), salvation (soteriology), church and sacraments (ecclesiology) and last things (eschatology).
ch 1: The Supreme Workman (i.e. God)
1: Nature as the Work of Art
2: The Economy of Nature
3: The Apotheosis of Nature
ch 2: The Equality of the Human Species
1: The Adaptability of Man
2: The Dispersion of the Human Species
3: Varieties of Mankind: the Indian and the Negro
4: The Fulfillment of Human Equality
ch 3: The Physiology of Thought and Morals
1: 'The Mode of Action Called Thinking'
2: The Happy Variety of Minds
3: The Perils of Metaphysics
4: The Moral Sense and the Life of Action
5: Jeffersonian Christianity
ch 4: The Natural History of a New Society
1: Natural History and Political Science
2: The Use of Government
3: A Philosophy of Rights
4: The Sovereignty of the Present Generation
5: The Quest for Useful Knowledge
6: The American Destiny
Conclusion
1: The Promise of Jeffersonian Thought
2: The God of the Republic
Other books by the author: The Genius of American Politics, The Image, The Americans (trilogy, won Bancroft, Parkman, Pulitzer prizes), The Discoverers, The Creators.