SOURCE: “Mythologies of a Founder,” in Thomas Jefferson and the Politics of Nature, edited by Thomas S. Engeman, University of Notre Dame Press, 2000, pp. 123-41.

[In the following essay, Fowler assesses Jefferson's declining reputation in recent years and discusses, in particular, Jefferson's ideas concerning natural rights.]

In his fine book The Natural Rights Republic, based on his Frank M. Covey, Jr., lectures at Loyola University Chicago, Michael Zuckert leads his readers to an appreciation of the intellectual dimensions of the founding of the United States. As Zuckert observes, the founders combined multiple sides of American political thought, including constitutionalism, the theory of natural rights, republicanism, and religious ideas, in a special way to forge the philosophical underpinnings of our nation.¹ Zuckert recognizes that Thomas Jefferson was a figure of undoubted significance in the process, one who is well worth continued efforts to understand his insights and his contributions. I share this judgment and in this spirit offer my own Mr. Jefferson, his political thought, and what I suspect are its foundations.

1. THE FALLEN HERO

The truth about Thomas Jefferson today is that his image as a founder—and as a person—is in steep decline. His reputation as a political philosopher, moreover, remains modest. While his political thought (or some of his political thoughts) are as popular and perhaps as influential as ever, there is little agreement among scholars with Michael Zuckert's view that Jefferson's political thought was especially creative. The opposite is true, which is just why Jefferson has been so influential. Jefferson was not especially philosophical or creative or unique as a political thinker—and he did not claim to be—but he was a master of uncommonly effective expression of common American ideas, ideas that have changed the world.

In the American pantheon Thomas Jefferson has occupied a place larger than life. This is evident not only on Mt. Rushmore but especially in the serenely beautiful Jefferson Memorial in the nation's capital. Millions each year sightsee in Washington and view the larger-than-life statue of Jefferson at his Memorial. There he stands in his full dignity, surrounded by selections from his political writings that soar above his statue.

As a self-declared Jeffersonian democrat (and Democrat), President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial in 1943. There was a considerable irony in the event, in that FDR by then was no advocate of small government, which was integral to what it meant to be a Jeffersonian and a Jeffersonian democrat (and Democrat). The construction of the Jefferson Memorial did make sense in that era, however, given Jefferson's prominence in the American civic religion. He was as great a figure then as Washington or Lincoln. Some, such as Joseph Ellis in his recent biography, American Sphinx, argue that little has changed in recent years. A certain Jefferson remains firmly ensconced in the pantheon of sacred heroes in the United States.² In fact, though, a lot has changed. Indeed, I doubt whether the Jefferson Memorial would be built today.

Sanford Levinson has ably explored some of the intriguing meanings of memorials, flags, and other cultural artifacts that exist in this and every age, in this and every land.³ He recognizes their powerful role in the “realities” people seek to construct or maintain. His analysis helps explain the creation of the Jefferson Memorial, erected during the United States' fight for American democracy and freedoms in World War II. It was a cultural affirmation of these values by honoring a hero from the past who was portrayed as a great exemplar of them.

The monuments to Stalin that have come down in recent years in Eastern Europe mark the fall of a former hero and the fall of the values the hero supposedly embodied. The situation with Jefferson, however, is different. The values celebrated by the Jefferson Memorial have not lost their cultural credibility. What has changed is the confidence that Jefferson is a fitting representative of them. Put another way, Jefferson has fallen victim to contemporary perceptions that “we do indeed live by symbols … the tangible … marble depictions of those the culture wishes to honor,” and in our fractious, cynical, and disillusioned age, “it can occasion no surprise that these symbols have become essentially contested.”⁴

In this contest Jefferson's reputation has gone into a steep decline.⁵ Despite his having a group of strong admirers, this fate is particularly obvious among intellectual arbiters of the Jeffersonian image, especially historians and political theorists. The consequent conflicts among public intellectuals and scholars in the course of this decline have been as numerous as they have been acrimonious.⁶ While Jefferson's overall public standing does not yet seem to have fallen—the visitors to Monticello and the Jefferson Memorial do not decrease—long-run effects in the public eye may surely be expected.

Several observers of Jefferson's standing have traced the steps in his decline; they agree on the considerable contemporary sullying of Jefferson's image and acknowledge that “most recent scholarship on Jefferson … is skeptical and, indeed, often critical.”⁷ Treatments continue to vary somewhat, as reflected, for example, in Joseph Ellis's American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Pauline Maier's American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence,⁸ and Conor Cruise O'Brien's The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800,⁹ but the hagiographic treatment of Jefferson is now long gone. Even quite sympathetic contemporary considerations on Jefferson—as in Ellis's American Sphinx—are far from uncritical.

A crucial step in the decline of Jefferson's reputation came in Leonard Levy's Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side (1963).¹⁰ Indeed, Gordon Wood judges this work to be the most important opening modern salvo on Jefferson.¹¹ Levy's approach was not to indulge in nasty gossip about Jefferson. Instead, he relentlessly probed Jefferson's supposedly sterling record on civil liberties and civil rights, especially during his ill-fated presidency. When Levy was finished, he left no heroic Jefferson in his wake. While there have been other views, even recent ones, that are more appreciative of Jefferson's “statecraft” and more sympathetic about his circumstances, they cannot escape Levy's shadow.¹² Levy's open challenge of the author of the Declaration of Independence on his actual record of devotion to liberty left a lasting mark on Jefferson's image.

The 1992 conference, “Jeffersonian Legacies,” at Jefferson's University of Virginia crystallized many of the contemporary disputes over Jefferson. In this setting, Jefferson was the object both of warm praise, and of scathing attacks that left no doubt that while “the Jeffersonian image is safely enshrined in the national memory,”¹³ it is regarded by many scholars and intellectuals as hopelessly sullied.¹⁴

The critiques take almost an infinite number of directions. The most frequent ones fault Jefferson as a racist slaveholder. They sternly object to the Jefferson who so often has been celebrated as the herald of American liberty. They see a Jefferson who did oppose slavery in principle, but who always had slaves and depended on them, who held African Americans to be inferior to whites in many ways, and who freed only a handful of his slaves in his will.¹⁵ On this subject the atmosphere is now pretty heated. Historian Paul Finkelman, for instance, castigates Jefferson as an appalling hypocrite on slavery whose convenient perfidy in practice to the antislavery cause he claimed to support was shown in his life. For Jefferson, “the time was never right” to make serious change.¹⁶ Rogers Smith articulates a current orthodoxy when he also brands Jefferson a hypocrite who lived off slave labor, while piously affirming that slavery would and should end someday.¹⁷

Jefferson's views and practices toward women and Native Americans provide other opportunities for critical judgments about a freedom lover who in fact was not open to a really pluralist society.¹⁸ Smith insists that signs of Jeffersonian concern with Indians are phony. They were merely a part of Jefferson's effort to defend everything American against Europe.¹⁹ Historian Pauline Maier points to Jefferson's dismissal of women as potential citizens and what she considers his equally bad record regarding Native Americans.²⁰

Jefferson's sexual behavior also falls under a harsh light. This sphere is, of course, a longtime critics' delight, since the identical charges of today circulated two hundred years ago in Jefferson's time. Critics suspect or simply assert that Jefferson abused his role as master, had sexual relations with some of his slaves, and thereby produced a number of children. Jefferson's denials often get little hearing here, just as do his claims of innocence of liaisons when he was Ambassador to Paris. Fawn Brodie's monument to speculation about Jefferson's sexual behavior, properly entitled Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, is the most famous example in point.²¹ Her salacious treatment of the sexual Jefferson metamorphoses into a more temperate and less speculative form in Annette Gordon-Reed's recent Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy.²² Neither studies burnish Jefferson's image.

These kinds of discussions now regularly meld into broader discussions of Jefferson's psychology, which are often less than flattering. Fawn Brodie's portrayal of Jefferson as weak and dishonest is a notorious example. But it is now routine to suggest that Jefferson was not psychologically whole and to offer, as perfectly serious analyses of Jefferson's life, claims that the young, revolutionary Jefferson was a child in revolt against—whom else?—his mother. Even students sympathetic to Jefferson can be less than helpful when they suggest that Jefferson was at least sincere in all he did, which in less friendly hands means he was incapable of coming to terms psychologically with the contradictions between his life and his values.²³

Some of the contemporary work on Jefferson concentrates on specialized scholarly analysis of aspects of his career, bypassing most of the more spectacular controversies—or at least not making them their centerpiece. These studies often make a serious contribution to a portion of the Jefferson story, for example, William Howard Adams in his Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson²⁴ and W. S. Randall in his Thomas Jefferson: A Life.²⁵ Other voices expend more effort trying to prop up the image of a fallen Jefferson. The most explicit work devoted to this cause is Thomas G. West's Vindicating the Founders. West and others argue that Jefferson believed all people had natural rights, including African Americans and Native Americans; they note Jefferson's consistent opposition to and “eloquent denunciations of slavery,”²⁶ and argue that Jefferson “refused to flinch before the stark contradiction between slavery” and his own values;²⁷ they recount Jefferson's faith in progress and therefore the future end of slavery in the United States; and they report his complex and active career that involved so many other good causes that should not now be forgotten.²⁸

Another theme of Jefferson's defenders is the folly of the presentism that they judge infects much Jefferson criticism. They do not share the idea that it makes sense to apply moral standards of today to the past—for example, regarding the evil of association with slavery under any circumstances and for any reason. They pose the question: How can Jefferson be judged by our times and terms? The gap between his age and ours, they maintain, is simply too vast.²⁹

Nor do defenders have much enthusiasm for what they often regard as an arrogant moralistic judgment of Jefferson that ignores the dilemmas of a real life, where it is easily conceivable that one may fall into traps not so different from Jefferson's when he found himself dependent on the slavery he opposed.³⁰ Some propose a Jefferson whose ambivalence and complexities (for example, Jefferson as “grieving optimist”) make him more attractive than appalling and, in a manner, appropriate for our ambivalent and ironic contemporary age.³¹ Still others deny the specific charges that float through the modern literature on Jefferson, such as the claim that he was a sexual libertine, whether in Paris or Monticello.³²

Joseph Ellis, who is himself ambivalent about Jefferson in a number of ways, offers a different approach. In his psychological analysis he denies that Jefferson was a hypocrite. Jefferson, Ellis argues, allowed his personal optimism and idealism to blur the complexities and contradictions in his life. Ellis suggests this tendency was reinforced by Jefferson's desire to live a kind of courteous, genteel, and conflict-free existence both in his psyche and in his relations with others. This psychological orientation had its costs, Ellis agrees, but making Jefferson a self-conscious hypocrite was not one of them.³³

2. THE FALLEN PHILOSOPHER

Few would approach Jefferson's political thought today without a sense of Jefferson's standing in the contemporary world of interpretation. To grasp Jefferson's ideas, one must understand how others perceive him. Michael Zuckert is unusual in that he wants to approach Jefferson—and believes one can understand Jefferson—largely apart from such a discussion. The more vulgar and the more controversial historical disputes about Jefferson apparently do not interest him and, he implies, do not have much of anything to teach us about Jefferson and his thought.

Perhaps this is correct, but I do not think Jefferson can be taken seriously as a political philosopher in anything but the broadest possible conception of philosophy. Jefferson's thought had its greatest importance in the effects of such public documents as the Declaration of Independence but it does not merit—nor would Jefferson want it to receive—much serious philosophical attention, examination, or analysis.³⁴ Jefferson was no philosopher even by the definition during his time, despite a sometime but puzzling inclination of some of his admirers to describe him as such.³⁵

The significance of this observation needs emphasis in any discussion of Jefferson and his political ideas. Jefferson himself, it must be noted, was always clear that he wanted nothing to do with elaborate philosophical systems or theoretical analyses.³⁶ He was definitely among those who “distrusted the builders of complicated systems of thought and the glorifiers of abstractions,”³⁷ and he displayed little interest in the self-consciously philosophical side of the Enlightenment.³⁸ In good part this is why he could fairly boast that “I never submitted … my opinions to the creed of any party … whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or anything else.”³⁹ In his mind, what Jefferson called his “whole system” of thought did not for a minute involve “a new philosophic conception,” and with good reason.⁴⁰

Some interpreters read Jefferson as a experientialist and thus not critical of the overly philosophical, schematic, or abstract. This was the fate of Plato, Jefferson's frequent target.⁴¹ Others describe Jefferson's outlook as more “visionary” than experiential, but the conclusion regarding Jefferson's claim to be any kind of a philosopher is the same.⁴² Thus it is not clear what value there is in approaching Jefferson's political ideas in a philosophical mode.

Zuckert's views of the nonsystematic, nonphilosophical Jefferson are rare, but one at least exists. It is evidenced in Zuckert's consideration of the origin of Jefferson's ideas. Zuckert understands that here, Jefferson was highly eclectic and “combined thoughts from various and often heterogeneous sources.” Indeed, Zuckert joins the lively current debate over which thinkers and traditions had the greatest influence on Jefferson: the Whig tradition of England with its uneasiness regarding government authority, the John Locke so recognizable in the Declaration of Independence the Scottish Enlightenment, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Jefferson's own romantic dreams of a utopian society, or an even broader mix whose proportions are now lost forever.⁴³

While there is little doubt about the eclectic and diverse range of sources for Jefferson's ideas, it does not follow, of course, that Jefferson's thought was either “very confused or very eclectic.” Zuckert certainly warns us away from such a conclusion. He insists this view is quite wrong and argues that it stems from misunderstandings about how to read Jefferson. According to Zuckert, we must read Jefferson's writings with close attention to whom they were written, that is, their intended audience. Once one understands this, then it is possible to unlock the meaning of Jefferson's thought and appreciate its fundamental consistency.⁴⁴ At one level this injunction is merely common sense. At another level, it solves little because it forces the texts to disappear into the interpreter's understanding of Jefferson's purpose in writing to different audiences. It does not make the text sovereign at all; it places a speculative interpreter in the role of sovereign.

From some perspectives, there may be no escape from this act of interpretation, but it should induce caution about confidence that one can somehow find the “true” Jeffersonian political ideas by steadily factoring in his intended audience.⁴⁵ In fact, this method works only if one is already quite confident of some essential Jefferson. As I shall argue, while Jefferson's political ideas do not deserve dismissal as a mishmash, they hardly constitute a tight, consistent philosophy that somehow a correct reading of Jefferson, his texts, and their audiences can reveal.

3. “THE NATURAL RIGHTS REPUBLIC” AND THE DOMESTICATED JEFFERSON

While Jefferson may not have been or wanted to be a philosopher, he certainly had plenty of political ideas, drawn from a number of sources. His ideas did amount to a discernible political outlook whose main elements have rarely been in significant dispute. Much more controversial is the priority that Jefferson gave to each of the elements in his political perspective. Michael Zuckert's argument is that Jefferson was a proponent of a “natural rights republicanism,” a creative political view in which Jefferson's famous affection for decentralized local government was a prominent feature.⁴⁶

This formulation is plausible as a description of Jefferson's overall political inclinations, though there are others. And it is important to make clear, as Zuckert does, that the term “natural rights republican,” while the most felicitous way to express Jefferson's allegiance, can mislead. Jefferson's first loyalty was to natural rights, as revealed, Zuckert points out, in Jefferson's own choice of a legacy: the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute for religious freedom. Yet the republican side was also vital for Jefferson, since “no American was more committed to republicanism than Jefferson.”⁴⁷

Far more controversial are the claims advanced by Professor Zuckert that Jefferson's views are a unique contribution and that “Jefferson pondered republicanism more seriously than any other American of his age.”⁴⁸ One may agree that Jefferson was no classical republican in some fifth century bce sense. In fact, Jefferson did not focus on the classical political world, though he loved aspects of its architecture, arts, and literature. Monticello itself testifies to his affection for aspects of the classical Roman and Greek worlds.⁴⁹ Yet, as Zuckert asserts, this did not mean Jefferson was especially interested in classical political philosophies or forms.⁵⁰

This matter aside, however, there is scant discussion by Jefferson of republicanism and even less that is somehow a special contribution. Much of what Jefferson says on the subject is clearly hortatory and nothing more.⁵¹ Much suggests Jefferson's affection for a more democratic and egalitarian republicanism than Zuckert describes. Thus, it is just at this point that the natural rights republican understanding of Jefferson becomes problematic. It drastically domesticates or conservatizes Jefferson, tearing away what many others discern as Jefferson's radical and communitarian democratic program.

Zuckert's view here contrasts with the interpretation of Gordon Wood, the leading contemporary historian of the revolutionary and founding era. Gordon places great emphasis on the radical democratic and communitarian elements of the American Revolution, and he portrays Jefferson as a major voice for these views.⁵² Zuckert disagrees, challenging Wood's claim that American republicanism was highly communitarian. Zuckert's understanding of Jeffersonian republicanism concentrates on political community, but not on a broader and more intense societal community as well.⁵³

The basic issue is how much Zuckert is willing to acknowledge Jefferson's deep commitment to pervasive community as well as Jefferson's affinity for a high degree of direct democracy. Although Zuckert does not acknowledge this Jefferson, many others do.⁵⁴ Zuckert bases his case primarily on the Declaration of Independence and interprets it to show scant commitment by Jefferson to democracy or radically equal political power.⁵⁵ For Zuckert the Declaration of Independence “yields up an essentially Lockean teaching,” which affirms natural rights, but not any radical or community-oriented society.⁵⁶

For Jefferson, however, popular participation, rule, and control were essential to a proper outlook—“his commitment to democratic politics was firm and enduring”⁵⁷—and this is why Jefferson supported a host of strongly democratic ideas and measures to ensure that government was as close to the people as possible, including public election of judges, a free press, and annual terms for officeholders. The list is long, but its existence is crucial. It is the practical evidence (something that matters to Jefferson) of his commitment to a radical democracy.⁵⁸

Yes, Jefferson recognized the dangers posed by a corrupted human nature, whether the corruption came from Europe or from bad leaders. But far more than most of Jefferson's fellow “republicans,” Jefferson was a democrat. He did indeed have an authentic “faith in the people.”⁵⁹ He rarely doubted that “the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army.”⁶⁰ Jefferson meant it when he said, “I consider the people who constitute a society or nation as the source of all authority in the nation,” and he was absolutely confident that “no government can continue good but under the control of the people.”⁶¹ Gordon Wood best defends the spirit of Jefferson, despite Jefferson's warts, by observing that Jefferson above all championed democratic commitment to the people. Wood contrasts Jefferson with Madison, who lacked this commitment, and Wood concludes that this “is why we remember Jefferson, and not Madison.”⁶²

4. JEFFERSON AND NATURAL RIGHTS

Jefferson's profound interest in nature is justly famous. His breadth of interest ranged from human nature to nature in the wild or in the gardens on his plantation. Jefferson's fascination with nature was more empirical than romantic. His careful, descriptive garden books, rather than any romantic poetry of nature, characterize his interest.⁶³ Jefferson strove to understand nature rationally and to organize and classify it.⁶⁴ This enterprise was a life-long journey for Jefferson. In its course, he was often able to distinguish the conventional and the natural so that nature was not simply reducible to his prejudices.

Perhaps this ability was present when Jefferson argued that there was no right to property in nature.⁶⁵ At other junctures, like many other celebrants of “nature,” Jefferson constructed a nature that embodied his values and employed it as a force against much in his own society—and many other societies—that he disliked. He was, for example, especially fond of aligning the “natural” human mind and its “natural” development with his preferences in this pleasant, self-justifying manner.⁶⁶

Obviously, in the context of his political thought, the topic of Jefferson and nature quickly leads us to Jefferson's doctrine of natural rights, which, as has long been clear, follows John Locke. Indeed, over the course of his long career, Jefferson repeatedly identified Locke as his most highly recommended political theorist, and he followed his own advice with that part of his political thought that addressed natural rights.⁶⁷

In his discussions of Jefferson and nature, Zuckert makes the case that Jefferson had a fairly complex understanding of nature and its connection with rights. Once again, Zuckert relies on Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and also on his most thoughtful, sustained piece of writing, Notes on the State of Virginia, to make his argument. While Professor Zuckert's view is hardly self-evident, it shows how much a skilled analyst can get from the works of the only faintly politically philosophical Jefferson.

In particular Zuckert contends that Jefferson's rather complex understanding of nature had little to do with simple-minded worship of nature. Jefferson conceived of nature as deeply intertwined with issues of security as well as with truth and rights. Jefferson's nature offered great security in one sense, but it could also threaten human security, and thus was no unqualified good in Jefferson's vision. After all, the argument goes, Jefferson realized that the natural passions of human beings could be dangerously selfish. While he was no skeptic of people to the degree that James Madison was, he knew about excessive human selfishness.

Yet nature also could and did assist people to overcome this unfortunate side of itself, according to Zuckert, by helping them create a secure world within the context of the natural. The key instrument was the acknowledgment and enforcement of another and good part of nature: natural rights, so dramatically affirmed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.⁶⁸ Thus, natural rights were not only true for Jefferson but were essential for the realization of nature at its best. One might suggest that this is why, from the beginning to the end of his life, Jefferson insisted that “nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.”⁶⁹

While skeptics may well wonder if this Jefferson on nature does not sometimes confuse Thomas Jefferson with Thomas Hobbes, Zuckert's consideration of Jefferson and natural rights does slay several dragons whose death should not be mourned. Thus, Zuckert deals firmly with the bizarre analysis of Morton White that Jefferson's Declaration of Independence must be understood within the framework of the obscure European theorist Jacques Burlamaqui.⁷⁰ As Zuckert observes, there simply is no evidence for this supposition.⁷¹ Zuckert shows an equal disinterest in Garry Wills's determined effort to make Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence an expression of the Scottish Enlightenment.⁷² Much of Zuckert's objection to Wills's reading of Jefferson proceeds from his correct suspicion that Wills wants to promote a radically egalitarian Jefferson, which, as we know, Zuckert decidedly does not.⁷³

Zuckert, however, offers his own controversial interpretations of Jefferson and natural rights. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” for example, might seem to be a straightforward proclamation of the fundamental and universal truth of the natural rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence but Zuckert's reading is quite different. He argues that this phrase means “truths” understood as what is appropriate within the practice of a given society. “We” becomes the key word, and it means the “we” of each particular culture. This interpretation fits nicely with Professor Zuckert's broader objective of domesticating Jefferson and stripping his doctrine of natural rights of its radical, universal edge. The problem in my view is that this edge is exactly what Jefferson sought and meant regarding his natural rights. They applied to any and every society and were universal truths, which is why Jefferson supported natural rights so strongly.⁷⁴ Any other view of his position would have stunned him.

Zuckert also argues that there is nothing “self-evident” about Jefferson's natural rights and that he did not mean there to be. After all, if natural rights are not actually universal but conceived in terms of a given culture's understanding, they can hardly be self-evident in some universal sense. Thus “the language, the logic, and the historic connections of the Declaration all point to the same conclusion: the truths announced in the Declaration are not self-evident, nor are they pronounced to be.”⁷⁵ Once again, the problem is that Jefferson in the Declaration does not agree. Jefferson did not want his truths domesticated; he self-consciously proclaimed that they are “self-evident” to all humankind.

Jefferson can be fuzzy about rights. He sometimes speaks of group, or institutional, or—in the instance of his draft of the Kentucky Resolution—of states' rights as often as he asserts the existence of individual natural rights. The particular rights vary and so does his answer to whether all people have rights in theory (only the living?) or in practice (all people or just male farmers?). One way to resolve these conundrums is to suggest that Jefferson's thought about rights was always in process; another way is to suggest that Jefferson's views on rights pitched according to personal and political swells as does any ship.⁷⁶

One of the best sides of Zuckert's Jefferson lies in his recognition that Jefferson had little spiritual or religious dimension to his conception of nature or natural rights (or anything else, for that matter).⁷⁷ This perspective is finally gaining hegemony, despite the efforts of some analysts and, more recently, of particular political activists somehow to transform all the founders into exemplars of Christian piety. In Jefferson's case the issue is not whether he was a Christian (he was not), but whether he was spiritual in any recognizable manner (he was not). Despite some efforts to find a different Jefferson, the truth is that he was tone deaf to the spiritual in life. Jefferson claimed his natural rights position was “supported by faith in a benevolent God whose design had made the claims of individual men harmonious.”⁷⁸ But Jefferson's commitment to such a view was at best perfunctory.

Zuckert is anxious to separate rights and religion in American history and especially at the founding. He cites his fellow neo-Straussian Thomas Pangle as an authority and insists that “rights are a terrible stumbling block” for interpreters who want rights and religion to be firmly connected in the American story from the beginning. There was plenty of religion on the Mayflower and in the soul of John Winthrop, but there was no talk of rights there. The Pilgrims' famous original contract was between the people and God and not, like Jefferson's, among the citizens themselves.⁷⁹ The point here is that natural rights in the American colonial experience, for the founders and especially Jefferson, had little central connection with religion (and, implicitly, needed little connection).

This does not mean that Jefferson had no use for religion. According to Zuckert, Jefferson used religion in a Tocquevillian manner, that is, religion was vital as a restraint on liberty in order to preserve liberty. Perhaps there is a case to be made for a strain of Jeffersonian religion conceived for this purpose, yet he and Tocqueville are far apart here. Tocqueville did see religion in largely utilitarian terms. But because its social stabilizing role was important, he thought religion was absolutely central for U.S. society, a conviction Jefferson did not share.⁸⁰

One major problem for all the efforts to grasp Jefferson as a natural rights thinker is that he was so highly eclectic in his political argument and justification. Certainly Jefferson made plenty of appeals to natural rights, as he also made abundant appeals to other bases for values, such as his radical democratic ethos. Moreover, Jefferson appealed to natural rights at least as often for their pragmatic advantages as for a deontological moral grounding. Indeed, his usual theme regarding natural rights was praise of their value due to the social and human benefits of their invocation.⁸¹

It is not really clear that Jefferson cared much about natural rights, except as a lever to promote his understanding of the good society. This is evident in all the famous Jefferson proclamations, and it casts doubt on the validity of dressing Jefferson largely in natural rights clothes. For instance, consider his Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, first proposed in 1777 and adopted by Virginia in 1786, an act which meant the world to Jefferson. It defended religious freedom, but the question is why. The act defends religious liberty because of its social benefits: helping truth triumph, lowering the cost of government (regulating religions), and the like. The heart of his argument is utilitarian.⁸²

This is exactly why Jefferson has so much to say about education—much more than he does about natural rights. As is well understood, Jefferson thought education was the way to achieve the social advancement and general happiness (as he understood both) that he as a kind of nonphilosophical utilitarian so sincerely sought. Natural rights were not the issue. Education was needed, Jefferson fondly believed, because it could make such a difference in the practical terms that moved him.⁸³

5. THE PRAGMATIC JEFFERSON

Despite his grand declarations of principle, Jefferson was quite often more a pragmatist as a thinker and as a politician than anything else. This is a Jefferson that merits emphasis. Jefferson engaged in a lifetime of political maneuvering and manipulation, and he was often quite successful in these activities. This Jefferson does provide evidence for Zuckert's view that the Jeffersonian audience must be understood before Jefferson's arguments are taken too seriously on their own terms. Thus, Jefferson's strenuous critiques of the Alien and Sedition Acts mostly took the form of complaints that they violated the Constitution, not natural rights. Jefferson made this argument recognizing its pragmatic and broader appeal. It certainly was no monument to his consistency, given his long-term skepticism of constitutions, including that of the United States.⁸⁴

Jefferson's pragmatic disposition was, in fact, integral to his political thought. He was also a pragmatist in other areas of his life. This was most famously—or notoriously—true in his self-conscious choice to own and live off slaves in denial of his natural rights philosophy. This situation painfully but fairly illustrates why one must look closely at Jefferson's life to grasp his basic thought.⁸⁵ Jefferson was also a self-conscious pragmatist of sorts in that he held that life experience was ultimately the basis for every individual's and every society's best development. Thus, what Jefferson actually offered in his political and social thought was no “new philosophic conception,” but rather an informal and experience-tested outlook, an approach that he thought inescapable.⁸⁶

In all this Jefferson of course affirmed the importance of empirical reason and the growth of science in good Enlightenment fashion. Empirical reason was his epistemology. Yet matters are more complicated here than they may at first appear. Zuckert rightly observes that Jefferson was not fully “the Enlightenment rationalist he is most often taken to be” and his epistemology cannot really be summed up as “pursuit of reason.”⁸⁷ For when it came to morality, it was “moral instinct,” as Jefferson put it, that was central to understanding of human beings and human life. It was hardly just another function or dimension of reason. Feelings and desires and intimations mattered greatly to Jefferson and his moral and political vision.⁸⁸

6. THE EPICUREAN JEFFERSON

Michael Zuckert perceives very well that nature was not the ground of all Jefferson's thought, though he does not think the pragmatic Jefferson was dominant either. He argues that for Jefferson nature “is not unequivocally the home of natural rights” and it cannot be, since Jefferson opts for civilization over a natural state of existence.⁸⁹ As Zuckert puts it, for Jefferson it is only in social life that people develop their natural rights fully and recognize and honor those rights in all that they have perceived in themselves from the start.⁹⁰

I want to argue, though, that all earnest discussion of Jefferson and natural rights, republicanism, and democracy speaks only to one, albeit central, side of Jefferson's outlook regarding politics and society. This dimension receives far too much discussion from politically-oriented intellectuals and has for a long time. It results in a much too political Jefferson, and it miscasts Jefferson as a political thinker above all else. There is another side to Jefferson, a dimension of equal or greater importance, and it is Jefferson's Epicureanism. “I too am an Epicurean,” Jefferson wrote.⁹¹ This Jefferson may not be ignored, and he matters enormously in terms of Jefferson's political thought.

Jefferson's Epicureanism included such “philosophical” positions as materialism and such personal attitudes as deep respect for those who achieved balance in their lives as well as a yearning for balance in his own life, in which he was, indeed, an Epicurean “grieving optimist.”⁹² Above all, though, Jefferson's Epicureanism was about how to live life. What Jefferson had in mind—and what he sometimes succeeded in practicing—were the lessons of Epicurus, the master, on the value of a good existence lived out of the public eye in the quiet of one's mental and spatial garden.⁹³ It was certainly what lay behind what an unfriendly voice terms his “obsessive concerns with privacy.”⁹⁴ This Jefferson did not focus on natural rights, pragmatism, republicanism, or democracy, though he supported and practiced each of them also.

The idea that Jefferson was an Epicurean in this sense obviously clashes with Jefferson's long and active political career. Although the Epicurean side has been neglected, it has attracted attention in some quarters, usually in the form of disapproval, such as pointing out Jefferson's “reclusive pattern of behavior.”⁹⁵ The truth is that the Epicurean Jefferson constantly sought relief from his political undertakings and returned to Monticello and his Epicurean garden again and again with the greatest joy. There is no denying that he was involved in politics and that he wanted to be, nor that he was a busy political thinker and that he wanted to be. But at the same time, Jefferson's Epicureanism showed in the many other activities that gave him intense pleasure and were important to him because they gave him that pleasure. Jefferson was just as multidimensional as most portraits describe him.⁹⁶ After all, there was Jefferson the bibliophile, architect, inventor, wine connoisseur, student of coins and coinages, European capitals, the gardens of England, walnut trees, and ploughs; expert in elevators, patents, and standards of weights and measures. The list knows no end.

This was a man for whom there were pleasures to be found everywhere in the natural and human worlds, and he reached out to enjoy a great many of them.⁹⁷ One of the most important expressions of this Jefferson was his devotion to friendship and to his friends, to whom he wrote innumerable letters. As with Epicurus in his garden, so for Jefferson his friends (often through the mail) were fundamental to his untiring pursuit of happiness. The pleasure was distinctly mutual, since Jefferson was “an engaging and considerate friend,” just as he wanted to be.⁹⁸

Looking at Jefferson as an Epicurean warns us away from too much stress on Jefferson as a political thinker—without denying this Jefferson either. It equally warns us away from expecting or believing we can encounter a Jefferson who was particularly philosophical. Jefferson was no professional political theorist or philosopher and had no interest in such roles. He was an Epicurean fascinated with innumerable aspects of life and the pleasures that he experienced with each. Politics, natural rights, education, republicanism, and all the rest were but the means to the Epicurean freedom required to pursue his (and others') chosen pleasures, desires, and life objectives. He called on these political values when he judged them helpful toward his Epicurean model, no more and no less.

Granted this Jefferson is not the only Jefferson. Far from it, though the Epicurean Jefferson's disposition was integral to the other Jeffersons. This understanding also leads us away from the idea that there is some “essential” Jefferson, which reduces all other dimensions of this fascinating figure to very little. The truth is that “the search for a single definitive, ‘real’ Jefferson is a fool's errand, a hopeless search.”⁹⁹

Such a view hardly denigrates Thomas Jefferson. It is not another effort to tear down the monuments to Jefferson. Rather, it is an attempt to help free Jefferson (and the Jeffersonian image) from the status of a monument—to be celebrated or attacked—and let him be what he was. Thomas Jefferson was an extraordinary but very real human being, in love with life and its endless dimensions, flawed as we all are, and always a restless, pragmatic, reflective, many-sided Epicurean.

Notes

1. Michael P. Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic: Studies in the Foundation of the American Political Tradition (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996).

2. Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Knopf, 1997).

3. Sanford Levinson, “They Whisper: Reflections on Flags, Monuments, and State Holidays, and the Construction of Social Meaning in a Multicultural Society,” Chicago Kent Law Review 70 (1995): 1079-1119.

4. Sanford Levinson, “Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies,” Duke University Law Review (1998): 82.

5. To a lesser extent, so has that of some other founders; see the discussion in Thomas G. West, Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997).

6. Scot A. French and Edward L. Ayers, “The Strange Career of Thomas Jefferson,” in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 418-56.

7. Jan Lewis and Peter S. Onuf, “American Synecdoche: Thomas Jefferson as Image, Icon, Character, and Self,” American Historical Review 103 (February 1988): 127. I thank my friend James Baughman for bringing this article to my attention.

8. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1997), introduction.

9. Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

10. Leonard Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).

11. Gordon S. Wood, “The Trials and Tribulations of Thomas Jefferson,” in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Onuf, 395-417.

12. Robert W. Tucker, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), or Forrest McDonald, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976).

13. Onuf, Jeffersonian Legacies, 23.

14. Ibid., prologue.

15. Some examples: Paul Finkelman, “Jefferson and Slavery,” in Onuf, Jeffersonian Legacies, chap. 6; John Chester Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: Free Press, 1977), chap. 7; O'Brien, The Long Affair.

16. Finkelman, “Jefferson and Slavery.”

17. Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 105 and chap. 7.

18. Ellis, American Sphinx, 200-202.

19. Smith, Civic Ideals, 110.

20. Maier, American Scripture, 193, 197.

21. Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: Bantam, 1974).

22. Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997).

23. This is the main defense, so to speak, offered by Ellis in American Sphinx.

24. William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

25. W. S. Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life (New York: Holt, 1993).

26. West, Vindicating, 175.

27. Ibid., 10.

28. Miller, Wolf by the Ears, 248, 122, and passim; West, Vindicating, 1-4, 30, and 72.

29. Ellis, American Sphinx, epilogue.

30. Ibid., 148-49.

31. Andrew Burstein, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995).

32. For example, see ibid., 93-97, and Miller, Wolf by the Ears, chaps. 20-21.

33. Ellis, American Sphinx, 86-89.

34. Some admirers reach this conclusion with apologies, but reach it firmly nonetheless. See, for example, James W. Ceasar's Reconstructing America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

35. Adrienne Koch, Jefferson and Madison: the Great Collaboration (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).

36. Karl Lehmann, Thomas Jefferson, American Humanist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), xii and 77.

37. Ibid., xii.

38. Ibid., 79.

39. Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789, in The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Edward Dumbauld (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), 46.

40. Daniel Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (Boston: Beacon, 1948), 237.

41. Ibid.; Lehmann, Thomas Jefferson, 83-84.

42. Ellis, American Sphinx, 275.

43. Some places to look: Lehmann, Thomas Jefferson, 73; Ellis, American Sphinx, 42-43 and 58-59; Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (New York: Doubleday, 1978).

44. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 87-89.

45. Of course, in this proposed methodology, as elsewhere, Zuckert's fidelity to neo-Straussian tenets is evident.

46. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, chap. 7.

47. Ibid., 211.

48. Ibid.

49. Lehmann, Thomas Jefferson, chap. 4.

50. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 212.

51. Consider, for example, Jefferson to Thomas Lomas, March 12, 1799, in Dumbauld, Political Writings, 78.

52. Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969) and The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1992).

53. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 21-22 and 204-209.

54. The most vigorous effort to argue this in a position diametrically opposed to Zuckert may be found in Richard K. Matthews, The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984).

55. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 16-20 and 29-30.

56. Ibid., 16.

57. Michael Lienesch, “Thomas Jefferson and the American Democratic Experience,” in Onuf, Jeffersonian Legacies, 318.

58. For example, ibid., 336; Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816, in Dumbauld, Political Writings, 51-53; Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, in ibid., 118; also see Dumbauld, Political Writings, 101.

59. Dumbauld, Political Writings, xxxv.

60. Jefferson to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787, in Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Wiley, 1944), 549-50.

61. “Cabinet Opinion,” in Dumbauld, Political Writings, 79; Jefferson to John Adams, December 10, 1819, in Dumbauld, Political Writings, 92.

62. Wood, “Trials and Tribulations,” 415.

63. Thomas Jefferson, The Garden and Farm Books, ed. Robert C. Baron (Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum, 1987).

64. Jefferson to Dr. John Manners, February 22, 1814, in Foner, Basic Writings, 726-29.

65. Matthews, Radical Politics, chap. 2.

66. Foner, Basic Writings, 675.

67. Jefferson to Bernard Moore, 1767, and to John Minor, August 1814, in ibid., 499-503.

68. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 69-70.

69. Jefferson to John Cartwright, June 5, 1824, in Dumbauld, Political Writings, 126.

70. See Morton White, The Philosophy of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

71. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 34-40.

72. Wills, Inventing America.

73. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 32-34.

74. Ibid., chap. 2.

75. Ibid., 49.

76. Stephen A. Conrad, “Putting Rights Talk in Its Place,” in Onuf, Jeffersonian Legacies, chap. 8; Dumbauld, Political Writings, 156-62; Koch, Jefferson and Madison, chap. 4.

77. Paul K. Conklin, “The Religious Pilgrimage of Thomas Jefferson,” in Onuf, Jeffersonian Legacies, 19-49.

78. Boorstin, Lost World, 245.

79. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 132-46.

80. For Zuckert's view, ibid., 201; for a thorough and sympathetic religious biography of Jefferson, see Edwin A. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996).

81. For example, see Thomas Jefferson, “Autobiography” 1821, in Foner, Basic Writings, 482.

82. Thomas Jefferson, “An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom,” in Thomas Jefferson: Selected Writings, ed. Harvey Mansfield, Jr. (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1979), 13-15.

83. Jefferson to George Wythe, August 13, 1786, in Foner, Basic Writings, 534-35; Jefferson to Pierre Dupont, April 24, 1816, in Dumbauld, Political Writings, 50.

84. Jefferson to John Taylor, November 26, 1798, in Dumbauld, Political Writings, 155; Jefferson to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804, in Foner, Basic Writings, 669-71.

85. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, chaps. 2 and 3; Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, chap. 13.

86. See, for example, Boorstin, Lost World.

87. The first quote is Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 66, and the second is from the title of Noble E. Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Ballantine, 1988).

88. For example, see Jefferson to Thomas Low, June 3, 1814, in Mansfield, Selected Writings, 79-81.

89. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 73.

90. Ibid., chap. 3 contains a full discussion of Zuckert's intriguing argument.

91. Jefferson to William Short, October 31, 1819, in Foner, Basic Writings, 764-66.

92. Lehmann, Thomas Jefferson, 141-42; Burstein, The Inner Jefferson.

93. Epicurus, Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964).

94. Lewis and Onuf, “American Synecdoche,” 133.

95. The quote is from Ellis, American Sphinx, 27; for another view, see Matthews, Radical Politics, 92.

96. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson.

97. Some relevant citations: Jefferson to George Watterson, May 7, 1815, in Foner, Basic Writings, 740-41; to John Taylor, December 29, 1794, Foner, 632-33; to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813, Foner, 708-14; to Dr. Robert Patterson, October 10, 1811, Foner, 694-701; “A Tour of Some of the Gardens of England 1786,” Foner, 281-85; “Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit and of a Coinage for the United States 1784,” Foner, 194-203; “Memoranda Taken on a Journey from Paris into the Southern Parts of France, and Northern Parts of Italy, in the Year 1787,” Foner, 240-81; “Memoranda on a Tour From Paris to Amsterdam, Strasbourg, and Back to Paris 1788,” Foner, 285-309; Dumas Malone, “Forward,” in Lehmann, Thomas Jefferson, vii-xiv.

98. Lewis and Onuf, “American Synecdoche,” 134.

99. Ibid., 132.