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Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia--Positions and Perspectives |
| "Reason is in the estimation of the
philosopher what grace is to the Christian. Grace determines the Christian’s action;
reason the philosopher’s.Other men are carried away by their passions, so that the
acts which they produce do not proceed from reflection (i.e., contemplation). These are
the men who move in darkness; while the philosopher, even in his passions, moves only
after reflection. He marches at night, but a torch goes on ahead. The philosopher forms
his principles (beliefs) upon an infinity of individual observations. [Other] people adopt
the principle without a thought of the observations which have produced it, believing that
the maxim (truth) exists, so to speak, of itself; but the philosopher takes the maxim at
its source, he examines its origin, he knows its real value, and only makes use of it, if
it seems to him satisfactory. " --The Philosophe, Denis Diderot Jefferson as Philosophe, Enlightenment Rationalist Jefferson's Notes answers the queries of Mssr. Marbou by mustering empirical data and observations--charts, measurements, maps, firsthand descriptions, etc. He refutes Buffon's charge that the New World is weaker and less developed by including information regarding a mastodon's skeleton, comparative species charts of Old and New World, and a discussion of Indian life and culture, including the oratory of Chief Logan. Jefferson also holds a high faith in reason (as opposed to religious faith) as a method of assessing truth. He looks to the diversification and disestablishment of religion as positive goods because they dilute zealots and bring more focus to the rational as the test of what is actual--"the best way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them." According to Richard Hooker, the philosophes were defined by three dominant ideals. :
[Click here for a more complete discussion of this.] Questions:
Jefferson as Racial Idealist and Bigot Jefferson has very different notions of Native Americans and Africans. he praises the former as naturally virtuous, concerned with moral matters, skilled in their environment, and rhetorically moving. Biological differences from Europeans are slight and unimportant. While Jefferson disapproves of slavery, his stance toward Africans is far more troubling. He sees them as less beautiful, having less reason and memory, perhaps even inferior in their bodies. He discounts Phillis Wheatley as a non-poet and Ignatius Sancho as wild and without style. His answer to slavery is deportation as a protection against miscegenation. Question: Why do you think Jefferson comes to such two different perspectives on two different races? What does each view reveal about Jefferson's concerns, prejudices, even ideals? Jefferson as Agrarian Republican "The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind." "On this view of the import of the term
republic, instead of saying, as has been said, "that it may mean anything or
nothing," we may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less
republican as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in
their composition; and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest
depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies
of the people, are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a
friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this
ingredient." Jefferson's query on manufacture stresses farming as leading to virtue. He calls farmers "the chosen people of God." He wishes to see workshops stay in Europe and stresses government by the people and depreciation of paper money as concerns. His constitutional history of Virginia stresses the injustices of the past such as James I's reworking of the state charter, Parliament's control over foreign trade in the 1650's, but especially George III's wrongs and the righteousness of the 1776 Revolution as resistance to tyranny. Questions:
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