The American Mind; 6; Philosopher-President

www. Riconuzzle.com The American Mind, a series of programs concerned with the intellectual history of the American Republic. Conducting the series is Dr. Robert C. Whitmore, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University.

Program number six, Philosopher President. I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility to tyranny over the mind of man. The words are those of Thomas Jefferson, and it is fitting that they of all that he wrote should be inscribed in the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial for more than any other. They typify the thought of the man who is the greatest of the philosophers of democracy.

Every school child knows Thomas Jefferson as the third president of the United States, as the author of the Declaration of Independence, as the man who purchased the Louisiana Territory. Not so many are familiar with him as a philosopher, and yet it is in this, perhaps the most important of his roles, as far as posterity is concerned, that he commands the attention of anyone who would seek to know the American Mind. Jefferson was born in 1743 on the largest of his father's plantations, old Shadwell in Virginia. On both sides, the family were distinguished and well to do. They had sufficient land, and the young Thomas grew up surrounded by the wealth and living the life of a young man of society of the times.

He went to William & Mary College, and afterwards studied law with the famous Virginia jurist, George White. At 26 he went into the Virginia House of Burgesses, and soon he began to make a reputation for himself as a man who could write resolutions, speak well, and it was at this time that he wrote his summary view of the rights of British North America, which indirectly was to bring him to the attention of the men who were going to draft the Declaration of Independence. At this time also his father's house having burned down, he moved to Monticello, which was to be his home for the rest of his life, and which has become symbolic of Jefferson himself. However, we're not concerned so much with the politician, nor with his later career as a president, as we are with the philosophy of the man. And in order to understand his philosophy, you have to read his letters, because he didn't write any philosophic tones.

However, he did have a voluminous correspondence. He wrote, for instance, to John Adams. And one of his most famous letters to Adams, he says this. And in it, we have the epitome of his philosophy. To give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodine. I feel. Therefore, I exist. I feel bodies which are not myself. There are other existences then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion, where there is an absence of matter. I call it void or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind.

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothing's. To say that the human soul angels God or immaterial is to say that they are nothing's, or that there is no God, no angels and no soul. I cannot reason otherwise, but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by the locks, the traces, and the stewards. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism or mask atheism crept in? I do not exactly know, but a heresy it certainly is for Jesus taught nothing of it. Well, there you have, in a nutshell, the basis of the philosophy of Jefferson. It is, as you can see, a philosophy which is derived from European sources, from the traces, the stewards. And originally from the man who was the ancestor of all of them, from John Locke, the famous British philosopher. According to John Locke, the basis of all knowledge lies in sensation.

There is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses, says Locke. And therefore everything that we can learn must be compounded out of sensations and impressions. This is the view known as empiricism or sensationalism, and it is largely the view that prevails among those who have a scientific cast of mind, and who do not want to admit anything but what they experience. This is the sort of view that was taken up by the eminent Scottish philosopher, Dougal Stuart. Stuart was also a great influence on Jefferson. Stuart's interest was primarily in the mind itself. How does it operate? What he wanted to do was to analyze the structure of ideas, not in so far as they were anything metaphysical, but as so far as the physiology of them is concerned, how does man come to think?

How are his thoughts organized? Dougal Stuart was one of the first of our modern psychologist, and he was an empiricist all the way, stick to the facts, stick to observation. This is all that we need to know, and this is all that we can know. The third great influence on the development of Jefferson's philosophy was a man named Distrupt Ditresi, a Frenchman who wrote a book called Elements of Ideology. Ideology, as Ditresi saw it, was what he called a branch of zoology, and as the name implies, it was concerned with ideas, the genesis of ideas, following Dougal Stuart, and also following the French empiricist, philosophers Kondidak and Cabanas. Ditresi felt that the sole aim of philosophy should be to constitute itself a natural science. He wanted to do away with all metaphysics. He wanted to do away with all questions of value.

Philosophy is strictly a natural science. Ideology is something that observes, classifies, and catalogs. The human mind as a strictly material thing. Well, this then was the sort of philosophy. That is at the heart of Jefferson's way of looking at things. Jefferson himself was much interested in science. He was an experimenter. He was a man who was always interested in the concrete. They, ideas, didn't interest him very much. And so, many people have called him a materialist and have called him an atheist. And many people have decried his interest in science in the sense that he wants just the facts, and his lack of interest in the values of things. Of course, Jefferson did believe in the values of things. Here, he was a follower of Epicurus. Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, had argued that the prime duty of man is to be happy.

And man's happiness is a strictly material thing. He should seek pleasure, and he should avoid pain. Not simply in the crude sense of physical pleasure, but in the more refined sense of mental pleasure. Well, this too was for Jefferson the end and all of virtue. It was the sort of virtue that one might expect from a man who was primarily interested again in science, in observation, in ideas simply in the natural physiological sense. So, then, Jefferson is a materialist, understanding that word, however, in the broad sense. And if you don't understand it in this sense, then you won't understand anything further about Jefferson, because all of his ideas on politics, on religion, indeed on the very elements of political philosophy itself stem from this 18th century, empiricist, sensationalist doctrine of materialism.

It comes out very specifically in his ideas on religion. Jefferson, you know, has written quite a bit on religion, and many people who don't like Jefferson have often taken his religious ideas as being rather poorly said, something that they don't like to think a president or to say. Well, remembering now that the man is strictly concerned with the empirical this world, here is his advice to a young friend of his on the subject of religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty and singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand, shake off all the fears and servile prejudices which under weak minds are servile-couched.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness, even the existence of a God, because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason, then that a blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first the religion of your own country, read the Bible then as you would read Livy, or Tacitus. And so on and on it goes. As he says, those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature must be examined with care and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine on what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature. Next, you will read the New Testament.

Keep your eye on the opposite pretensions of those who say that Jesus was begotten by God or born of a virgin suspended in reverse the laws of nature it will and ascended bodily into heaven. And of those who say that he was a man of illegitimate birth of a benevolent heart in enthusiastic mind who set out without pretensions to divinity ended in believing them and was punished capital for sedition. And so therefore, as Jefferson goes on in his letter of advice to his young friend, only believe that which your reason tells you to be true. Do away then with all the talk of miracles, do away with all that comes as the result of the work of later writers. Jefferson himself as a exercise, redacted the whole of the New Testament to 46 pages of what he considered to be the basic teachings of Jesus. Just what Jesus himself said, this says Jefferson is what we really mean by Christianity. Christianity therefore is not to be associated with all the dogma and doctrine of institutional churches.

No, it's the teaching of Jesus himself. And if this be so, then Jefferson thinks it is legitimate to call oneself a Christian and he did so call himself and here is how he justified his use of the term. To the corruptions of Christianity, I am indeed opposed but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be, sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing to himself every human excellence and believing he never claimed any other. Well, that's what Jefferson thinks on the subject of religion. Is he an atheist? Not the way he sees it. Rather he is what he himself would call a deist. That is one who believes in the existence of a God as the creator and founder of this world, but one who also does not interfere with the process of natural law.

In the 18th century you know they were great on natural law and God was nature's God. And the universe is governed by natural law and natural law is found out through the course and operation of reason. And so therefore the God of a reasonable man will not be the God of theology, will not be the God of institutional religions but rather will be the God of the rational deist. And this should be the God of all men. So therefore Jefferson is not an atheist. Of course he's not an orthodox Christian in the sense in which we ordinarily understand that term either. But you must remember that by his lights he was a religious and a moral man. Of course the most important contribution of Jefferson to the American mind is his political philosophy. And here too we have to look back to European sources to see from whence this comes.

The great influence on Jefferson other than those we have mentioned is that of the French jurist and philosopher the Baron de Montesquieu. De Montesquieu's Le Sbreedelois was a classic and Jefferson imbibed it. According to Montesquieu all law is relative. That is to say the moral and juridical codes of any country are only fit for the time of that country. Jefferson expressed this in one of his own aphorisms. The living should be the guides of their own destiny. One should not be bound down to fixed forms of government or fixed laws. There are no such things as fixed laws. This of course is a rejection of the idea of divine law. Therefore in a republican form of government, in a democratic form of government we must recognize the relativity of all law.

We must of course also recognize that this is built on certain inalienable natural rights. But within this framework the living should legislate for the living and not for their indefinite posterity. This then was the idea that guided Jefferson when he came to draft the Declaration of Independence. There is a famous drawing of him doing this being advised by Ben Franklin by James Madison by John Adams and by James Monroe. And there is Jefferson sitting there taking their advice. Actually their advice was very limited. The work of drafting the Declaration of Independence was almost solely the work of Jefferson himself. And this is his great monument to political philosophy. Now if you are to understand this, first of all you must get behind the superficial aspect of it.

In the first place the Declaration of Independence is not at all a declaration of independence. The declaration was in fact the work of Richard Henry Lee in his resolution of independence. What we call the Declaration of Independence is rather a document designed to explain the reasons why this resolution of independence, which had been passed some days earlier, was actually taken effect. So then we have to keep that in mind. Secondly you want to keep in mind what the Declaration does not say. For instance nowhere in the Declaration of Independence do we find a reference to Parliament. And yet the colonists all through their formative period were interested in representation. They were interested in Parliament and taking part in Parliament. Nor do you find in the Declaration of Independence any discussion of the rights of British subjects.

And yet the colonists were certainly British subjects. Their whole plea no taxation without representation is based upon the idea that as British subjects they are entitled to representation in the British Parliament if they would be taxed. Yet the Declaration doesn't speak of these things at all. So when you read these famous words think not so much of what it says as to perhaps what it leaves out. And also when you think of these words think of the alterations that were made. This is the way Jefferson originally wrote it. If you will keep before your mind the way he originally wrote it and the way it finally got written down and passed, you will I think begin to see how there has been so much controversy and so much difficulty of interpretation on these matters. This is what Jefferson originally wrote.

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable that all men are created equal and independent. That from that equal creation they derive in rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these ends governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government. Now notice how that differs from the ordinary understanding of this. What narrowly as you perhaps have memorized this in school it goes we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. Now that may seem like a very small change but it really isn't because there's a difference between saying rights are sacred, which implies that they have some sort of a divine sanction and saying they are self-evident.

Because if you say they're self-evident well then somebody can come along and challenge this is for instance John C. Calhoun was going to do. And say it is not at all self-evident that are all men are created equal, they're not created equal in fact. Men differ. And of course this is one of the arguments that has been brought up against the Declaration. Also if we had regard to Jefferson's original phrase a great deal of trouble about these equal rights would have been avoided. Jefferson says from equal creation they derive rights inherent. Now notice the qualification there they derive rights they don't have them just by being born. They have to earn them they have the chance to become equal. In short there's a difference between being born equal and having equality of opportunity and that is a very big difference indeed. Or take again something later on that was omitted from the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson of course was a southerner. He was also a slave holder. And yet Jefferson disapproved very strongly of the institution of slavery and one of his basic objections to King George III was that King George III, a Christian ruler, had permitted the slave trade this is part of the Declaration that didn't get into the final draft. He speaking of George III now has waged cruel war against human nature itself violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery into another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical warfare the appropriate of infidel powers is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Now you'll notice how contemptuous he is there of the Christian King and of the Christianity that can permit slavery to exist.

Well it's not very much to be wondered at that a convention which consisted in large part of southerners who were themselves slave holders should have decided that this was just a little bit too much of a hot potato to leave in the Declaration of Independence. We can pay lip service to these generalities or as Rufus choked would later say these glittering generalities of the Declaration which are meaningless when brought down to concrete fact. But we slave holders don't want any word about slave holding in the Declaration and so the conventions struck it out. Well I want you to think about those things you see when you think about the Declaration not so much for what is in it. But what did they leave out what did they gloss over what didn't they mention.

For instance another thing that we have to take account of is Jefferson's attitude toward the rights of the individual and the states. One of his most famous documents was the Kentucky resolutions where any argued against the Hamiltonian idea that we must have a strong central government. Rather we must be careful to preserve the rights of the individual and the rights of the states. We must interpret the Constitution in a strict sense so that those things which are the concern of local government should be reserved to local government. Well here again we have the foundation of a century of controversy because all the way on down the history of slavery and on into our own time and the history of the problem of integration versus segregation you're going to hear over and over again the Declaration of Independence quoted at you. You're going to hear it interpreted you're going to hear it in relation to the Constitution and what do these things say.

Well the blunt fact to them out of is that sometimes they're pretty vague they don't really give us any clear cut answers. All men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights true. But what does that mean? You think about it towards the end of his life at the close of his autobiography. Jefferson asked himself this question. Is my country the better for my having lived at all? His answer is very simple. He lists some contributions he has made to the improvement of agriculture. He notes his work in Virginia for freedom of religion and civil rights. And then comes one striking phrase the Declaration of Independence. Was he too modest in assessing his contribution?

Well there again you must judge of that. In order that you may be helped to do so there are three books that I would like to recommend to you. The first of these is a book by Carl Becker called the Declaration of Independence. It's really the various texts and a very detailed analysis of it. And if you would understand this basic work then this is the book you must read. A second work which is very valuable for anyone who wants to know something more about the details of the European influences which made Jefferson the man he was and led him to write what he did is a book by Adrian Cush. It's called the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. It's fairly clearly written. It's not too involved and technical and I think you may get somewhat of a different slant on it if you look at Jefferson through its eyes.

Finally you must read something of the man himself. And so therefore I recommend to you the modern library edition of the life and writings of Thomas Jefferson by coach again and man named William P. These then are the books that you should read if you would know the man. And perhaps more than any other American. It is important that you do know the man because if you don't know Jefferson, you really have no basis for assessing the philosophy that is going to come at you throughout the 19th century. You will for instance have no basis to assess the philosophy of the man we are going to take up next week. The cast iron southerner John C. Calhoun. So if you would understand Calhoun and states rights, go back and read Jefferson. It will repay you to do so.

The American Mine, a series of programs concerned with the intellectual history of the American Republic, is conducted by Dr. Robert C. Whitmore, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University. The American Mine is a studio presentation of W-Y-E-S-T-B, New Orleans. This is National Educational Television. Thank you.