Authors
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Bibliography
Biography
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Questions for Discussion and Writing
Jefferson compares to Franklin and Edwards in being an intellectual adventurer, interested in many fields of study and willing to trust reason, direct observation, and logic, rather than prevailing opinions and conventions. He was a slaveholder who drafted one of the fundamental affirmations of human rights, the Declaration of Independence; he was an aristocrat who took enormous risks with his social standing and personal fortune; and he was a key figure in the theory and practice of American higher education, helping to begin a revolution there which continues to this day. The NAAL selections give us a sense of Jefferson's range and contradictions.
1. Jefferson's Autobiography offers us two versions of the Declaration of Independence--the draft that Jefferson presented to the Continental Congress, and the final version that was published and sent to King George III. We have, therefore, a wonderful opportunity to see a founding document undergo substantial revision and to speculate on the political and moral motives and rhetorical tastes which caused these changes to be made. In the draft, look at the long deleted paragraph beginning "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself" and at the deleted excerpt toward the end of the document, beginning "At this very time too, they are permitting their chief magistrate . . ." Why exclude these passages? Who is the implicit audience? Are there differences between the rhetoric of these deleted passages and the general tone and style of the final document? Do you see any relationship between the values implicit in these revisions and the values that a modern writer might have in mind as he or she revises prose?
2. In Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Jefferson offers a long commentary on Native American peoples, apparently based on direct encounters and on consultation of published authorities. These are among the most detailed and dispassionate observations offered at that time or before, but Jefferson was writing several generations before the development of systematic anthropology. What dubious generalizations does he work from or arrive at? Where do his own cultural values and paradigms show themselves in his descriptions?
3. In Jefferson's Letter to Peter Carr (1787), the founder of the University of Virginia, the first public secular university established by an American state, offers his views on what sort of education a young gentleman should pursue. What assumptions does Jefferson make about the life ahead of Carr and the kind of identity that should be nurtured? Does Jefferson think of "education" as utilitarian and pragmatic? As spiritual in any sense? What does Jefferson mean when he says, "State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules." Where do you see this kind of thinking reflected in other American writers whom you have encountered?