Confidence in the people, writes C.E. Merriam, Jr., in a 1902 paper on Jefferson’s political thinking, was the “distinguishing characteristic in the theory of Jeffersonian democracy.” What Jefferson wrote on republican governing “was notable … [more] because of its rhetoric than because of its scientific depth or clearness.” Jefferson offered nothing new, did not penetrate deeply into political theory, and was not a systematic writer. “Jefferson falls far short of the stature of a great political philosopher.”
Ari Helo in Thomas Jefferson’s Ethics and the Politics of Human Progress quite recently argues that Jeffersonian republicanism could not have been a political philosophy because Jefferson was a politician and not a philosopher—“he refused to be a philosopher for moral reasons” (hmm, is not a moralist a philosopher?)—and he never aimed at a consistent theory, but only on “keeping ethical discourse alive” with his “ethically charged Lockean [political] leanings.” Jefferson, while he did adopt “various extra-historical assumptions” like a philosopher, chose to live in “an ongoing history.”
The verdicts of Merriam and Helo are today still the received view. Most historians believe that Jefferson was a real politician, who hungered for power (e.g., Jon Meacham) and only pretended in numerous letters to execrate politics. Jefferson was a praktiker, not an ideologue.
Yet are the two mutually exclusive? Cannot an ideologue also be a praktiker if the scheme dreamt is practicable?
Yet, pace Helo, Jefferson was first a philosopher and then a politician and that he had, pace Merriam, a consistent and relatively rich and robust political philosophy—one more nuanced than Merriam acknowledges.
What is a political philosophy?
Whereas, following Aristotle (384–322 BC), ethics (ethikē technē) aims to answer the question of the good of each human being, political science (politikē technē) essays to answer the question of the good of each type of polity. For Aristotle, the “science” of ethics is subordinate to and subsumable under political science in one sense and its sister science in another. He lists and defines political science and ethics and asserts that both are branches of political science. In sum:
POLITICAL SCIENCE: the science of political entities and the science of humans.
1) Political Science: the science of the good or proper end (telos) of government (whether government by one, few, or many).
2) Ethical Science: the science of the good or proper end (telos) of humans.
Aristotle’s view that polities can be broken into governments of one (monarchies), few (oligarchies; oligos=df “few), and many (polities; Aristotle reserves “democracy” as a degenerate polity), was generally accepted in Jefferson’s day; so too was his critique on good and bad governments (e.g., Montesquieu).
Nonetheless, Jefferson consistently noted that Aristotle was obsolete, or mostly so, as he and Plato tended to think of political liberty (Gr., eleutheria) as something bad, as it would lead to anarchy, and he flatly claimed that when a government got too large (say, 200,000 persons), it would naturally degenerate. The notion of elected governmental representatives in large polities never occurred to them. Jefferson writes to Isaac Tiffany (6 Aug. 1816) and here he has Aristotle in mind:
so different was the style of society then, and with those people, from what it is now and with us, that I think little edification can be obtained from their writings on the subject of government. They had just ideas of the value of personal liberty, but none at all of the structure of government best calculated to preserve it. They knew no medium between a democracy (the only pure republic, but impracticable beyond the limits of a town) and an abandonment of themselves to an aristocracy, or a tyranny independent of the people. It seems not to have occurred that where the citizens cannot meet to transact their business in person, they alone have the right to choose the agents who shall transact it; and that in this way a republican, or popular government, of the second grade of purity, may be exercised over any extent of country. The full experiment of a government democratical, but representative, was and is still reserved for us.
Another disagreement, or difference, was that Aristotle’s cosmos was static; Jefferson’s progressive. For Aristotle, people were (roughly) constitutionally the same, though environmental (e.g., climate) and cultural differences, and the two were not causally independent, made for differences of habit and of moral excellence or its lack. For Jefferson, knowledge was advancing and thus, so too were the varied sciences, politics and ethics among them. Hence, Aristotle’s political views were more of historical significance than of practical significance. Aristotle did not grasp fully the centrality of “liberty” and “equality” in his political discourse, as did Jefferson in his Declaration. Aristotle once said, “To treat unequals as equals is to treat them unequally.”
Yet Jefferson, like Aristotle, did believe in the subject of political science—a sort of ethics applicable to political institutions. It (1) tells us what government is, (2) why government is important, (3) offers a description and comparative analysis of various types of governments (past and present), (4) works from such comparative analyses to views of utopias as well as assessments of their realization, (5) gives normative assessment of the relationships of citizens to each other and to their government in various types of government, and (6) critically assesses such subjects as freedom, equality, placement of power, number of persons governing in a government, citizens’ rights, the justness of war and revolution, how a society ideally ought to be constructed, inter alia. And so, to assert that Jefferson was no political philosopher is to assert that he never thought systemically about or never offered crisp, consistent answers to the sorts of questions that political philosophers address. That is demonstrably false. He did give “republicanism,” which he tackles formally first in his Declaration.
In 1787, Jefferson discusses in letters to Edward Carrington (Jan. 16) and James Madison (Jan. 30) the effects perceived of no government, too much government, and government that addresses itself to the will of its citizens. The first allows for “an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments,” but is “inconsistent with any degree of population.” The second is merely a government of “wolves and sheep.” The last, “wherein the will of every one has a just influence,” allows for “the mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty & happiness,” but also allows for political turbulence. Yet turbulence “prevents the degeneracy of government, and it nourishes a general attention to the public affairs.”
Jefferson’s squabbles with Alexander Hamilton when both were members of George Washington’s cabinet, forced more mental exertion of the nature of sound governing. So, by his presidency, we see further maturation. In his First Inaugural Address (1801), Jefferson lists the “essential principles of our Government” in 13 doctrines: (1) equal and exact justice to all men; (2) peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations and entangling alliances with none; (3) support of the rights of states; (4) the preservation of the federal government in its constitutional vigor to secure peace at home and safety abroad; (5) preservation of the right of election by the people to guard against revolution; (6) appeal to the will of the majority in political matters; (7) a well-disciplined militia and not a standing army; (8) civil instead of military authority; (9) political measures to lighten public expenses; (10) ready payment of governmental debts; (11) encouragement of agriculture and commerce; (12) freedom of the press and freedom of person by habeas corpus, with trial by juries impartially selected; and (13) freedom of religion. The address is not an anthem for a party credo, as most scholars have mistakenly stated, but a sketch of a political philosophy, which has its roots in a normative picture of man in the cosmos.
By the year 1816 was especially noteworthy. It showed without question that Jefferson had got to the essence of sound republican government through defining “republicanism” in gist and enumeration of the moral principles and the natural rights it accommodates.
Republican government, Jefferson writes to P.S. Dupont de Nemours (24 Apr. 1816), is grounded on nine indissoluble “moral principles,” which are “proper for all conditions of society.” He asserts that (1) morality, compassion, generosity are innate elements of the human constitution; (2) rights cannot be secured by force; (3) there is a right to property; (4) no one has a right to obstruct another; (5) justice is the fundamental law of society; (6) the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime; (7) “action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and competence, and in all others by representatives, chosen immediately, and removable by themselves, constitutes the essence of a republic”; (8) the approximation of principle 7 is a measure of a state’s republicanism; and (9) “a government by representation is capable of extension over a greater surface of country than one of any other form.”
To John Taylor (28 May 1816), Jefferson says that a proper republic is “a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority.”
To Samuel Kercheval (12 July 1816), Jefferson gives his “mother principle”:
Governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it
through, at the higher offices, by elected representatives. Jefferson then adds,
The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.
Thus, we might arrive at the following barebones definition of “republic” for Jefferson, or a Jeffersonian republic:
Jeffersonian republic=df: A government is republic if and only if (1) it allows each citizen the same opportunity to participate politically in affairs within their reach and competency; (2) it encourages such participation through education aimed to show that republicanism fails without citizens’ fullest participation; (3) it employs representatives, chosen and recallable by the citizenry and functioning for short periods, for affairs outside citizens’ reach and competency; (4) it functions according to the rules (periodically revisable) established by the majority of the citizens in a constitution; (5) it treats each generation as sovereign; and (6) it guarantees the equal rights, in person and property, of all citizens.
And so, by 1816, Jefferson believes that Jeffersonian republicanism is the only viable schema for any civilized, progressive nation.
By calling it “schema,” not any particular system of government to suit the needs of any particular people, Jefferson has done for “republicanism” what John Rawls in A Theory of Justice did later in the twentieth century for “democracy.” Rawls writes of the structure of a well-ordered society—“the background social framework within which the activities of associations and individuals take place.” As with Rawls’ basic structure, whose principles “do not apply directly to or regulate internally institutions and associations within society,” Jeffersonian republicanism is not wedded to any particular constitution—constitutions are merely provisional representations of the will of the people at the time of their drafting—but to the principle or spirit of government representing the will of the people, suitably informed. That is why Jefferson said in his First Inaugural Address that for the will of the majority to be reasonable, it must be rightful.
Thus, unlike John Rawls, Jefferson never enumerated and elaborated on his republican ideals in a book-long manuscript. He did however write often, lucidly, consistently, and persuasively on how the two core concepts of republicanism—liberty and equality—ground justly a system of republican governing. Pace C.E. Merriam, Jr., and as I have shown in “The disease of liberty,” Jefferson was not only a noteworthy political philosopher, he was uniquely an American political philosopher, who set the stage for vibrant discussion of liberal governing in his time and thereafter in the works of John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin, and others.
Enjoy the video below….
Excellent work on Jefferson’s republican form of government. Thanks for sharing your work, M. Andrew Holowchak.