Download or read book Jefferson s Political Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Utopia written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-02-20 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jefferson’s Political Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Utopia, M. Andrew Holowchak traces the development of Jeffersonian republicanism as a political philosophy, though it is today seldom seen as a political philosophy, by examining the documents he wrote (e.g., Declaration, First Inaugural Address, and significant letters) and key literature he read. That political philosophy, fundamentally progressive and people-first, was driven by a vision of an “empire of liberty”—a global confederation of republican nations in moral and political partnership and peaceful coexistence—and was to take root in North America. Jefferson's vision influenced his domestic and foreign policies as president and the numerous letters he wrote after his presidency, but never took root there, or anywhere. Was that due to a defect of vision—a view of humans’ capacities and goodness at odds with reality—or were historical forces at play which were antagonistic to the rooting and suckering of Jeffersonian republicanism?

Download or read book The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson written by Garrett Ward Sheldon and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Thomas Jefferson a Lockean liberal or a classical republican? In The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, Garrett Ward Sheldon aims to reconcile two opposing camps of an ongoing scholarly debate. Offering a revised account of Jefferson's political theory, Sheldon shows that Jefferson's thought comprised a rich constellation of theoretical traditions--including British liberalism, classical republicanism, Scottish moral philosophy, Christian ethics, and Lockean theory. Examining Jefferson's views on democracy, rights, freedom, and slavery as well as the cultural and economic context of his ideas in the Virginia gentry class, this book not only offers a concise introduction to Jefferson's political philosophy but also makes a thought-provoking contribution to a current historiography controversy.

Download or read book Understanding Thomas Jefferson written by M.L. Burstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 1993-06-18 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Supplies extensive material making it possible for the reader to understand how Thomas Jefferson's mind spanned the vast distance separating antiquity from writers like William James and Sigmund Freud, analyzing his studies in economics, moral philosophy, history and law.

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson in Paris The Ministry of a Virginian Looker on written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jefferson’s years in France as minister plenipotentiary were a time of large edification. He approached his ministry as a “looker on”: Jefferson, while in France, always kept a critical distance from events, so that he could measure and critically examine them from the perspective of a dispassionate natural philosopher. Being dispassionate, Jefferson was pulled into events only insofar as circumstances required him to do so. Yet his “adventures” from his critical distance (e.g., his trip to London to meet the king, his ventures in the salons of Paris, and his travels through Southern France, Northern Italy, the Rhineland, and the Netherlands) were many, and varied. He even, at times, lost his critical, looker-on perspective from distance as he allowed himself to become immersed in events, as in the case of his relationship with lovely Italian artist and musician Maria Cosway.... > This book is a portal into the mind of Thomas Jefferson, as looker-on, during his tenure in Paris. Why was Jefferson so eager to accept the ministry to Paris? What was his impression of the great city and its people while he stayed? What lessons, while in Paris, did he learn which he could transport to Virginia and his country? Those and other questions Holowchak aims to answer in this book.

Download or read book Rethinking Thomas Jefferson s Writings on Slavery and Race written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisionism has been the historical vogue for well over two decades concerning Jeffersonian scholarship. This movement has been an attempt to neutralize the avowed “hagiographical” scholarship on Jefferson by aiming to offer an all-too-human Thomas Jefferson. The regrettable result has been a depiction, iterated and reiterated uncritically by scholars, of a less-than-human Jefferson, presenting him as an inveterate hypocrite and racist. Thus, Jeffersonian scholarship, as argued here, has become an exercise in useless, fatuous repetition of the same claims that has impeded attempts by serious scholars to gain fresh insights into the mind of one of the greatest Americans. This book offers a stimulating, provocative challenge to the stale revisionist claims on Jefferson concerning his hypocrisy and racism. It will appeal to mavens of Jefferson, as well as scholars intent on moving forward with Jeffersonian scholarship. The book will also appeal to those persons who believe it is time to resituate Jefferson on his little mountain.

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson s Notes on the State of Virginia A Prolegomena written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2023-05-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Jefferson write 'Notes on the State of Virginia'? There are today two common theses. The first, the Alphabet-Soup Thesis, maintains that the book is more or less a loose collection of notes in answer to the 22 queries given by French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois. Jefferson’s altering the arrangement of his answers to the questions is a matter of allowing for a smoother “narrative” for his answers, but other than that, one ought to be cautious not to read too much into his restructuring. The second, the Deconstructionist Thesis, is that meticulous deconstruction of the text reveals a latent thesis, which Jefferson, consciously or subconsciously, kept from his readers. Both views are problematic. The former cannot explain why Jefferson fell so deeply into the project, rearranged Marbois’ questions so that the book would flow smoothly from nature to culture, and continually revise his often-lengthy answers, even after the Stockdale edition in 1787. The latter suffers from the fact that Jefferson tended never to write elliptically. "Thomas Jefferson’s ‘Notes on the State of Virginia’: A Prolegomena" is an attempt to provide an alternative, “dialectical” reading to current interpretations of the book. The book, Holowchak asserts, is neither a simple omnium gatherum nor is its message accessible only through deconstruction. There is an obvious movement from nature (Gr., 'phusis') in the first seven queries to culture (Gr., 'nomos') in the remaining 16 queries, but that “movement” is not linear. Early naturalistic queries set up neatly Jefferson’s discussion of the cultural aspects of Virginia, and Jefferson’s explication of the cultural aspects of Virginia cannot be grasped without frequent returns to the naturalistic queries, hence its dialectic. Jefferson’s aim overall, sums Holowchak, is the appropriation of what nature had given for humans’ use—to perfect the social state by taming nature and putting it to use for human betterment.

Download or read book Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia written by Nathaniel Robert Walker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of suburbs and disinvestment from cities have been defining features of life in many countries over the course of the twentieth century. In Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia, Nathaniel Walker asks: why did we abandon our dense, complex urban places and seek to find "the best of the city and the country" in the flowery suburbs? While looking back at the architecture and urban design of the 1800s offers some answers, Walker argues that a great missing piece of the story can be found in Victorian utopian literature. The replacement of cities with high-tech suburbs was repeatedly imagined and breathlessly described in the socialist dreams and science-fiction fantasies of dozens of British and American authors. Some of these visionaries — such as Robert Owen, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Ebenezer Howard, and H. G. Wells — are enduringly famous, while others were street vendors or amateur chemists who have been all but forgotten. Together, they fashioned strange and beautiful imaginary worlds built of synthetic gemstones, lacy metal colonnades, and unbreakable glass, staffed by robotic servants and teeming with flying carriages. As varied as their futuristic visions could be, Walker reveals how most of them were unified by a single, desperate plea: for humanity to have a future worth living, we must abandon our smoky, poor, chaotic Babylonian cities for a life in shimmering gardens.

Download or read book The Disease of Liberty written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2024-04-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberty for Jefferson was 'the' driving force of human history and a realizable state of the human organism and of a society of men. Study of history and anthropology showed that humans were moving from the barbaric independence suffered in primal hordes, which lived inefficiently on lands, to a more economical, human-friendly use of land in social settings, demanding laws for order. Those laws, historically, favored the powerful few to the detriment of the hoi polloi. As a pupil of the Enlightenment, Jefferson argued that all humans were by nature equal, and thus, deserving of as much civic liberty as a reason-oriented and sciences-loving society, a Jeffersonian republic, could guarantee them. This book, philosophical, explains how such a society was possible, given Jefferson’s conception of the nature of man, and how the realization of one such society could lead, through contagion, to a global community of such societies. There are a large number of books that cover Jefferson’s political ideology (e.g., Gordon Wood’s 'Empire of Liberty' and Adrienne Koch’s 'The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson')—too many to limn—but none that gets at the philosophical implications of TJ’s views on liberty. This book, examining TJ as a natural scientist and philosophy, examines and situates him in the manner of other great political ideologists of his day—e.g., Hume and Kant.

Download or read book The Cavernous Mind of Thomas Jefferson an American Savant written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While every biographer has something to say concerning Thomas Jefferson’s cavernous mind—his varied interests and the depth of his understanding of them—there has never been, strange as it might seem, a non-anthology dedicated to fleshing out key features of his mind, exploring Jefferson’s varied interests through his varied personae. This book—studying Jefferson as lawyer, moralist, politician, scientist, epistolist, aesthetician, farmer, educationalist, and philologist—does just that. In tracing out the many “hats” Jefferson wore, there are many disclosures here. For instance, personal growth and human betterment were driving forces throughout his life, and they shaped his liberal and agrarian political philosophy, which, in turn, shaped his philosophy of education. Moreover, Jefferson was a great lover of beauty, but beauty for him was always second to functionality. That had implications for his views on agriculture, morality, aesthetics, philology, and even the Fine Arts. The structure of this book—covering an array of topics related to the mind of Jefferson—will make it appeal to a large audience. In addition, scholarly details in each chapter will make it must-read for Jeffersonian researchers.

Download or read book The Elusive Thomas Jefferson written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Jefferson's writings on morality have largely been ignored. His thoughts on the subject, never developed in any formal work, are said to be unsystematic--a judgment reinforced by his shift from Stoicism (intentions are critical) to Utilitarianism (consequences are critical) later in life. Yet his writings and the moral works he recommended reveal much about his moral sense and views on good living. Jefferson valued personal moral improvement, had great respect for moral exemplars and drew inspiration from moralists, sermonizers, novelists, poets, historians and such role models as Professor William Small and his friend George Wythe.

Download or read book Understanding Thomas Jefferson written by Meyer Louis Burstein and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1993 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Jefferson, author of the American Declaration of Independence, first Secretary of State, second Vice-President, and third President of the United States, was the premier halberdier of the Enlightenment in America. Minister to France, 1784-89, Jefferson was linked in many ways to the French Revolution and its stupendous sequel. He finally travelled (mainly along French roads - see the Ideologues as an example) so far from his 'Lockean' origins that he verged on the work of William James and Sigmund Freud. One of the most powerful American Presidents, and longtime president of the American Philosophical Association, this polymath man of action has long been wrongly perceived to have been a barmy eccentric, pitifully yearning for an unattainable Arcadia. This book's studies go far to make it possible, finally, to understand Thomas Jefferson.

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson on American Indians written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jefferson’s views on Indians were characterized by ambivalence. Jefferson both loved and hated Native Americans, because he loved Native Americans. Jefferson was, through his father Peter, exposed early on and directly, though likely infrequently, to mysterious but congenial Indigenes, and he came to respect profoundly their courage, physical endurance, artistry, integrity, and most importantly, their large love of liberty, even if they were “uncivilized.” So impressed by Indians culture was Jefferson that he made their nature and culture objects of study in his ‘Notes on Virginia.’ Though uncivilized, Indians showed marked signs of being readily civilizable. Thus, Jefferson, qua politician and philosopher, hoped that they would mix their blood with Whites and become part of what he saw as a great American “empire for liberty.” Miscegenation meant integration, willful or by force, into American culture and abandonment of Aboriginal ways and their radically different way of seeing the land upon which they lived, which Natives could only grudgingly accept. Was Jefferson’s Indian policy, though guided by true concern for their wellbeing, genocidal? This book ultimately aims to answer that question.

Download or read book Jesus in an Age of Enlightenment written by Jonathan C. P. Birch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the religious concerns of Enlightenment thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Thomas Jefferson. Using an innovative method, the study illuminates the intellectual history of the age through interpretations of Jesus between c.1650 and c.1826. The book demonstrates the persistence of theology in modern philosophy and the projects of social reform and amelioration associated with the Enlightenment. At the core of many of these projects was a robust moral-theological realism, sometimes manifest in a natural law ethic, but always associated with Jesus and a commitment to the sovereign goodness of God. This ethical orientation in Enlightenment discourse is found in a range of different metaphysical and political identities (dualist and monist; progressive and radical) which intersect with earlier ‘heretical’ tendencies in Christian thought (Arianism, Pelagianism, and Marcionism). This intellectual matrix helped to produce the discourses of irenic toleration which are a legacy of the Enlightenment at its best.

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though it is not uncommon for historians to have something to say concerning philosophical strands in Jefferson’s thought, that something is usually insubstantial—often misleadingly so—or inchoate. Overall, precious little has been said. The significance of the man and the richness of his thought demands that this defect be remedied. Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy is a collection of nine new essays on philosophical elements in Jefferson’s writings. The first of its kind, this collection should lead to further philosophical analysis of Jefferson’s thinking—especially by philosophers, who tend to appreciate Jefferson only as the author of the Declaration of Independence—and to greater appreciation for the man who gave to statesmanship a large number of the prime of his years out of a moral sense of duty to others. In that regard, Jefferson was always first a philosopher. This book will be a valuable read for students and scholars of history, political theory, and philosophy, as well as anyone interested in the thought of Thomas Jefferson.

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson written by Mark Holowchak and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to systematize the philosophical content of Thomas Jefferson's writings. Sifting through Jefferson's many addresses, messages, and letters, philosopher M. Andrew Holowchak uncovers an intensely curious Enlightenment thinker with a well-constructed, people-sympathetic, and consistent philosophy. As the author shows, Jefferson's philosophical views encompassed human nature, the cosmos, politics, morality, and education. Beginning with his understanding of the cosmos, part one considers Jefferson's philosophical naturalism and the influence on him of Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke. The next section critically examines his political viewpoints, specifically his republicanism, liberalism, and progressivism. The third part, oJefferson on Morality,o analyzes Jefferson's thoughts on human nature, his moral-sense theory, and his notion of onatural aristoio (best or most virtuous citizens). Finally, oJefferson on Educationo reviews his ideas on properly educating the people of the new nation for responsible, participatory citizenry. Jefferson conceived of the United States as a ogreat experimento-embodying a vision of a government responsibly representative of its people and functioning for the sake of them. This book will help readers understand the philosophical perspective that sustained this audacious, innovative, and people-first experiment.

Download or read book The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson written by Alexander Holtzoff and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson written by Lennox Blater-Kinghorn and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: