Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson

C

Cypress

Well-known member
Jefferson's beliefs were decidedly radical for his time. He was a free-thinking secular humanist.

Jefferson embraced science against revealed superstitions.

Jefferson was part of the Enlightenment struggle against intolerance and tyranny.

Jefferson's world view was an eclectic mix of naturalism, rationalism, and proto-romantic sensibility.

Jefferson's metaphysical views were grounded in scientific naturalism.

Jefferson explicitly rejected the rationalist belief in innate ideas as well as the more elaborate idealism of Plato and Christian dualism.

Jefferson associated his three heroes of the Enlightenment - Bacon, Newton, Locke - with materialism.
Jefferson argued that all physical realities can be constructed with sense data.

Jefferson's materialism resulted in a radical psychological reductionism.

Jefferson's religious beliefs were part of what was called "Christian paganism".

He was dismissive of evangelical religion.

Jefferson's attitude towards Jesus is complicated.

He deeply admired the ethical teachings of Jesus and kept a scrapbook of them.

Jefferson was an Arian in that he denied the divinity of Jesus, seeing him as a wise moral teacher like Socrates.

A radical free thinker, Jefferson was the most advanced spokesperson for the complete separation of church and state.



Source credit: Professor Darren Staloff, City College of New York
 
Jesus was one of the great philosophers


How I wish the people who claim him as a religion would follow his teachings
 
evince said:
Jesus was one of the great philosophers


How I wish the people who claim him as a religion would follow his teachings
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Soren Kierkegaard wrote that the world is full of phony christians, because to actually emulate Jesus and live the authentic Christian life is extremely challenging and requires total commitment.
 
Pretty sure most of the Founding Father thought that way.

It's the people they had to deal with. Hence the reason for the First Amendment.
 
AProudLefty said:
Pretty sure most of the Founding Father thought that way.

It's the people they had to deal with. Hence the reason for the First Amendment.
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They a achieved broad areas of consensus, but in many ways Jefferson was a radical in a way the others weren't. The John Adams faction was certainly conservative and deeply religious. In many ways, the founders were an American aristocracy.

Jefferson was explicitly a populist and hostile to the aristocracy and the monied interests. Jefferson was one of the few in the Anglo-American world who initially supported the radical, populist doctrines and goals of the French Revolution.
 
Jefferson wrote that slavery was a moral evil, it was a violation of the natural rights of Africans, that slavery impaired the moral character of the slave owner, and he made efforts to prevent the spread of slavery into new states incorporated from the northwest territories.

At the same time he was a virulent racist slave owner who only ever freed five of his own slaves.

That is what you call a tortured and conflicted soul.
 
Phantasmal said:
Cypress, I keep meaning to ask you if you ever use iTunesU? How did I never discover this gem before?
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I did not know about this! It sounds like it has serious potential! Can you stream courses and lectures?

I have been old school, using streaming audio and video content from the socialist public library.
 
Cypress said:
I did not know about this! It sounds like it has serious potential! Can you stream courses and lectures?

I have been old school, using streaming audio and video content from the socialist public library.
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I’m just in the process of discovering it. Yes! Check it out.
 
In Jefferson's seminal correspondence with John Adams, the two debated philosophical questions.

Jefferson espoused a type of strict, reductionist materialism.

Adams countered with a George Berkley-inspired idealism: that the material world is an illusion and reality is constructed by ideas in our minds.


Since I grew up in the age of Bedtime for Bonzo, Dan Quayle, George Dumbya Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump, it is weird to think about former presidents corresponding and musing with peers about philosophy and history.
 
Cypress said:
In Jefferson's seminal correspondence with John Adams, the two debated philosophical questions.

Jefferson espoused a type of strict, reductionist materialism.

Adams countered with a George Berkley-inspired idealism: that the material world is an illusion and reality is constructed by ideas in our minds.


Since I grew up in the age of Bedtime for Bonzo, Dan Quayle, George Dumbya Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump, it is weird to think about former presidents corresponding and musing with peers about philosophy and history.
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Absolutely agree with you. Well said.
 
Cypress said:
Jefferson wrote that slavery was a moral evil, it was a violation of the natural rights of Africans, that slavery impaired the moral character of the slave owner, and he made efforts to prevent the spread of slavery into new states incorporated from the northwest territories.

At the same time he was a virulent racist slave owner who only ever freed five of his own slaves.

That is what you call a tortured and conflicted soul.
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"Years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson fathered at least six of Sally Hemings’s children. Four survived to adulthood and are mentioned in Jefferson’s plantation records: Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings. Sally Hemings worked for two and a half years (1787-89) in Paris as a domestic servant and maid in Jefferson’s household. While in Paris, where she was free, she negotiated with Jefferson to return to enslavement at Monticello in exchange for “extraordinary privileges” for herself and freedom for her unborn children. Decades later, Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings’s children – Beverly and Harriet left Monticello in the early 1820s; Madison and Eston were freed in his will and left Monticello in 1826. Jefferson did not grant freedom to any other enslaved family unit."
https://www.monticello.org/thomas-j...-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/
 
Cypress said:
In Jefferson's seminal correspondence with John Adams, the two debated philosophical questions.

Jefferson espoused a type of strict, reductionist materialism.

Adams countered with a George Berkley-inspired idealism: that the material world is an illusion and reality is constructed by ideas in our minds.


Since I grew up in the age of Bedtime for Bonzo, Dan Quayle, George Dumbya Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump, it is weird to think about former presidents corresponding and musing with peers about philosophy and history.
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Link on Jefferson and Adams? Usually I side with Jefferson against Adams but in this case, as stated, I'm leaning with Adams.


https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Reductive_materialism
Reductive materialism (Identity theory) claims that there is no independent, autonomous level of phenomena in the world that would correspond to the level of conscious mental states. It also states that the level of conscious phenomena is identical with some level of purely neurological description. Conscious phenomena are nothing over and above the neural level, thus it can be reduced to that level.

Similar reductions have taken place in the history of science:

  • water = H2O
  • visible light = EM-radiation at certain wavelengths
  • temperature = kinetic of energy molecules
  • pain = neural impulses in C-fibers
  • seeing red = synchronization of neural activity at 40Hz in V4

A major criticism of this theory is that it leaves out qualia--what it is actually like to see red, or feel pain, or experience anything.
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Qualia (from the Latin, meaning "what sort" or "what kind"; Latin and English singular "quale", pronounced KWAHL-ay) are most simply defined as qualities or feelings, like redness, as considered independently of their effects on behavior.

In more philosophical terms, qualia are properties of sensory experiences by virtue of which there is something it is like to have them.

Whether qualia actually exist is a hotly debated topic in contemporary philosophy of mind. The importance of qualia in contemporary philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that they are often seen as being an obvious refutation of physicalism. Much of the debate over their existence, however, hinges on the debate over the precise definition of the term, as various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain properties.
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