Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826 · American Philosophy · Renowned
Jefferson was a Virginia statesman and the third U.S. President, and the sentence about all men being created equal is his, drafted for the Declaration of Independence at 33. He put Enlightenment principles into America's founding language: Locke's natural rights, religious liberty, and a republic of independent farmers. He held people as slaves his whole life, in tension with every word of it.
Signature
The position Jefferson is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ignorance
- Bondage – Bliss
- Law
- Natural Law
Positions on the 1 axes the sources answer
- Order
- mildly leans Horizontal (62 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
19 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Jefferson refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Deism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy / Direct Democracy / Federal Republic
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Indirect Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal First Cause
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Other
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Agnostic
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Innate Good
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity / Nation / Posterity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?