Jefferson used letters to friends, family, and even strangers in the same fashion that Plato used Socrates's dialogues to expound a philosophy of politics, education, ethics and human nature that is every bit as comprehensive as Plato's, and far more practical in its application.
Americans Charles S. Peirce and psychologist William James are considered the founders of the philosophical school known as Pragmatism ( a system of philosophy in which the truth of a proposition is measured by both its correspondence with experimental results as well as its practical outcome). I believe that Thomas Jefferson was pragmatism's spiritual Godfather, even if Peirce and James never read a word he wrote, something I strongly doubt.
Unlike most philosophers, Thomas Jefferson had practical experience in the world of politics from the local to the international level. He had seen the positive effects education had on the average American, not only in terms of their ability to help make the choices to govern a nation at every level, but in terms of their overall happiness. He knew that ethics had to be more than a convenient, artificial construct. Ethics had to be in practical terms, both in life and politics, a solid framework upon which to hang the political decision making process at every level of the nation, if the American experiment was to succeed in the long term.
Like his friend James Madison, Jefferson knew that the concentration of economic power in too few hands, particularly in the form of corporations who were beyond the control of the people and their government--corporations and their owners who could count on the government as their agents of enforcement even against the interests of the people as a whole--represented the greatest potential threat to the American people's future happiness and prosperity in the long-term. (See my May 12, 2010 OpEdNews article "Against the Corporate State ," for more on this subject.) He had seen the destruction and misery wrought by the British East Indian Company to the people of the American Colonies before the Revolution. For this reason if no other, he believed that corporations should be limited in both size and duration of existence, with their scope limited by the caveat of their operating solely for the public good. Dr. Mike Byron, twice the Democratic Party's write-in candidate (2002-4) for California's heavily Republican 49th Congressional District, and Professor of History at California State University, San Marcos, wrote an article "Jefferson Was Right ," where he explored Jefferson's and Madison's desire to limit corporations by Constitutional Amendment:
"[This Amendment] would have prohibited 'monopolies in commerce.' The amendment would have made it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise try to influence elections. Corporations would be chartered by the states for the primary purpose of 'serving the public good.' Corporations would possess the legal status not of natural persons but rather of 'artificial persons.' This means that they would have only those legal attributes which the state saw fit to grant to them. They would NOT; and indeed could NOT possess the same bundle of rights which actual flesh and blood persons enjoy. Under this proposed amendment neither the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, nor any provision of that document would protect the artificial entities known of as corporations."
As Jefferson had noted in a letter from France to James Madison in 1785, "A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of [a people] which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters." ( The Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition ; volume 8, p. 40; 1904 .) Jefferson was well aware of the history of corporations in Europe: it was the history of monopolies dominated by the few, and exploiting the many, at every stage of their business.
Jefferson was not blind to the faults of humanity. He did not believe the common man would suddenly be imbued with the sort of infallibility that the Catholic Church claims today for the Pope. In this, and understanding the appetites and desires that drive human beings, Jefferson was far ahead of Karl Marx, or utopian Socialists like Robert Owen. Jefferson did believe that the needs expressed by an informed and educated public, whose opinions were then enacted through their elected representatives and magistrates, would provide the best possible governance for the nation in the long-term, as evidenced by the following six quotes from our Third President:
"The will of the people...is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." (Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waring, 1801. The Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition; Volume 10, p. 236; 1904.)
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