Keywords
Thomas Jefferson
Democratic Idealism
Democracy
political ideology
Abstract
This article contends that there is a pronounced if underappreciated side to Thomas Jefferson’s democratic vision that is decidedly undemocratic. By reexamining several of Jefferson’s core beliefs, including his agrarianism, his philosophy of education, and his desire for an “empire of liberty,” this paper elucidates a Jeffersonian vision of democracy that defers to the knowledgeable and enlightened rather than the actual, historical will of the people. Reexamining the character and quality of Jefferson’s vision helps shed light on our own fraught conception of democracy, which similarly is often torn between the desire for direct popular rule and a competing desire for rule by experts.
Similar Articles
- Nadia Urbinati, About Democracy’s Friends , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Grant Havers, Voegelin, Marx, and the "Evils" of Capitalism , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 47 No. 1 (2023): Political Theory and Economics, and other Essays
- Sarah Gustafson, Opening the American Heart , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 47 No. 2 (2023): The Future Before Us: Early Career Women in Political Theory and Constitutional Studies
- Michelle Schwarze, Freedom and Dependence in John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- John Boersma, Adam Smith’s Eulogy for Self-Command , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 47 No. 1 (2023): Political Theory and Economics, and other Essays
- Eduardo Schmidt Passos, Carl Schmitt’s Political Theory during the Third Reich , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Douglas Walker, Michael Giles, Tocqueville Reconsidered: On Secular Morality and Religion’s Place in Liberal Democracy , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 43 No. 1 (2019): Essays
- James Read, John Adams and the Unpurchased Impact of Wealth , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Thomas David Bunting, Erin Evans, Together Under the Open Sky , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 43 No. 1 (2019): Essays
- Noah Stengl, Tocqueville in the Wilderness , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- John E Alvis, The Slavery Provisions of the U.S. Constitution , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 17 (1987): Symposium: The Constitutional Convention of 1787
- Michael P Zuckert, Herbert J. Storing’s Turn to the American Founding , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 29 (2000): A Symposium on Herbert J Storing
- Ellis Sandoz, The Foundations of Voegelin’s Political Theory , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 1 (1971): Reviews
- Claes Ryn, Peter Viereck , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 7 (1977): Reviews
- Dante Germino, Henri Bergson , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 9 (1979): Reviews
- George W Carey, John P. East, May 5, 1931–June 29, 1986 , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 16 (1986): In Memoriam and Reviews
- Erin A. Dolgoy, Kimberly Hurd Hale, Virtue and Vice , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 44 No. 1 (2020): Symposium: Wit in the History of Political Thought
- Trevor Shelley, Tocquevillean Poetics , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 44 No. 2 (2020): Symposium: Leadership and the History of Political Thought
- Lance Banning, James Madison and the Dynamics of the Constitutional Convention , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 17 (1987): Symposium: The Constitutional Convention of 1787
- Michael Franz, Commentaries on the Work of Eric Voegelin , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 30 (2001): Symposia on Kant Studies and on <em>I’ll Take My Stand</em>