Thomas Jefferson Metaphysical Idealist Analysis

It is evident in this particular writing, and many others, that Jefferson is a metaphysical idealist. He invokes Nature’s God as being the giver of law and the rights of man. In being so given by God, a right is personally held as property which cannot be abridged and is such an important gift that it ‘impels them to separate’ from those who might fetter these things. The gift is held by all mankind equally and separately, not as a whole; keeping with Jefferson’s views on property rights. Truth is ‘self-evident’, all mankind is ‘created equal’, and are granted ‘unalienable rights’. Government is a tool created by the people and with their consent and subject to abolishment should it fail to serve mankind. These ideas were revolutionary, inflammatory

His religion was Christianity, stripped of the miracles, the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. That a moral compass was given to most of mankind and that man was responsible to use it to do what is right. He was a believer in ‘natural law’ which mankind might know from the prompting of conscience, which he equated with the other physical senses we know of. Jefferson considered Jesus to be the greatest of all the religious reformers and he wrote of the morality of the teachings of Jesus. Jefferson considered his religion to consist of belief in a single god, an afterlife of reward and punishment and loving one’s neighbor as self. These are the grand tenants of Jeffersonian religion. As for the aforementioned organization of religion, Jefferson was opposed and considered such to be coercive of the rights and freedoms of mankind. Thus, his desire to create a freedom of religious thought without enshrining a mandate or litmus test concerning religious belief in government or as far as rights are protected or acknowledged. Jefferson’s philosophy on religion, as with many other areas, were derived from his thought experiments. He reasoned his philosophy out of an educated mind, and although we can identify its underpinnings, much of his philosophy is considered unique. He was an empiricist in this regard, attempting to prove argument by assertion of sense and logic.