Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

From the National Archives, here's a letter by Th omas Jefferson discussing monetary policy. This is an explicit explanation of his views on the economic merits of the question, not simply the constitutional question of whether the federal government can charter a national bank (an argument with which I presume the readership of this blog is familiar). Jefferson is an "elder statesman" when he writes this letter, in November 1813. He hasn't been President for more than four years. Further, the original "Bank of the United States," the one that Hamilton created over Jefferson's strident objections, is no longer in operation. Its charter had expired and gone unrenewed during Madison's first term. BUT ... it was proving difficult to finance the ongoing war without a central bank, and this caused some soul-searching within the Republican-Democratic Party, by now the only national political party left. Hence the discussion. Eventually the party w...

That phrase comes, of course, from the Declaration of Independence. It is the third of the unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. The word "property" often shows up as the third item on such lists, and does so for example in both the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment. But Jefferson wrote of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Much heavy water has been made of this in the last 2 and 1/3  centuries. I'm reminded of an episode of The Sopranos in which Tony is complaining to his psychologist about his terrible life.  He says that he saw a documentary on The History Channel in which the anchor said that the US is the only nation in the world with a founding document that explicitly mentions happiness. "So where is my happiness," he cries. Dr. Melfi, "'Pursuit' is what it says." Tony: "Yeah, there's always a fucking loophole." Anyway, one common question is the origin of Jefferson's p...

Bernard Mauser was, as of May 2011, a candidate for a Ph.D. in philosophy from Marquette University. I've read bits and pieces of his dissertation online. It has the forbidding title, "The Ontological Foundations for Natural Law Theory and Contemporary Ethical Naturalism." Natural-law theory, to put matters starkly, is the whole body of theory that holds that there is such a fact as "human nature," and that human nature is normative. Understanding our own nature tells us how we ought to live. Natural-law theory may be theistic. That is, one may couple the "laws of nature" with "Nature's God" as Thomas Jefferson did. But natural-law theory need not be theistic, and Mauser cites Larry Arnhart as an example of a philosopher who invokes the laws of nature while keeping nature's God out of the account. At any rate, natural-law theory is certainly realist and cognitivist. It necessarily contends that good and bad are objective (...

The gun control argument has heated up again, and this time a certain quote said to be from Thomas Jefferson is in wide circulation. This gives me another chance for pedantic digressiveness, my default mode of evasion these days. The quote getting wide circulation is this: "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Now: did Jefferson actually say that? One can't prove a negative, but it surely smells like a misattribution. It also sounds like a rip-off of the movie V for Vendetta , but let's leave that aside and stick with the founders. The Monticello website checked into this, here. Part of the confusion (as appears in the footnotes to the Monticello-site essay) may be that, especially overseas, there is no clarity about Jefferson's rol...