Thomas Jefferson

by Onuf, Peter S.; Cole, Nicholas P.

• ISBN13: 9780813931319
• ISBN10: 0813931312
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-10-31
• Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr

Summary

Thomas Jefferson read Latin and Greek authors throughout his life and wrote movingly about his love of the ancient texts, which he thought should be at the core of America's curriculum. Yet at the same time, Jefferson warned his countrymen not to look to the ancient world for modern lessons and deplored many of the ways his peers used classical authors to address contemporary questions. As a result, the contribution of the ancient world to the thought of America's most classically educated Founding Father remains difficult to assess. This volume brings together historians of political thought with classicists and historians of art and culture to find new approaches to the difficult questions raised by America's classical heritage. The essays explore the classical contribution to different aspects of Jefferson's thought and taste, as well as examining the significance of the ancient world to America in a broader historical context. The diverse interests and methodologies of the contributors suggest new ways of approaching one of the most prominent and contested of the traditions that helped create America's revolutionary republicanism. ContributorsGordon S. Wood, Brown University * Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia * Michael P. Zuckert, University of Notre Dame * Caroline Winterer, Stanford University * Richard Guy Wilson, University of Virginia * Maurie D. McInnis, University of Virginia * Nicholas P. Cole, University of Oxford * Peter Thompson, University of Oxford * Eran Shalev, Haifa University * Paul A. Rahe, Hillsdale College * Jennifer T. Roberts, City University of New York, Graduate Center * Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, University of Virginia

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Prologue: The Legacy of Rome in the American Revolution	p. 11
Jefferson's Classical World
Ancients, Moderns, and the Progress of Mankind: Thomas Jefferson's Classical World	p. 35
Thomas Jefferson and Natural Morality: Classical Moral Theory, Moral Sense, and Rights	p. 56
Classical Taste at Monticello: The Case of Thomas Jefferson's Daughter and Granddaughters	p. 78
Thomas Jefferson's Classical Architecture: An American Agenda	p. 99
George Washington: Cincinnatus or Marcus Aurelius?
Classical Influences
America and Ancient and Modern Europe	p. 171
Aristotle and King Alfred in America	p. 193
Thomas Jefferson's Classical Silence, 1774-1776: Historical Consciousness and Roman History in the Revolutionary South	p. 219
Cicero and the Classical Republican Legacy in America	p. 248
Pericles in America: The Founding Era and Beyond	p. 265
Notes on Contributors	p. 301
Index	p. 305
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