Entry
Reader's guide
Entries A-Z
Subject index
Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826)
Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence and other key documents of early American constitutionalism. He was almost certainly the founder most instrumental in developing the philosophy of limited government that dominated American political thought until the 20th century. Jefferson was a quintessential Renaissance man, with law and politics as perhaps the least favorite of his many interests, yet he was drawn into the political conflicts of his time because of his devotion to what he called “the holy cause of freedom.”
Educated at the College of William and Mary and trained as a lawyer by Williamsburg attorney George Wythe, by the mid-1760s, Jefferson was well versed in the English radical Whig political tradition and its core principle that government, when its citizens ...
- Biographical
- Acton, Lord
- Adams, John
- Aquinas, Thomas
- Aristotle
- Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von
- Bastiat, Frédéric
- Bauer, Peter
- Becker, Gary S.
- Bentham, Jeremy
- Branden, Nathaniel
- Bright, John
- Brown, John
- Buchanan, James M.
- Buckle, Henry Thomas
- Burke, Edmund
- Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques
- Cantillon, Richard
- Childs, Roy A.
- Chodorov, Frank
- Cicero
- Clark, Ed
- Coase, Ronald H.
- Cobden, Richard
- Coke, Edward
- Comte, Charles
- Condorcet, Marquis de
- Constant, Benjamin
- Dicey, Albert Venn
- Diderot, Denis
- Douglas, Frederick
- Dunoyer, Charles
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo
- Epstein, Richard A.
- Ferguson, Adam
- Fisher, Antony
- Foucault, Michel
- Friedman, David
- Friedman, Milton
- Garrison, William Lloyd
- Gladstone, William Ewart
- Godwin, William
- Goldwater, Barry
- Harper, Floyd Arthur “Baldy”
- Hayek, Friedrich A.
- Hazlitt, Henry
- Heinlein, Robert
- Herbert, Auberon
- Hess, Karl
- Hobbes, Thomas
- Hodgskin, Thomas
- Hospers, John
- Humboldt, Wilhelm von
- Hume, David
- Hutcheson, Francis
- Jacobs, Jane
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jouvenel, Bertrand de
- Kant, Immanuel
- Kirzner, Israel M.
- Knight, Frank H.
- La Boétie, Etienne de
- Lane, Rose Wilder
- Lao Tzu
- Las Casas, Bartolomé de
- LeFevre, Robert
- Leggett, William
- Locke, John
- Macaulay, Thomas Babington
- MacBride, Roger Lea
- Madison, James
- Maine, Henry Sumner
- Mandeville, Bernard
- Mason, George
- Mencken, H. L.
- Menger, Carl
- Meyer, Frank S.
- Mill, John Stuart
- Milton, John
- Mises, Ludwig von
- Molinari, Gustave de
- Montaigne, Michel de
- Montesquieu, Charles de Secondât de
- Murray, Charles
- Nathan, Tonie
- Nietzsche, Friedrich
- Nock, Albert Jay
- Nozick, Robert
- Oppenheimer, Franz
- Ortega y Gasset, José
- Orwell, George
- Ostrom, Vincent and Elinor
- Paine, Thomas
- Paterson, Isabel
- Paul, Ron
- Popper, Karl
- Posner, Richard A.
- Pound, Roscoe
- Price, Richard
- Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph
- Röpke, Wilhelm
- Rand, Ayn
- Rawls, John
- Read, Leonard E.
- Ricardo, David
- Rothbard, Murray
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Say, Jean-Baptiste
- Schumpeter, Joseph
- Senior, Nassau William
- Shaftesbury, Third Earl of
- Sidney, Algernon
- Simon, Julian
- Smith, Adam
- So well, Thomas
- Spencer, Herbert
- Spooner, Lysander
- Stigler, George J.
- Stirner, Max
- Sumner, William Graham
- Szasz, Thomas
- Taft, Robert A.
- Thoreau, Henry David
- Tocqueville, Alexis de
- Tracy, Destutt de
- Tucker, Benjamin R.
- Tullock, Gordon
- Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques
- Voltaire
- Washington, George
- Wicksell, Knut
- Wilberforce, William
- Wollstonecraft, Mary
- Policy
- Abortion
- Affirmative Action
- Antitrust
- Arts and Public Support
- Bioethics
- Black Markets
- Campaign Finance
- Capital Punishment
- Censorship
- Conscription
- Corruption
- Development, Economic
- Drug Prohibition
- Education
- Eminent Domain/Takings
- Environment
- Euthanasia
- Family
- Feminism and Women's Rights
- Foreign Policy
- Free Trade
- Freedom of Speech
- Freedom of Thought
- Gambling
- Genetics
- Globalization
- Health Care
- Illicit Drugs
- Immigration
- Intellectual Property
- Internet
- Interventionism
- Judiciary
- Labor Unions
- Laissez-Faire Policy
- Law and Economics
- Liability
- Market Failure
- Marriage
- Military-Industrial Complex
- Money and Banking
- Paternalism
- Political Parties
- Pornography
- Price Controls
- Privacy
- Privatization
- Psychiatry
- Public Choice Economics
- Racism
- Regulation
- Rent Seeking
- Restitution for Crime
- Retribution for Crime
- Right to Bear Arms
- Rule of Law
- Separation of Church and State
- Sexuality
- Social Security
- Taxation
- Term Limits
- Transportation
- Urban Planning
- War
- War on Terror
- War Powers
- Welfare State
- Topical
- Abolitionism
- American Revolution
- Anarchism
- Anarcho-Capitalism
- Anti-Corn Law League
- Assurance and Trust
- Banking, Austrian Theory of
- Bill of Rights, U.S.
- Bureaucracy
- Capitalism
- Cato's Letters
- Charity/Friendly Societies
- Children
- Cities
- Civil Society
- Civil War, U.S.
- Classical Economics
- Coercion
- Collectivism
- Common Law
- Communism
- Competition
- Conscience
- Consequentialism
- Conservatism
- Conservative Critique of Libertarianism
- Constitution, U.S.
- Constitutionalism
- Contractarianism/Social Contract
- Cosmopolitanism
- Culture
- Decentralism
- Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- Delegation
- Democracy
- Division of Labor
- Dutch Republic
- Economics, Austrian School of
- Economics, Chicago School of
- Economics, Experimental
- Economics, Keynesian
- English Civil Wars
- Enlightenment
- Entrepreneurship
- Epicureanism
- Equality
- Evolutionary Psychology
- Existentialism
- Externalities
- Fascism
- Federalism
- Federalists Versus Anti-Federalists
- Freedom
- Free-Market Economy
- French Revolution
- Fusionism
- Glorious Revolution
- Government
- Great Depression
- Humanism
- Imperialism
- Individual Rights
- Individualism, Methodological
- Individualism, Political and Ethical
- Individualist Anarchism
- Industrial Revolution
- Islam
- Italian Fiscal Theorists
- Kleptocracy
- Law Merchant
- Left Libertarianism
- Levellers
- Liberal Critique of Libertarianism
- Liberalism, Classical
- Liberalism, German
- Liberty in the Ancient World
- Liberty, Presumption of
- Limited Government
- Magna Carta
- Marxism
- Material Progress
- Mercantilism
- Minimal State
- Mont Pèlerin Society
- Nationalism
- Natural Harmony of Interests
- Natural Law
- New Deal
- Nonaggression Axiom
- Objectivism
- Peace and Pacifism
- Philosophic Radicals
- Physiocracy
- Positive Liberty
- Praxeology
- Private Property
- Progress
- Progressive Era
- Prohibition of Alcohol
- Puritanism
- Pursuit of Happiness
- Religion and Liberty
- Republicanism, Classical
- Responsibility
- Revolution, Right of
- Rights, Natural
- Rights, Theories of
- Scholastics/School of Salamanca
- Secessionism
- Self-interest
- Slavery in America
- Slavery, World
- Social Darwinism
- Socialism
- Socialist Calculation Debate
- Sociology and Libertarianism
- Spontaneous Order
- State
- Stoicism
- Subsidiarity
- Utilitarianism
- Virtue
- Voluntarism
- Wealth and Poverty
- Whiggism
- Loading...