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THOMAS JEFFERSON'S ETHICS AND THE POLITICS OF HUMAN PROGRESS: The Morality of a Slave Holder. By Ari Helo. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013.
Ari Helo's Thomas Jefferson's Ethics and the Politics of Human Progress: The Morality of a Slave Holder is a thorough and complex contribution to Jeffersonian scholarship. Helo is primarily concerned with reconciling Jefferson's intellectual contributions to the foundational American ideas and ideals of mass democracy while simultaneously being a racist slaveholder. The short answer is that Jefferson was a politician, but this is not a tongue-in-cheek critique of two-faced politicians today. Those with waning interest in the besiegement of historical figures in order to critique popular notions of today's society will be relieved by Helo's efforts here. Helo scours Jefferson's documents, letters, and notebooks in order to prove that he was the utmost believer that human betterment was a product of political actions, i.e. those with political power have the ability and responsibility to be benevolent.
But Jeffersonian progress offered no guarantees against temporary setbacks in even enlightened, democratic majority opinion. Eventually, Jefferson's conception of individual self-determination remained subordinate...