Eudemonism or Survivalism? Jefferson and the Unwritten Laws of Self-Preservation

Abstract

Jefferson states that in certain dire circumstances—e.g., when a person’s life is at stake or when a belligerent nation threatens the existence of another—the legal pacts between those persons or nations, and even the laws of morality, are left in abeyancy. Survival of the threatened person or nation is the only thing that matters, and any actions that conduce to survival are justifiable. Self-preservation in such cases trumps all considerations—even moral considerations. The right to existence then, seems to be the first axiom of morality, lex suprema, for Jefferson in such scenarios. Virtuous living is ancillary. Jefferson seems to be advocating a sort of moral or egoistic “survivalism.” For ancient eudemonists like Aristotle and the Stoics, happiness is the end of living, and a life without the prospect of happiness, of which virtue is the key or sole ingredient, is not worth living. All the goods or conveniences of life, without virtue, cannot make a person anything but miserable. In sum, virtuous living, not living, is the human telos (the Stoics), or the chief part of it (Aristotle). And so, survival without the prospect of virtue is valueless. Is Jefferson a eudemonist or a moral survivalist? Are the two positions reconcilable? In this essay, I argue that the difficult passages, mostly of a political sort, do not lead to moral survivalism, but are instead consistent with the unique eudemonism Jefferson embraced.