Was Thomas Jefferson a philosopher

Answer 1

No he wasnt; he was an American patriot that wrote the declaration of independece.

Not so fast! Much depends on what one considers a philosopher to be. If one considers a philosopher to be, as today it is the case, one with a high-level degree in Philosophy or one who teaches Philosophy for a living, then he was not a philosopher. However, Jefferson was an polymath that investigated seriously issues such as cosmology, existence and nature of deity, morally correct action, and even what we consider today to be epistemology and metaphysics. Moreover, he had consistent views on political philosophy and philosophy of pedagody that were founded in a normative vision of the nature of man and the good life. Yet he was a deep-dyed empiricist whose philosophical views were more in keeping with what one might deem scientific hypotheses today--viz., they were revisable in light of additional knowledge. One must grasp that "philosopher" often was pejorative, so Jefferson would have been more comfortable with the epithet "scientist."

I refer readers to my forthcoming book: Dutiful Correspondent: Philosophical Essays on Thomas Jefferson (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012). In the intro, I maintain it is fitting to label Jefferson "philosopher," in some sense of the word.