Thomas Jefferson és a szegénység problémája az Egyesült Államokban republikánus kontextusban
Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Poverty in the United States in a Republican Context

Summary/Abstract: This essay is proposed to explore the problem of poverty in Thomas Jefferson’s thought – an issue that has received very little attention from scholars of intellectual and cultural history. Although there have been modest attempts at probing into the general aspects of his ideas concerning poverty as well as its ramifications concerning indigence in Europe, the American scene has been left largely intact by scholars. A careful examination of his writings, however, reveals that Jefferson was, in fact, concerned over poverty in the USA and devoted quite a degree of his attention to it. I argue, in the first place, that his understanding of republicanism largely informed his conception of poverty in the US. In the second place, I demonstrate, he distinguished several categories of the poor ranging from the unemployed indigents through the labouring poor existing in America, and that his regarding America as an exceptional place compared to Europe was largely based on his understanding of the extended nature of poor relief for those in his country. Finally, I also argue that from the early nineteenth century on, Jefferson used the discourse of poverty to describe the situation of farmers, struck by the general economic crisis, otherwise considered the bulwark of American republicanism. His complaints about their lot also extended to himself trying to cope with a situation that he originally identified with those living in poverty.

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