Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson is invoked as a defender of ordinary citizens’ ability to judge moral questions, offering a counterpoint to the claim that complex public choices should be left to experts. His brief appearance helps frame democracy not simply as a way to identify technical answers, but as a system that keeps political judgment open to people with different knowledge and perspectives.

Jefferson’s Argument About Expertise

In a discussion of whether political decisions should be entrusted to a technocratic elite, the book distinguishes between deciding how to achieve an agreed goal and deciding what goals a society should pursue. The latter involves values and trade-offs, not just technical competence. It therefore questions the assumption that experts are necessarily better judges of what society should do.

Jefferson is cited in support of that distinction. He wrote, “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor,” and argued that the ploughman may decide as well as, or better than, the professor because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. The example does not claim that ordinary people possess penetrating insights unavailable to experts; it makes the narrower case that expertise does not confer a monopoly on moral judgment.

Democratic Judgment and Local Knowledge

The argument connects Jefferson’s example to the value of local knowledge in democratic life. Government affects citizens’ everyday circumstances, and their votes carry information about those experiences that insulated experts may not encounter. Sharing political power between experts and nonexperts can therefore keep a decision-making system more diverse, even while neither group is treated as infallible.

Jefferson’s role is concise but consequential: his words help separate technical expertise from authority over shared ends. In the book’s account, democracy’s value lies not in guaranteeing that every decision is wise, but in sustaining participation and the possibility of compromise among people who bring different perspectives to public choices.