| Summary: | Few sources cover the first 30 years of Thomas Jefferson. His Literary Commonplace Book (LCB), compiled almost entirely from his adolescence to the dawn of his political career (1758-1773), possesses thus an invaluable heuristic value. The goal of this article is to grasp a vision of existence which could explain the foundations of his liberalism. We believe this possible because the LCB possesses a value and a meaning to the eyes of Jefferson which can be perceived early as much as late in his life. The themes of fatality and of finitude, but also, of the virtue of which man is capable, are all central. We believe that the extracts chosen by Jefferson, when put in parallel with his texts written in this period as with those written posteriorly, permit to apprehend in his thought a conception of an individual which, even if placed at the mercy of a fatality relative to which he remains powerless, keeps a potentiality for autonomy and virtue. We will subsequently recognize this optimism in his liberal writings.
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