Thomas Jefferson occupies a complicated place in American political history. Jefferson was, of course, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and a proponent of Enlightenment ideals. But he was also a slaveholder who (in)famously insisted that Blacks and whites could not coexist. These contradictory positions make Jefferson a puzzling figure. How could the very man who proclaimed “that all men are created equal” hold captive more than 600 slaves? And how could the champion of “unalienable rights” deny those very rights to African Americans?

In Black Reason, White Feeling, Hannah Spahn explores these tensions. Contra prevailing narratives, Spahn argues that Jefferson was not a universalist Enlightenment figure. She also claims that Jefferson was not inconsistent or hypocritical—a thinker who betrayed his own principles by disparaging and discrediting Black bodies. Instead, Spahn argues that Jefferson was the father of a distinctly Jeffersonian “Enlightenment of Feeling”—a mode of thinking that prioritized local, subjective, and embodied experience over universal and rational “truth.” Spahn explains that this emphasis on individual feeling allowed Jefferson to consistently and in good faith proclaim universal ideals (“all men are created equal”) while also harboring and endorsing subjective prejudices. She also demonstrates that the rationalist, universalist philosophy we now attribute to Jefferson was not, in fact, his. Rather, it was the work of a group of African American thinkers who refined and refashioned Jefferson’s “Enlightenment of Feeling” into a more universal “Enlightenment of Principle.”

The first half of the book reconstructs the features of Jefferson’s “felt” Enlightenment. According to Spahn, Jefferson emphasized sensation as the basis of knowledge. He downplayed the importance of reason, which he understood as a supplement to, rather than corrector of, feeling. He resisted the Enlightenment urge to think for thought’s sake and instead pursued only what he called “useful knowledge.” He insisted that knowledge should be diffused—spread democratically and horizontally—rather than located in the hands of a small group of elites. And he saw public opinion—i.e., the collective feelings of a community—as the basis of government. In short, Spahn argues that Jefferson differed from European Enlightenment thinkers in key respects. Where they prioritized Reason, he emphasized feeling. Where they strove for universal Truth, he stressed the importance of local and public opinion.

There were problems, though, with this “Enlightenment of Feeling.” Because Jefferson saw subjective sentiment as the basis of knowledge, there was room within his Enlightenment for prejudice: What a person felt, whether biased or not, warranted respect. And because Jefferson saw public opinion as the basis of government, he accepted a community’s collective prejudices. Further, Jefferson did not believe that individual or social prejudices could be forcibly corrected: He saw reason as a weak, sense-like phenomenon, so there was nothing in his worldview that would urge him or others to interrogate pre-conceived opinions. Notwithstanding his claims about “self-evident truths,” then, Jefferson accepted and perpetuated his society’s racism. If white Americans felt prejudice toward Black Americans, then it was appropriate—necessary, even—to institutionalize racial division.

In Part II, Spahn explains how African American thinkers responded to and ultimately transformed this “Enlightenment of Feeling.” Spahn describes the work of more than sixteen African American thinkers who reacted to Jefferson’s ideas, beginning with Phillis Wheatley (born 1753). She shows how each of these thinkers critiqued Jefferson’s narrow “Enlightenment of Feeling” and converted his philosophy into something more rational, objective, and universal. Lemuel Haynes, for example, abridged the second sentence of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence to stress that “life, liberty, and property” were universals, rather than contingent or derived from consent. David Walker challenged Jefferson’s belief that prejudice was natural, neutral, and inevitable by instead insisting that prejudice was voluntary, problematic, and solvable. James Forten strengthened the Declaration’s truth claims by rewording Jefferson’s “all men were created equal” to “GOD created men equal”—a more active and divinely grounded formulation. Spahn uses these and other examples to show that Jefferson did not actually hold the robust, universalist, truth-with-a-capital-T worldview that we now attribute to him. Rather, that worldview “[is] the result of African American revisions” that transformed Jefferson’s narrow “Enlightenment of Feeling” into a bigger, bolder, and more universal “Enlightenment of Principle.”

Black Reason, White Feeling does many things well. Spahn carefully describes Jefferson’s views on reason, prejudice, knowledge, and feeling and in doing so, persuasively illustrates that Jefferson was not the universalist Enlightenment thinker he is often thought to be. She also adeptly navigates the line between celebration and critique. She neither places Jefferson on a pedestal nor dismisses him as depraved. The book also addresses longstanding questions about who Jefferson was and who we, as his intellectual heirs, ought to be. And vitally, Spahn’s thoughtful and engaging survey of African American thinkers contributes to ongoing efforts to expand the white male-dominated canon of American political thought.

A book cannot be everything to everyone, though, so notwithstanding its many strengths, some readers may find Black Reason, White Feeling lacking. Spahn assumes familiarity with the texts and thinkers she discusses, and in places, the book could benefit from more context. Like all surveys, the analysis sacrifices depth for breadth. Spahn often makes claims based on only one or two lines of text (Jefferson’s “immoveable veil of black,” for example, sustains more than a dozen pages of argument), and she moves quickly between thinkers and texts. For some, the book’s pace and breadth will be refreshing. However, readers like me who prefer close readings may find the analysis underdeveloped.

Spahn’s argument also leaves some substantive questions unanswered. For example, why does Spahn label the African American tradition “Wheatley’s Enlightenment of Principle,” when Phillis Wheatley’s contributions receive only a few pages of analysis? Is it because Wheatley was one of the first African Americans to respond to Jefferson? Because Jefferson explicitly engaged with Wheatley? The distinction between Jefferson’s “Enlightenment of Feeling” and Wheatley’s “Enlightenment of Principle” lies at the heart of Spahn’s argument, so Spahn’s decision to name the latter after Wheatley could use more justification.

Spahn also does not explain how Wheatley’s “Enlightenment of Principle” differs from what Spahn calls “‘the’ Enlightenment.” Throughout the book, Spahn argues that African American thinkers transformed Jefferson’s “Enlightenment of Feeling” into a new and distinctly American mode of Enlightenment thought. But the transformations Spahn describes—namely, stronger conceptions of reason, more universal truth claims, and less emphasis on subjective feeling—look and sound a lot like the hallmarks of the European Enlightenment. Was Wheatley’s “Enlightenment of Principle” simply a return to “‘the’ Enlightenment” from which Jefferson had deviated? Or did Wheatley and her successors transform Jefferson’s “Enlightenment of Feeling” into something entirely new? Spahn seems to claim the latter, but her analysis could have done more to highlight the unique features of the “Enlightenment of Principle.”

Ultimately, though, these are small quibbles with an otherwise compelling and persuasive book. Black Reason, White Feeling is a worthwhile read for any seeking a more nuanced understanding of Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, or the American founding. It engages thoughtfully and seriously with previously under- and unstudied figures in American political thought. And, at a macro level, it provides a timely and much-needed reminder that the values, creeds, and institutions Americans revere are not only the work of white, male elites but also of Black, brown, and female intellectuals.