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FRENCH REVOLUTION (EQUALITY (NATURAL VS. UNNATURAL INEQUALITIES (The Role…
FRENCH REVOLUTION
EQUALITY
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Condorcet views equality as a natural right, Paine describes equality as having equal natural rights
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FREEDOM AND EQUALITY
Robbespierre: "The goal toward which we are heading" is "peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality" - like Condorcet draws a link between two concepts, but does not discuss the relationship beween the two concepts in the way that Condorcet does
Lukes and Urbinati in Intro to Condorcet's Esquisse: Condorcet's key idea to draw links between freedom and equality ensures that "full freedom for individuals presupposes equal participation in the making of laws and the equalizing of their chances of influencing them"
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For Condorcet, despotism means a radical violation of liberty because it is a denial of equality
MATERIAL INEQUALITY
Question of taxation at the heat of the outbreak of the FR - concept of material inequality most obvious aspect of equality
Sieyes recognized there was more to inequality than simply material wealth: rejected the idea that equality would be achieved as soon as nobility renounced their monetary tax exemptions and instead emphasized other aspects of inequality
Paine's Equality between generations: "every generation is equal in rights to the generations which preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his contemporary"
Drawing a comparison between the equal rights of men and those of generations allows him to justify and defend the Revolution
Published a year after Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Rights of Man is a clear defense of the FR
In arguing that "principle of the equal rights of man [...] relates not only to the living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each other", Paine uses his previous arguments about equal rights given to mankind by God to justify French population's right to overthrow government
For Condcorcet, progress of equality required distribution of knowledge throughout society
REPUBLICANISM, NATION AND SOVEREIGNTY
REPRESENTATION
Saint-Just: "The people is sometimes mistaken, but it is mistaken less than individuals"
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For Sieyes, everything hinged on distinction between representative and democratic government: the latter was appropriate to a simpler society (based on slavery), only representative government could serve the needs of all individuals in complex, commerical society - but superiority of repr. government not just dependent on size - good for every society
Barnave, among others, drew on this distinction to defend a property-based criterion for active citizenship
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Paine one of a number of political figures to call for establishment of a republic --> Sieyes publicly came out against this call
Discussion between the two was a concise summary of two quite different conceptions of what representative government might be
For Paine, republicanism meant "government by representation" - this is why for Paine, a republic couldn't have a monarch because monarchy necessarily had a hereditary element
Sieyes argued that Paine's notion of political representation didn't go far enough and wasn't enough to ensure that all members of nation were represented - nation as a whole had to have it's own representative
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"The nation is prior to everything. It is the source of everything. It is always legal; indeed, it is the law itself" - Sieyes' on the nation as a primordial political reality
Such a class had to be excluded from a society of "useful and industrious" citizens, it was "foreign to the nation because of it's idleness"
For Sieyes, the privileged also excluded based on his definition of the nation configured within a political discourse of will: the essence of the nation in this definition lay in the equality of citizens and the universality inherent in their exercise of a common will
Sieyes, Essai sure les privileges (1788): exchange rather than hierarchy is true bond of society --> the nation, as a social body actively engaged in productive functions, can't contain entire class of citizens who consumed "the best part of the product without having in any way helped produce it"
Robespierre's attack on LA: source of all evils is absolute independence in which representatives placed themselves in regard to nation - they annihilated sovereignty of the nation, they "made themselves sovereigns, which is to say despots" - "despotism is nothing but the usurpation of sovereign power"
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REASON AND VIRTUE
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PROGRESS AND REASON
Condorcet: "We have watched man's reason being slowly formed by the natural progress of civilization
Condorcet, Esquisse: "the progress of virtue has always gone hand in hand with that of Enlightenment"
Condorcet's concept of public instruction (essential element of liberty) as a way to further indefinite progress - fundamentally linked to equal rights but unequal abilities
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Robespierre: In dealing with the internal and external enemies of the Republic, you have to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror
The discourse of reason was an idiom of modernity, emphasizing the growth of commerce and the progress of civil society - it was essentially a language of the social (as exemplified by Sieyes)
Robespierre: the greater the power of revolutionary government, the more it must be directed by good faith - if not liberty will be lost --> the reign of terror necessarily had to be the reign of virtue
For Robespierre, virtue wasn't just a political effect of good laws but innate in human nature
RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
NATURAL RIGHTS AND LAW
1789, On Despotism: Condorcet identifies 1) personal security and liberty, 2) security of and the freedom to own property, 3) equality as the three natural rights of men
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Paine, The Rights of Man (1791-92): Rights are granted to mankind by God and intended to then be inherited equally
LIBERTY
Condorcet reiterated Rousseau's theory that the natural sentiment of liberty could be found in all human hearts
For Condorcet, liberty was at the heart of revolution, any political change that would eliminate liberty would not be a revolution
Barnave: representative government would secure liberty and the interests of all citizens by entrusting the key function of active citizens to those individuals most closely attached to the social interest by their ownership of property
PROGRESS
Different forms of progress were inseparable for Condorcet - "nature links together truth, happiness and virtue by an unbreakable chain"
Moral progress: Condorcet was an egalitarian and cared about an equality of rights that could be created through institutional and political change
Condorcet didn't want to formulate perfect idealized schemes, but see how his principles could contribute to designing political frameworks in order to hasten human progress
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Link to Rousseau: Rousseau notably distinguished between physical and moral inequalities and viewed the latter as unnatural - But R and C need to be separated with regard to the role they assign property
ROUSSEAU: In Rousseau, it is the sentiment of pity that links man in a SoN to his fellows - society awakens reason, thereby weakening pity --> social man begins carelessly comparing himself with others