The French Revolution
These were all incredible reads. Considering that the times these writers lived in was so rich in change must have been very exciting (unless you were "headed" to the guillotine). It was a time when people were throwing off the mantle of the king's "divine right" to rule, and were beginning to demand a more secular approach to life--not giving up God, but asking for their leaders to show responsibility to the people that allowed them to rule. And they were realizing that, yes, they had a say so in the way their Kings treated them, or spent money or traded.
Burke was typical of the aristocracy, wheedling and using emotional propaganda to convince the people that it was God's will that they remain poor and ill and illiterate, so that the heirarchy in place to protect the rich would remain strong. Burke uses emotional appeal to persuade his readers that the Revolution was a bad thing. He describes the Revolution as chaos and a mixture of follies (pg. 47), making the claim that revolution was unnatural, that what the people wanted was out of order with the natural world. He uses the analogy of a father passing on an inheritance to a child to indicate that the political system, and the inheritance of titles, land and power, was normal and worthy. He fully believes that some people are better than others, and deserve the life of privilege over others. On page 50 he begins an explanation of some of his ideas about equality. He writes that there should be equality of rights, but that some men are meant ot be privileged and rule or carry a title. The idea of opportunity surely never even occurred to him. That a man had the right to invest his bit of money and share in the revenues is normal to Burke, but he doesn't seem to see that few outside of the aristocracy could not afford a shilling extra. He perceived the revolution as a tsunami of disorder, and surely worried overly much over his own place in his society when the fight was over. I wonder if he even cringed when Marie Antoinette reportedly made the comment that if they can't eat bread, then let them eat cake. Oh well, off with her head.
Both Wollstonecraft and Paine vehemently disagreed with Burke; this is important because both were considered well-off, but Burke and those like him were able to dismiss their ideas because, in Wollstonecraft's case, she was "merely" a woman, and subject to emotional inappropriateness, and Paine was not a member of the aristocracy so had little to lose.Wollstonecraft made the argument that the revolution was a result of oppression, and greets Burke's compassion for the king and queen with outrage at his lack of concern for the thousands who've lived in squalor for ages(pg. 64). Paine uses less passionate language than Wollstonecraft, but makes the same points, namely that man is created in God's own image, and that "divine authority" is the right of man to do what is in his power to ensure his survival and his happiness, less the need for cake-eating queens and land-stealing kings.
These were all incredible reads. Considering that the times these writers lived in was so rich in change must have been very exciting (unless you were "headed" to the guillotine). It was a time when people were throwing off the mantle of the king's "divine right" to rule, and were beginning to demand a more secular approach to life--not giving up God, but asking for their leaders to show responsibility to the people that allowed them to rule. And they were realizing that, yes, they had a say so in the way their Kings treated them, or spent money or traded.
Burke was typical of the aristocracy, wheedling and using emotional propaganda to convince the people that it was God's will that they remain poor and ill and illiterate, so that the heirarchy in place to protect the rich would remain strong. Burke uses emotional appeal to persuade his readers that the Revolution was a bad thing. He describes the Revolution as chaos and a mixture of follies (pg. 47), making the claim that revolution was unnatural, that what the people wanted was out of order with the natural world. He uses the analogy of a father passing on an inheritance to a child to indicate that the political system, and the inheritance of titles, land and power, was normal and worthy. He fully believes that some people are better than others, and deserve the life of privilege over others. On page 50 he begins an explanation of some of his ideas about equality. He writes that there should be equality of rights, but that some men are meant ot be privileged and rule or carry a title. The idea of opportunity surely never even occurred to him. That a man had the right to invest his bit of money and share in the revenues is normal to Burke, but he doesn't seem to see that few outside of the aristocracy could not afford a shilling extra. He perceived the revolution as a tsunami of disorder, and surely worried overly much over his own place in his society when the fight was over. I wonder if he even cringed when Marie Antoinette reportedly made the comment that if they can't eat bread, then let them eat cake. Oh well, off with her head.
Both Wollstonecraft and Paine vehemently disagreed with Burke; this is important because both were considered well-off, but Burke and those like him were able to dismiss their ideas because, in Wollstonecraft's case, she was "merely" a woman, and subject to emotional inappropriateness, and Paine was not a member of the aristocracy so had little to lose.Wollstonecraft made the argument that the revolution was a result of oppression, and greets Burke's compassion for the king and queen with outrage at his lack of concern for the thousands who've lived in squalor for ages(pg. 64). Paine uses less passionate language than Wollstonecraft, but makes the same points, namely that man is created in God's own image, and that "divine authority" is the right of man to do what is in his power to ensure his survival and his happiness, less the need for cake-eating queens and land-stealing kings.
posted by stevepeano at 3:50 PM
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