Friday, March 12, 2010

How did the Enlightenment help cause the American and French Revolutions?

The egalitarianism of ideas enabled people realize that the utilization of their own reason was more powerful and more meaningful than the Church unilaterally telling them what was right and what wasn't.





So, they started disobeying the Church, and their own governments.





Viola.





-John
How did the Enlightenment help cause the American and French Revolutions?
People started thinking for themselves.
How did the Enlightenment help cause the American and French Revolutions?
People started becoming more secular than in the past, famous philosophers started valuing the individual and how everyone could achieve change. They pressured creative thinking, and encouraged the everyday people to question others, their authority, and their governments and religions.





Upon hearing these statements put out a lot, the Americans and the French realized that they shouldn't have to suffer and that something was never right. They asked questions, and got answers, reached a realization and took risks to make their countries better places, all through the encouragement of revolutionaries. It created their new attitudes on life.
Reply:The Enlightenment movement had philosophers such as John Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Beccaria analyse different things about goverment and life.


There is the idea of reason, that people have a natural reason and so we should be living life according to that reason and nothing else.


There was also the idea of the social contract where everyone made an agreement to live in a society where people agreed to the rules and morals that were upheld.


There was also a huge look at the legal system and how it was unfair in the use of judicial torture, that the law could be manipulated by the wealthy and used in such a way that the poor would have little or no access and representation in the laws.


All of these ideas impacted on how people thought. Locke was a huge influence towards the writing of the Declaration of Indpendence with the famous line we have the right to life, liberty. He influenced people to want what they believed was naturally their right to have.


When it comes to the French Revolution, it came down to the this idea of nature, but also the government and the legal system being appaulling and needing to be changed. These philosophers' publications influenced enough people to make enough noise to get things changed through the revolution.
Reply:Locke was the most important to the American Revolution, though his role is often exaggerated.





In any case, to say that Enlightenment ideas "caused" these Revolutions goes rather too far. To say it "helped cause" ... not quite sure of that either. For one thing, there were many OTHER ideas as well as political, economic and social situations that played a LARGER role in producing these upheavals.





True, some Enlightenment ideas helped give SHAPE to arguments used to push and shape these Revolutions -- and PERHAPS they would not have happened apart from those specific ideas, but I'm not so sure about that either.





For example, Americans were not simply responding to abstract ideas about what government should be like. Rather, their OWN experience of enjoying a large measure of self-government since the founding of these colonies (due to a growing English "Constitutional" tradition that came BEFORE the Enlightenment) and feeling that suddenly this was all being taken away was a HUGE factor in producing the American Revolution.





So, for instance, in one of the earliest official explanations of their views, the FIRST Continental Congress, in its "Declarations and Resolves" (Oct 1774) mentions "natural rights" (to life, liberty and property) -- in language based on John Locke (specifically, his 1692 "Second Treatise on Government", perhaps the ONE Enlightenment work most of them knew much about).





But much MORE of that document appeals to the covenants, charters and historical 'rights of ENGLISHMEN' they had enjoyed to this time. ALL of the "concrete" rights (e.g., to trial by jury, representation) and complaints are based on these matters -- and on EARLIER English struggles (esp the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution of 1689), which preceded Locke. (In fact, Locke's treatise was written in part to explain and justify those earlier events)... And even Locke's ideas in opposition to the "divine right of kings" (in favor of government "by the consent of the governed") were not original. Puritan and Whig writers had argued for these earlier in the century, and the Puritans of New England were arranging 'covenants' and 'compacts' in the 1620s and 30s. (The first great argument against divine right of kings, in the 1650s, was "Lex Rex" ["the LAW is king"] by the Scotch Puritan pastor Samuel Rutherford.)





A good read through the English "Bill of Rights" of 1689 shows strong connections to later U.S. bills of rights AND to the very structure and main argument of the Declaration of Independence (listing their rights as Englishmen and how the king had VIOLATED them, leading to their refusing to any longer acknowledge his authority) -- yet that was NOT considered an "Enlightenment" document.





As a result, the rhetoric and part of the WAY of arguing in their political pamphlets and official documents (e.g. Declaration of Independence) did draw on Locke, but OTHER factors were at least as important. The other major "Enlightenment" idea that influenced the founders' was Montesquieu's notion of "separation of powers".





This did not directly affect the Revolution, but it DID influence the way several state governments and eventually the U.S. government under the Constitution (1789) were organized. (Most of those who shaped these arrangements may have known nothing of Montesquieu, et.al. On this specific matter perhaps the biggest influence on the colonists was the advocacy and arguments made by John Adams.)





As for the French Revolution -- again, ideas played their part. But certainly economic hardships, political struggles between the various estates, etc. were a major part in getting that all STARTED. THEN, once the upheaval had begun, there were some who tried to steer and shape it based on ideas from the political philosophical writings of "Enlightenment" thinkers (including French writers like Voltaire who were influenced by Locke).

History

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