FRENCH REVOLUTION-II CONTRIBUTION OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

Objectives:

 1. To understand the intellectual background of the French Revolution of 1789. 

2. To study the philosophical views of various French philosophers, especially those related to the state and society. 

3. To review the contribution of the Encyclopedists and Physiocrats to the understanding of the conditions prior to the French Revolution of 1789. 2.1. 

Introduction:

 In addition to the economic and social difficulties, the Ancient Regime was undermined intellectually by the apostles of the Enlightenment. The philosophers were extremely critical of the Ancient Regime. In their writings, the French philosophers discredited the old order and generated optimism about the future. The philosophers introduced ideas such as constitutional monarchy, republicanism, popular sovereignty, and social equality and influenced the course of the Revolution. Voltaire attacked the church and absolutism; Montesquieu made English constitutionalism fashionable and advocated the Theory of Separation of Powers, Rousseau promoted the Social Contract Theory through which he highlighted his concept of popular sovereignty. His influence on the French Revolution was more direct than any other philosopher. Denis Diderot and the Encyclopedists, through articles on various subjects, attacked tradition and the Ancient Regime. Physiocrats advocated economic reform. The following were the prominent French philosophers who inspired the French Revolution of 1789. The French philosophers were not conscious advocates of violent revolution. When the Revolution came, one of the philosophers who lived to witness its violence wrote: The philosophers did not want to do all that has been done, nor to use the means that have been employed, nor to act as rapidly as has been done. They were the enemies of ancient abuses that long demanded suppression. Reason prompted them to attack the forces of superstition, ignorance, and folly that continued and incompetent administration, a crushing financial system, a barbarous judicial procedure, religious cruelty, economic waste, and confusion. In several ways the philosophers demonstrated the rottenness of the French institutions through satire and wit, criticism and comparison, analogy, sociological theory, and downright abuse. The French philosophers challenged the tradition and authority of the King. They believed that the Ancient Regime must go in order to bring about a better world. The philosophers questioned the basis of authority that existed upon revelation (religion), formulated new theories, aroused new enthusiasm, and fixed new ideas for all mankind. The philosophers were the standard-bearers of a faith that spread from France through all the civilized world. While destroying the old order, they established the basis of a new order. 

2.2. Voltaire (1694-1778): 

Voltaire's intelligence, wit, and style made him one of France's greatest writers and philosophers. famous writer and critic, much sought after by Louis XV of France, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Catherine the Great of Russia. Through his poems, biographies, histories, essays, and dramas he attacked traditions and beliefs as well as existing institutions like the church and the state. Francois Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) was born on 21 November 1694 in Paris. He was the son of a notary. He was educated at the Jesuit Collège Louis-le-Grand where he said he learned nothing but Latin and Stupidities. He left school at 17 and soon made friends among the Parisian aristocrats. His humorous verses made him a favorite in society circles. Because of insults to the regent, Philippe II d‘Orléans, wrongly ascribed to him, Voltaire was sent to the Bastille in 1717 for 11 months. During his time in prison, Francois Marie wrote "Oedipe" which was to become his first theatrical success and adopted his pen name "Voltaire." He also undertook the writing of an epic poem on Henry IV, the Henriade. It was at this time that he began to call himself Voltaire. Oedipe won him fame and a pension from the regent. Voltaire acquired an independent fortune through speculation; he was often noted for his generosity but also displayed shrewd business acumen throughout his life and became a millionaire. In 1726, a young nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan, resented a witticism made at his expense by Voltaire who was beaten. 

Far from obtaining justice, Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille through the influence of the powerful Rohan family. He was released only upon his promise to go into exile to England. The episode left an indelible impression on Voltaire: for the rest of his life, he exerted himself to his utmost in struggling against judicial arbitrariness. During his more than two years (1726–29) in England, Voltaire met the English literary men of the period. Voltaire was attracted to the philosophy of John Locke and the ideas of mathematician and scientist, Sir Isaac Newton. He studied England's Constitutional Monarchy and its religious tolerance. While in England, Voltaire wrote the first of his historical works. A History of Charles XII of Sweden, which remains a classic in biography. Voltaire was particularly interested in the philosophical rationalism of the time, and in the study of the natural sciences. He was impressed by the greater freedom of thought in England. Voltaire‘s Letters Concerning the English Nation, which appeared in 1733 in English, and in 1734 in French as Lettres Philosophiques, may be said to have initiated the vogue of English philosophy and science that characterized the literature of the Enlightenment. In this book, Voltaire praised English customs and institutions. In this work, Voltaire described the country, England, where opinion was free and government constitutional; where religious persecution was unknown and everyone was permitted to go to heaven in his own way; where the middle class was as respectable as the nobility; where civil liberties were guaranteed and men of letters and sciences were honored. Voltaire pointed out the lack of these praiseworthy features in the French polity and society. 

It was interpreted as criticism of the French government and in 1734, the book was formally banned in France, and in 1734, Voltaire was forced to leave Paris again. After his return to France from England in 1729 and his banishment from Paris in 1734, Voltaire produced several tragedies. These included Brutus‘ (1730) and Zaire(1732). In 1733 he met Madam Emile du Châtelet, whose intellectual interests, especially in science, matched with his own. They took up residence together at Cirey, in Lorraine. In 1746, Voltaire was voted into the "Academie Francaise." In 1749, after the death of Emile du Chatelet and at the invitation of the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, Voltaire moved to Potsdam, near Berlin in Germany. In 1753, Voltaire left Potsdam to return to France. In 1759, Voltaire purchased an estate called Ferney near the French-Swiss border where he lived until just before his death. Ferney soon became the intellectual capital of Europe. Voltaire worked continuously throughout the years, producing a constant flow of books, plays, and other publications. He wrote hundreds of letters to his circle of friends and received hosts of visitors who came to do homage to the patriarch of Ferney‘. He was always a voice of reason. Voltaire was often an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution and employed himself in seeking justice for victims of religious or political persecution and in campaigning against the practice of torture. 

He regularly contributed to the Encyclopedia and managed his estate, taking an active interest in improving the condition of his tenants.  Voltaire also edited the works of Corneille, wrote commentaries on Racine, and turned out a stream of anonymous novels and pamphlets in which he attacked the established institutions of his time. Ironically, it is one of these great works, Candide (1759) that is most widely read today. It is the masterpiece among his philosophical romances‘. In 1778, at the age of 84, Voltaire returned triumphantly to France to attend the first performance of his tragedy ―Irène in Paris. But the emotion was too much for him and he died in Paris soon afterward. In order to obtain Christian burial, he had signed a partial retraction of his writings. This was considered insufficient by the church, but he refused to sign a more general retraction. To a friend he gave the following written declaration: I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting persecution. An abbot secretly conveyed Voltaire‘s corpse to an abbey in Champagne, where he was buried. His remains were brought back to Paris in 1791 and buried in the Panthéon. Through his philosophical writings, Voltaire became the torchbearer of the French Revolution of 1789. He boldly attacked the Ancient Regime and criticized the existing political and religious beliefs and institutions. His plays, historical works, and philosophical writings inspired the French people to question the political, social, and economic conditions that existed in France.

 2.3. Montesquieu (1689-1755):

 Montesquieu was one of the great political philosophers of the Enlightenment. He constructed a naturalistic account of the various forms of government, and of the causes that made them what they were and that advanced or constrained their development. He used this account to explain how governments might be preserved from corruption. He considered despotism as a danger for any government not already despotic. In order to prevent despotism, Montesquieu argued that it could best be prevented by a system in which different bodies exercised legislative, executive, and judicial power, and in which all those bodies were bound by the rule of law. This theory of the separation of powers had an enormous impact on liberal political theory. Montesquieu‘s Theory of the Separation of Powers greatly contributed to the framing of the constitution of the United States of America and also inspired the French people in their Revolution against the autocratic regime in France. The original name of Montesquieu was Charles Louis de Secondat. He was born in Bordeaux, France, in 1689 to a wealthy family. Despite his family's wealth, De Secondat was placed in the care of a poor family during his childhood. He later went to college and 19 studied science and history, eventually becoming a lawyer in the local government. De Secondat's father died in 1713 and he was placed under the care of his uncle, Baron de Montesquieu. The Baron died in 1716 and left De Secondat his fortune, his office as president of the Bordeaux Parliament, and his title of Baron de Montesquieu. Later he became a member of the Bordeaux and French Academies of Science and studied the laws and customs and governments of the countries of Europe. He gained fame in 1721 with his Persian Letters, which criticized the lifestyle and liberties of the wealthy French as well as the church. However, Montesquieu's book On the Spirit of Laws, published in 1748, was his most famous work. It outlined his ideas on how the government would best work. Montesquieu became famous with his Persian Letters (1721), which criticized the lifestyle and liberties of the wealthy French as well as the church and national governments of France. The Persian Letters is an epistolary novel consisting of letters sent to and from two fictional Persians, Usbek, and Rica, who set out for Europe in 1711 and remain there at least until 1720 when the novel ends. While Montesquieu was not the first writer to try to imagine how European culture might look to travelers from non-European countries, he used that device with particular brilliance. Many of the letters are brief descriptions of scenes or characters. At first, their humor derives mostly from the fact that Usbek and Rica misinterpret what they see. In later letters, Usbek and Rica no longer misinterpret what they see; but they find the actions of Europeans quite incomprehensible. They describe people who are so consumed by vanity that they become ridiculous. Usbek shares many of Montesquieu's own views such as the contrast between European and non-European societies, the advantages and disadvantages of different systems of government, the nature of political authority, and the proper role of law. The best government, he says, is that "which attains its purpose with the least trouble", and "controls men in the manner best adapted to their inclinations and desires." Montesquieu lived in England from 1729 to 1731 and greatly admired the English political system. Being a lawyer and student of constitutional government, Montesquieu summed up his ideas in his book L' Esprit Des Lois‘ (The Spirit of the Laws) published in 1748. Montesquieu's aim in The Spirit of the Laws is to explain human laws and social institutions. Montesquieu believed that all things were made up of rules or laws that never changed. He set out to study these laws scientifically with the hope that knowledge of the laws of government would reduce the problems of society and improve human life. 20 According to Montesquieu, there were three types of government: a monarchy (ruled by a king or queen), a republic (ruled by an elected leader), and a despotism (ruled by a dictator).

Montesquieu believed that a government that was elected by the people was the best form of government. He did, however, believe that the success of a democracy - a government in which the people have the power - depended upon maintaining the right balance of power. Montesquieu argued that the best government would be one in which power was balanced among three groups of officials. He thought England - which divided power between the king (who enforced laws), Parliament (which made laws), and the judges of the English courts (who interpreted laws) - was a good model of this. Montesquieu called the idea of dividing government power into three branches the "separation of powers." He thought it most important to create separate branches of government with equal but different powers. That way, the government would avoid placing too much power on one individual or group of individuals. He wrote, "When the law-making and law enforcement powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty." According to Montesquieu, each branch of government could limit the power of the other two branches. Therefore, no branch of the government could threaten the freedom of the people. His ideas about the separation of powers became the basis for the United States Constitution. Montesquieu advocated constitutionalism, the preservation of civil liberties, the abolition of slavery, gradualism, moderation, peace, internationalism, social and economic justice with due respect to national and local tradition. He believed in justice and the rule of law; detested all forms of extremism and fanaticism; put his faith in the balance of power and the division of authority as a weapon against despotic rule by individuals or groups or majorities; and approved of social equality, but not to the point which it threatened individual liberty; and out of liberty, not to the point where it threatened to disrupt orderly government. Sir Isaiah Berlin. 

2.2.4. Rousseau (1712-1778):

 Jean Jacques Rousseau has been considered as the Father of the French Revolution. His influence on French society was much more than any other philosopher. In fact, it was Rousseau who provided the intellectual basis for the French Revolution. His greatest contribution to political philosophy was the famous book, The Social Contract‖. Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland on 28 June 1712. His father was a watchmaker. His mother died shortly after his birth, and his upbringing was haphazard. At the age of 16, Rousseau 21 started a life of a wanderer. During this period he came into contact with Louise de Warens in 1728 who became his patron and later his lover. She arranged for his trip to Turin, where he became an unenthusiastic Roman Catholic convert. After serving as a footman in a powerful family, he left Turin and spent most of the next dozen years at Chambéry, Savoy, with his patron. In 1742 he went to Paris and came in contact with the circle of Denis Diderot, who was the editor of the Encyclopedia. Rousseau contributed articles on Music to the Encyclopedia. His autobiographical account Les Confessions (The Confessions) written in 1783 offers an insight into his turbulent life. In 1749, Rousseau won first prize in a contest, held by the Academy of Dijon, on the question: Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to the corruption or to the improvement of human conduct? Rousseau took the negative stand, contending that humanity was good by nature and had been fully corrupted by civilization. Rousseau contended that man is essentially good, a "noble savage" when in the "state of nature" (the state of all the other animals, and the condition man was in before the creation of civilization and society), and that good person is made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society. He viewed society as "artificial" and "corrupt" and that the furthering of society results in the continuing unhappiness of man. Rousseau‘s essay made him both famous and controversial. Although it is still widely believed that all of Rousseau‘s philosophy was based on his call for a return to nature, this view is an oversimplification, caused by the excessive importance attached to this first essay. 

In a second philosophical essay, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), Rousseau argued that the advancement of art and science had not been beneficial to mankind. He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful, and crushed individual liberty. He concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of sincere friendship, replacing it with jealousy, fear, and suspicion. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) is one of Rousseau‘s most mature and daring philosophical productions. In this revolutionary piece of writing, Rousseau maintains that every variety of injustice found in human society is an artificial result of the control exercised by defective political and intellectual influences over the healthy natural impulses of otherwise noble savages. After its publication, Rousseau returned to Geneva, reverted to Protestantism in order to regain his citizenship, and returned to Paris with the title Citizen of Geneva.  The alternative to his philosophical thought expressed in The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality was his monumental work On the Social Contract written in 1762. 

Rousseau's Social Contract Theory laid down a new scheme of social organization. Rousseau believed that 'man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.' He argued that all human beings have certain natural rights and liberties. These are, right to life, liberty, and property. Rousseau further emphasized that human beings no longer owed obedience to any government that failed to protect these rights and liberties. He was the first philosopher to promote the concept of popular sovereignty. He justified the right of people to revolt against a tyrannical government. Rousseau believed in the establishment of an ideal state with a just society in which individual citizens would put their person and their power under the direction of the general will, i.e., the law. The three great ideals of the French Revolution "liberty, equality, and fraternity are found in Rousseau's Social Contract. Besides the above philosophical works, Rousseau also wrote a number of books and pamphlets on various subjects during his stay in Switzerland, Luxemburg, England, and France. 

The most important among them are: Discourse on Political Economy (1755) The New Heloise (1761), Emile (1762), Constitutional Program for Corsica (1765), and Considerations on the Government of Poland (1772). Although the authorities made every effort to suppress Rousseau's writings, the ideas they expressed, along with those of Locke, were of great influence during the French Revolution. Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution of private property, and therefore is considered a forebear of modern socialism and Communism. Rousseau also questioned the assumption that the will of the majority is always correct. He argued that the goal of government should be to secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of the will of the majority. One of the primary principles of Rousseau‘s political philosophy is that politics and morality should not be separated. When a state fails to act in a moral fashion, it ceases to function in the proper manner and ceases to exert genuine authority over the individual. The second important principle is freedom, which the state is created to preserve. 

2.2.5. Denis Diderot (1713-1784): 

Diderot was a French philosopher, and man of letters, the chief editor of the Encyclopedia, one of the principal literary monuments of the Age of 23 Enlightenment. The work took 26 years of Diderot's life. In seventeen volumes of text and eleven illustrations, it presented the achievements of human learning in a single work. Besides offering a summary of information on all theoretical knowledge, it also challenged the authority of the Catholic Church. Denis Diderot was born at Langres as the son of a successful cutler. He was first educated by the Jesuits. During this period he read and studies books of all kinds - his favorites were such classics as Horace and Homer. In 1732 Diderot received the Master of Arts degree from the University of Paris.

 His father expected him to study medicine or law, but Diderot spent his time with books. In order to earn his living Diderot worked for an Attorney, Clement de Ris, as a tutor and freelance writer. Diderot gained first notice in the 1740s as a translator of English books. Diderot wrote an article Letter on the Blind in which he questioned the existence of God, for which he was imprisoned for three months for his opinions. In 1745 Diderot became the editor of the Encyclopedia with mathematician Jean Le Rond d' Alembert, who resigned later because he believed that mathematics was a more fundamental science than biology. Diderot enlarged its scope and made it an organ for radical and revolutionary opinions. The Encyclopedia was published between 1751 and 1772 in 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of engravings. The Encyclopedia included a number of ideas of great French philosophers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire,  and Rousseau. Besides providing the latest knowledge, the Encyclopedia exposed the miserable conditions in which the country had fallen. It exposed a society based on inequality, injustice, exploitation, and slavery and promoted revolutionary ideas. 

2.2.6. The Physiocrats: 

The Physiocrats were the eighteenth-century economists and social philosophers. The School of Physiocrats was founded by French economist Francois Quesnay. Factors responsible for the rise of the School of Physiocrats were numerous. They included the growing importance of agriculture in France, the disappointing results of the economic theory of mercantilism, the poor state of French finance after the Seven Years War (1756-63), and the upsurge of liberalism in political and social thought. The Physiocrats held that the economy was subject to the rule of natural laws and that government should not interfere with the operation of the natural economic order. They advocated economic liberalism, freedom of trade, free competition, and the abolition of all special privileges. They were strong defenders of the rights to hold property, especially land. Besides Francois Quesnay other leading figures among the Physiocrats were Gournay, Mirabeau and Turgot. Quesnay explained his views in his famous book Tableau Economique (1758).

 As the son of a prosperous agriculturist, Quesnay strongly emphasized the position of agriculture. In his opinion, the land is the sole source of wealth and only that mass of agricultural and mineral products which is not consumed in the process of production should be taxed. He took his stand on the maxim, Poor peasant, poor kingdom, poor kingdom, poor monarch. According to the Physiocrats, the society is divided into three groups: farmers, landowners, and all others. The farmers were assumed to be fully productive. The landowners were considered partially productive because they cooperated with the farmers in the use and improvement of land. However, the Physiocrats held that the members of the third groups, which included people associated with trade and industry, were entirely unproductive. Quesnay and his followers also stressed the importance of free competition in creating a healthy economy and establishing good prices in agriculture. They favored little government interference in the natural law in economics. That is, they were in favor of Laissez Faire. They maintained that governmental activities should be limited to the protection of persons and property. The Physiocrats advocated the abolition of all indirect taxes and the imposition of a single tax on the net income from land.