PSCI Weeks 8-9

What is the basis for the “rights of man” or natural/human rights? Are the “rights of man” (or natural/human rights) universal moral truths? Or are they the product of specific historical circumstances and not universally true or applicable?

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A (Very Short) History

a. 18th Century French society was a complex web of different rights and legal privileges. The rights and privileges someone had were usually determined by their social class, the region they belonged to, and idiosyncratic individual circumstances.

b. The population was divided into three Estates (or classes)

The First Estate was the monarch and the clergy

ii. The Second Estate was the nobility

iii. The Third Estate was everyone else

Economic downturn

d. France accumulated large debts fighting the Seven Years War (1756–1763) and helping American Revolutionaries (1776-1783). It struggled to repay these debts as a result of its inconsistent taxation system.

e. France experienced an economic downturn and bad harvests in 1785-1788.

f. To manage social unrest and navigate the fiscal crisis,

King Louis XVI announced in August 1788 that representatives of the three estates would convene for a special meeting called the Estates General in May 1789.

g. As the country prepared for the Estates General, there was vigorous debate about how the different estates should be represented, how they would deliberate, and how they would vote.

national assembly p1

h. February 1789: Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès publishes What is the Third Estate?

i. June 17, 1789: When the Estates are not allowed to deliberate and vote together at the Estates General, the representatives of the Third Estate declare themselves to be the National Assembly. They are joined by some members of the other Estates.

j. July 14, 1789: Worried that the King may forcibly disband the National Assembly, supporters in Paris storm the Bastille, a fortress and prison, where they take weapons for themselves.

national assembly p2

k. August 26, 1789: National Assembly publishes the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

l. The National Assembly quickly became the highest political authority in France and began to make fundamental, egalitarian reforms. Disagreements about the course of the revolution led to civil war, international war, and revolutionary terror. The national government of France underwent a series of short-lived transformations until Napoleon Bonaparte took power in 1799.

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (1789)

a. The Third Estate as a Complete Nation

i. The Third Estate performs all necessary public and private activities (44)

ii. A nation is a “body of associates living under common laws and represented by the same legislative assembly” (47)

more on sieyes

France as a “palace aristocracy” (52) from which Third Estate has been excluded

c. Call for proper representation and procedure in the Estates General

Robespierre on property requirements and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

a. In September 1789, the National Assembly decided that only some people would be eligible for the political rights guaranteed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen—

men 25 or older who paid taxes equal to three days work and could not be defined as servants. These people were deemed “active citizens.” Others were “passive citizens.”

b. Robespierre argues that this decision violates the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the spirit of equality to which the revolution was committed

c. Robespierre’s Draft Declaration calls for economic proposals (which were not included in the final Declaration)

i. “The right to private property is limited, like all others, by the obligation to respect the rights of other people”

ii. “Society is obliged to provide for the subsistence of all its members, either by procuring work for them, or by ensuring the means to exist for those who are not fit to work”

d. Robespierre’s Draft also calls for international obligations (also not included in the final Declaration)

i. “Men of all countries are brothers, and the different peoples should help one another to the best of their ability, like citizens of the same state”

ii. “He who oppresses a single nation declares himself the enemy of all”

iii. “Those who make war on a people to arrest the progress of liberty and annihilate the rights of man should be pursued by all, not as ordinary enemies but as murderers and rebellious brigands”

e. Questions to consider

i. How much economic equality is required to guarantee political equality?

ii. Does a commitment to natural rights (or human rights) entail a commitment

to enforcing those rights globally?

iii. Do natural rights (or human rights) provide a legitimate justification for

foreign military intervention? Imperialism? Colonialism?

Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791)

a. Argues that women should be guaranteed the same rights as men

b. “Property belongs to both sexes”

c. Sample marriage contract

d. Protections for unmarried women

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) was

an uprising in which the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue abolished slavery, overthrew French colonial rule, and became the independent, sovereign state of Haiti.

Note the similarities and differences among the documents of the French and Haitian revolutions

a. Efforts to guarantee certain rights

b. Abolition of slavery

c. Exclusion of white men (1805 Constitution, Art. 12)

d. Establishment of emperor

e. Condemning international policing

Condemning international policing

“Let us ensure, however, that a missionary spirit does not destroy our work; let us allow our neighbors to breathe in peace; may they live quietly under the laws that they have made for themselves, and let us not, as revolutionary firebrands, declare ourselves the lawgivers of the Caribbean”

(Declaration of Independence)

From a Radical Revolution to the “Terror”

● Revolutionaries unseat the monarchy in 1792, but there is an immediate split and tension between the moderate Girondins and radical Jacobins

● Tensions sparked the Reign of Terror led by Robespierre and the Jacobin Club (1793-4)

○ Consider Marie-Antoinette, but also Olympes de Gouges!
○ Robespierre himself brought to the guillotine in 1794
○ Return of raison d’etat....!
■ Constitutional vs. Revolutionary Government

● After Robespierre’s death, royalists attempted a counterrevolution but were crushed by General Napoleon Bonaparte

○ Bonaparte then eventually became the emperor of France
○ Napoleon was born in Corsica and read Rousseau from a young age
■ Also a former member of Robespierre’s Jacobin Club

Philosophers of the Counter-Enlightenment

● Against political computation and modern rationalism ⇒ “barbarous philosophy”

● Against the general will as basis of sovereignty

● Crucial difference between Burke and de Maistre, however...

● Against political computation and modern rationalism ⇒ “barbarous philosophy”

○ Consider Condorcet’s mathematical innovations in electoral theory
○ Against science of political economy as well, for Burke
○ “The age of chivalry is gone” (Burke, 78)

● Against the general will as basis of sovereignty

○ All political power is subordinate to God’s
○ And de Maistre dismisses Rousseau’s claims about delegating the general will as “academic”

Crucial difference between Burke and de Maistre, however...

○ Burke was an Anglican Protestant, whereas de Maistre was deeply Catholic

“The evils of

inconstancy and versatility”

● Republicans: anti-monarchy because anti-arbitrary use of absolutist power

○ For Burke, this idea was baseless
○ For de Maistre, France was a republic without republicans (de Maistre, 102)

● Instead, the people should be feared and denounced for their arbitrariness

○ The people as the “swinish multitude”
■ “Poor and sordid barbarians ... possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter” (Burke, 81-2)

● For these reason, Burke and de Maistre reject the

“evils of inconstancy and versatility” (Burke, 100)

In Defense of

Hierarchy

● Think again about the “age of chivalry”

○ For Burke, based on two principles: (I) spirit of a gentleman and (II) spirit of religion
○ For de Maistre, recognizing that “hereditary distinctions and offices” have always guided politics

● For both, hierarchy is natural

○ Burke: First and Second French Estates were “natural protectors and guardians” (81)
○ de Maistre: hierarchy is part of the “order of things” (de Maistre, 70)

● Rather than political experimentation, leaders should rely on

the experience of history

○ For Burke, return to ancient mores and traditional love of royal authority
■ Ancient values as an anchor and compass
○ For de Maistre, rely on history to prove how “large republics” have never existed

● Rule of manners versus

the rule of law

On religion, the Church, and the State

● Burke was Protestant, whereas de Maistre was Catholic
○ But both saw French Revolutionaries as profoundly godless

● Religion is the basis of

civil society
○ The “source of all good and all comfort” (Burke, 94)

● “Man is by his constitution

a religious animal” (Burke, 95)
○ Consider Aristotle and Hobbes against Aristotle (Week 4.2, slide 7)

● For both,

God willed the State, which is one reason we should be wary of
fundamentally and rapidly transforming its character (Burke, 102) + (de Maistre, 136)

Toward the Counter-Revolution?

● As it turns out, de Maistre wasn’t far off!

● He called for the restoration of

the House of Bourbon
○ First counter-revolution was suppressed by Napoleon, however...
○ That restoration actually transpired after the Napoleonic Wars

Constant on the “Sovereignty of the People”

● How to balance popular sovereignty (the general will) with individual liberty

● If popular sovereignty is “universal”

then only in a specific, limited sense
○ “Sovereignty has only a limited and relative existence.” (Constant, 177)

● Explicit criticisms of Rousseau

○ What exactly is his critique of Rousseau?
■ “..in practice destroying the principle which he had just proclaimed” (Constant, 178)
○ Goes after Hobbes as well!

● Limited sovereignty and

individual rights
○ Why?
● “The will of an entire people cannot make just what is unjust.” (Constant, 182)

Liberty of the Ancients vs. the Moderns (1819)

● “France was exhausted by useless experiments” (Constant, 309)
○ Same claim as Burke and de Maistre?

● What was the cost of ignoring the differences between ancient and modern liberty?

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● Athens as “proto-modern”

○ No representation according to Constant, however consider Daniela Cammack (2021)
○ Why was it the closest approximation to modern states/ideas of liberty?

● Against Rousseau and

de Mably

Ancients:

Sovereign in politics, slave in private life
● Slave societies

ancients on geography

● Small, geographically-restricted republics
● International relations: war > commerce

ancients on liberties

● Political liberty > civil liberty
(political rights vs private interests)
○ Consider Robespierre on public liberty vs. civil liberty

Moderns

Restricted sovereignty (representation), independent in private life
○ “lost in the multitude” (Constant, 316)

moderns geography

● Large nation-states
● International relations: commerce > war
○ Cf. Montesquieu’s doux commerce

moderns liberties

● No slaves” among European nations
● Civil liberty > political liberty

For Mill, political tyranny is one thing, but

social tyranny is more pernicious
○ The “tyranny of the majority”

● How to balance individual independence and social control?

○ How is “social control” determined?
■ Custom (cf. Constant)

● Key principle of Mill’s On Liberty? (Mill, Intro, 10)

○ Self-preservation + “Mill’s Harm Principle”
■ What counts as harm?

● “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” (Mill, Intro, 10)

○ Does this apply to all?
■ Ideas of racial improvement

● Chief civil liberties for Mill?

○ Religious liberty (Cf. Constant); liberty of conscience; liberty of thought and feeling; freedom of opinion; liberty of association

Society does not come from a social contract for Mill

○ But we live in societies and nations regardless...
○ Where do social obligations come from?

■ Self-duty =/= socially obligatory (i.e., moral self-improvement)

● Ideal society:

a society of open discussion and debate

○ The infamous “marketplace of ideas”

● Discussion and debate should be used to correct

bad behavior, not laws
○ Society cannot control behavior that principally affects the individual themselves
■ “Purely personal conduct” (Mill, Chp. IV, 10)
■ “Acts and habits which are not social, but individual) (Mill, Chp. IV, 16)
○ Against notion of “social rights”

Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France

1789 - Women’s March on Versailles

The need for “pleasing illusions” (79) as opposed to

excessive reason

“the age of chivalry is gone” (78)

ii. “public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law” (80)

iii. “sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” (82)

iv. These customs help preserve a “natural sense of right and wrong” (177)

Political importance of religion:

“religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and all comfort” (94)

Dangers of democratic oppression

i. “in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority [...] In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers arc in a much more deplorable condition than in any other” (129-130)

de Maistre, Considerations on France (1796)

a. Divine providence (Chapter 1)

b. The benefits of war (Chapter 3)

c. The impossibility of large republics/popular sovereignty

c. The impossibility of large republics/popular sovereignty

i. Lack of historical examples (65-66)

ii. Representation ≠Sovereignty (68-71)

iii. Human incapacity: “that no great institution results from deliberation and that human works are fragile in proportion to the number of men involved” (103)

iii. Human incapacity: “that no great institution results from deliberation and that human works are fragile in proportion to the number of men involved” (103)

1) “there is too much deliberation, too much humanity in this business, and one could bet a thousand to one that the city will not be built, that it will not be called Washington, and that the Congress will not meet there” (109)

Constant, “On the Sovereignty of the People” (1815)

a. Limited sovereignty: “This is what we must declare; this is the important truth, the eternal principle which we must establish. No authority upon earth is unlimited” (180)

i. Criticism of Rousseau and Hobbes (177-179)

b. Individual Rights:

“The citizens possess individual rights independently of all social and political authority” (180)

c. Methods for limiting sovereignty (182-183).

Do you think these methods are effective?

d. Liberalism

Constant Ancient Liberty:

the direct exercise of sovereign, political power

Constant Modern Liberty:

the enjoyment of certain rights guaranteed by a large representative government

Mill on Liberty The problem:

What is “the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual” ? (intro)

The answer:

“That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (intro)

Exceptions to the rule:

“we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage [...] Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement” (intro)

Liberties as rights:

“liberty of conscience,” “liberty of expressing and publishing opinions,” “liberty of tastes and pursuits,” “freedom to unite”

i. “certain interests which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights” (Chapter 4)

The importance of liberty in the struggle between individuality and conformity

i. Individuality as essential to human development:

Individuality as essential to social progress:

Individuality under threat from custom and the pressure to conform

Individuality as essential to human development:

“unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable” (Chapter 3)

Individuality as essential to social progress:

“the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty” (Chapter 3)

Individuality under threat from custom and the pressure to conform

1) “In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual, or the family, do not ask themselves—what do I prefer? [...] They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? [...] It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary” (Chapter 3)