Today is Bastille Day, a celebration of the start of the French
Revolution. Most people I’ve talked to who have issues with the Revolution point
to its violence. It’s difficult to overstate the violence of the Revolution.
You could look at the sheer number of people beheaded with the guillotine, a
device chosen for being painless and disturbingly efficient.[1]
Less illuminating, but more emotionally charged, are anecdotes like the episode
in which a mob broke into the royal palace at Versailles, took the royal family
hostage, and forced them to ride to Paris in a parade with the still-bleeding heads
of their household staff, mounted on pikes. The bloodiness of the French
Revolution is clearly horrific, and it’s enough to make a person skeptical
about the Revolution’s cultural impact. A characterization of the Revolution
that seems fairly common to me is that it was good in theory, but then it got
out of control. I’m skeptical about this conception of the revolution. Looking
at the foundational documents of the revolution show all sorts of problems in
the ideals of the revolutionaries, to the point where it seems reasonable to
think that the ideals were part of the reason the revolution went out of
control.
The most
obvious example of this is the type of rights language the Declaration of
Rights of Man and Citizen (a sort of preliminary Bill of Rights). Some of these
sound like nice ideas that most people in modern in society can get behind,
like the idea that “The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the
most precious of the rights of man.” Free speech! We all like free speech. But
much of the rest of the document is vague. For instance, it asserts that all sovereignty
is derived from the nation. Nationalism was a fast-growing, popular idea in
Europe at the time, so presumably this refers to some nationalist catchphrase,
but the actual point to this (besides to say that sovereignty didn’t come from
the King) is left out.
The document also asserts that “Men
are born and remain free and equal in rights.” This is taken right out of
Rousseau’s philosophy, similar to the way the American Founding Fathers
borrowed Locke’s ideas. But what “Men are born free” means has always eluded me.
The meaning wasn’t obvious to people of the time either. The British political
philosopher Jeremy Bentham criticized the pronouncement harshly: “All men
are born free? All men remain free? No, not a single man: not a single man
that ever was, or is, or will be. All men, on the contrary, are born in
subjection, and the most absolute subjection—the subjection of a helpless child
to the parents on whom he depends every moment for his existence. In this
subjection every man is born—in this subjection he continues for years—for a
great number of years—and the existence of the individual and of the species
depends upon his so doing.” A more positive way of putting it is that we are
born into this world with dependency, relationships, and duties. A newborn
infant clearly can’t do anything he wants, because he can’t even feed himself.
Similarly, his parents do not “remain” free because they are bound by basic
obligations to care for their child—a basic obligation we would hope would be
more of a springboard for the greater relationship springing from mutual love.
However, even without this love, it would be considered reprehensible if the
parents left the child in the woods to die. These sort of basic obligations, or
duties, are a part of natural law; because of the nature of the parent-child
relationship, the parent must provide for the child, at least insofar as she or
he is able. Natural law can also be the basis for rights; in the case of the parent
and child, we could say that the child has a right to be cared for.
 |
| Two tablets? Really? Real subtle, guys. |
I won’t say natural law theory can’t
be interpreted in ways that vary. However, it is useful to compare the French
Revolutionaries’ idea of rights with natural law. Natural law is a possible basis we can
appeal to to justify claims of rights. The revolutionaries offered no grounds
for their rights. Rights were simply asserted as obvious, even though they
would have been considered absurd mere centuries before. The government didn’t
provide for those rights, so the revolutionaries overthrew the government and
set up a new one. Where do these rights come from? Bentham asks, “What, then,
was their object in declaring the existence of imprescriptible rights, and without
specifying a single one by any such mark as it could be known by? This and no
other—to excite and keep up a spirit of resistance to all laws—a spirit of
insurrection against all governments—against the governments of all other
nations instantly,—against the government of their own nation—against the
government they themselves were pretending to establish—even that, as soon as
their own reign should be at an end.” In other words, if these rights are
merely asserted without any clear basis, how do we know what rights ought to be
claimed? What rights correspond to the vast network of human relationships we
call society? Without a basis for rights besides popular opinion, we wind up
with an explosion of rights. Rights could be asserted even though they have no
apparent basis in our natures.
This explosion of rights is a much
more far-reaching effect of the revolution than the temporary, though horrific, violence. Rights eventually conflict with not
only our natures, but the rights of others. The right to freedom of religion
was found to conflict with the public welfare; since the freedom of religion
had no particular basis (or at least none was given at the time), it folded.
Catholic churches were burned, priests beheaded, monasteries attacked. The
revolutionary government founded a new religion based on worship of a
hyper-rational Supreme Being. Rights, asserted on the basis of nothing but
intellectual fads, were trampled as thousands were fed to the guillotine.
This is part of the reason
contemporary claims of rights can be disturbing. The right to freedom of religion
is apparently trumped by the right to contraception, although what basis the
latter can have in the nature of things escapes me. The right to life is
trumped by an increasingly privatized homicide. Popular arguments for same-sex
marriage seem based in little more than an assertion of a modern conception of
human equality, which is seems to be utterly undefined and unexamined.
Everyone, it seems, wants rights, but few seem to be able to explain what a “right”
is, where they come from, and why we should have any at all. For this, we have
the French Revolution, in part, to thank.
Note: I meant to actually post this for Bastille Day... but it was delayed. Oh well. It's my right to delay Bastille Day posts until July 28th, or even Christmas, if I want.
All images- Wikipedia
c David L.
[1]
About choosing the guillotine: when your new government puts this much thought
into the way they’re going to execute people, and just happens to choose a
device that’s supposed to be easy-to-use and lends itself to rapid-succession
executions, warning bells should go off.
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