Enlightenment Ideas
Edmund Burke was one of the first to suggest that the philosophers of the French Enlightenment were somehow responsible for the French Revolution. It may well be that the collapse of the Old Regime was the consequence of other factors- economic problems, social unrest, conflicting ambitions of groups and individuals.
Those theorists were far from sharing the same ideas; but then, the French Revolution itself was not animated by a single revolutionary program. The French Revolution went through the series of phases, each of which almost amounted to a revolution in itself. Revolutionists repudiated one policy to adopt another, more or less its antithesis, they were able to turn from one philosopher of the enlightenment, to an alternative, competing or rival theorists from the same stable.
The first phase of the French Revolution was the one in which the dominant ideas were those of Montesquieu, notably those expounded in his masterpiece. Montesquieu claimed that a liberal constitutional monarchy was the best system of government for the people who prized freedom. Monstesquieu suggested that the English had achieved this by sharing sovereignty between the crown, Parliament and the law courts.
Some of the people most active in the earliest stages of the revolution were aristocrats, who undoubtedly identified the cause of national freedom with the interests of their own estate.
The privelege orders proved more eager to hold on to their priveleges than to accede to the powers Montesquieu had wished them to have. Instead it was less privileged groups represented in the Third Estate- the commons- who demanded to share the soveriegnty of the nation witht the Crown.
Locke's theory of the natural rights were life, liberty and property. French Revolution justifies itself to the world and the people, by proclaiming the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen as early as August, 1789. The division of soveriegnty between the Crown and the legislature was still thought of as the central achievement of the revolution of 1789.
Thus the theory of divided soveriegnty came to be overthrown in favor of the theory of undivided soveriegnty; the constitutional monarchy gave way to a republic: Montesquieu, in effect yielded to Rousseau.
The Second phase of the French Revolution can be dated as it is in the revolutionary calendar from September 1792, or Vendemiaire of Year One, to Napoleon's coup d'etat in November 1799, or 19 Brumaire of Year Eight. Rousseau's body was disinterred from its grave in Ermononville, taken in a solemn procession to Paris and placed in the Pantheon.
When the First French Republic was brought to an end by Napoleon. Once the French Revolutionists had rid themselves of their king, they began increasingly to think of themselves as the Romans of the modern world.
The privelege orders proved more eager to hold on to their priveleges than to accede to the powers Montesquieu had wished them to have. Instead it was less privileged groups represented in the Third Estate- the commons- who demanded to share the soveriegnty of the nation witht the Crown.
Locke's theory of the natural rights were life, liberty and property. French Revolution justifies itself to the world and the people, by proclaiming the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen as early as August, 1789. The division of soveriegnty between the Crown and the legislature was still thought of as the central achievement of the revolution of 1789.
Thus the theory of divided soveriegnty came to be overthrown in favor of the theory of undivided soveriegnty; the constitutional monarchy gave way to a republic: Montesquieu, in effect yielded to Rousseau.
The Second phase of the French Revolution can be dated as it is in the revolutionary calendar from September 1792, or Vendemiaire of Year One, to Napoleon's coup d'etat in November 1799, or 19 Brumaire of Year Eight. Rousseau's body was disinterred from its grave in Ermononville, taken in a solemn procession to Paris and placed in the Pantheon.
When the First French Republic was brought to an end by Napoleon. Once the French Revolutionists had rid themselves of their king, they began increasingly to think of themselves as the Romans of the modern world.