Rousseau’s Impact on the French Revolutionaries

Rousseau’s Impact on the French Revolutionaries

        Every major civilization that has ever existed since the Enlightenment Era has strived to create and demonstrate the perfect society.  Arguments on how to create a perfect society will always be present as long as human beings are in existence. Many different government practices have upheld to fail in forming an ideal society. It is commonly accepted in present day and time that a perfect society has nor ever will exist, but late in the seventeenth century a mass of French citizens thought otherwise.

        King Louie XVI and Marie Antoinette ruled the country of France using a monarchy style of government. King Louie and especially Marie Antoinette, who nickname became Madam Deficit lived in great luxury while everyone else in the country could barely survive. A group of French people gathered, determined to change the way France was being ruled, they were called the revolutionaries. The Revolutionaries sought a new form of government called a republic, where even the common man had equal rights. The French revolutionaries favored characteristics of a republic government including, ability to move up and down the social class ladder, the right to vote, and a fair court system.

The Revolutionaries drafted a large portion of the new system from the enlightenment era, practically from one man, Jean-Jacques Rousseau author of “The Social Contract”. Rousseau, a philosophy genius, introduced several political theories that ran parallel with the idea of a formed republic; therefore the revolutionaries used Rousseau’s works as a rough draft of their new government system. The goal of the Revolutionaries was to use existing ideas from Rousseau’s Social Contract and tool them with their idea of logic.

Before the revolution France along with most of Europe had a social class system that consisted of three groups called estates. The first estate was royalty, the second estate was the noble, and the largest estate was the common laborer. The first two estates lived comfortable life styles while members of the third estate lived in poor living conditions, often not even having enough money for a loaf of bread. When word of a revolution started spreading members of the third estate were the first major supporters. They admired the thought of a republic, because it provided every man with certain rights and freedoms no matter which estate they originally came from. The first two estates obviously were agents the revolution because they held power at this time.

The revolutionaries did not think their country should be ran by a bloodline, but instead a collection of people who were best fitted to run a country no matter which estate they were born into. This aspect of a republic would prove to be beneficial because if someone in authority dies the next person fit for the task could move up and continue, mirroring Rousseau’s idea on the right of the strongest. Where in a monarchy the power comes from one individual, the king. When a monarchy king is ceased his empire crumbles with him. In chapter five of the Social Contract Rousseau supports this idea “Even if he has enslaved half the world, he is still only an individual; his interest, apart from that of others, is still a purely private interest. If this same man comes to die, his empire, after him, remains scattered and without unity, as an oak falls and dissolves into heap of ashes when the fire has consumed it”.