The Theism of the French Revolution
Jonathan Rowe on Jun 30th 2007
In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example and France has followed it [emphasis mine], of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness. We look back, already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason and the rights of man; We look forward with joy, to the period, when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound for ever in the chains, with which it had loaded its miserable victims.
– James Madison, 1792
Another title to this post could have been Robespierre Creationist!
American Vision produced a comical video attempting to slam atheists Dawkins and Harris with the horrors of atheistic regimes the French Revolution, Nazism, and Communism. One main problem with their notion is that neither Nazism nor the French Revolution were atheistic.
The video singles out Maximilien Robespierre as the poster boy for Enlightenment influenced atheistic slaughter. But Robespierre was not an atheist but a firm believer in God. And, as I pointed out in this much read post, the French Revolution was declared according to a strikingly parallel set of principles/ideals as the American.
The French Revolution, like the US Revolution, appealed to a generically defined God. This shouldn’t surprise us given that Jefferson, the author of the US’s Declaration, was in France right before their revolution, helping to lay the philosophical grounds for it, assisting in writing the French’s Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The two documents, and hence the two revolutions, appealed, at base, to the same Enlightenment principles of God-given rights to liberty and equality. As the French document begins:
Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:
Articles:
1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
As noted, Maximilien Robespierre was not an atheist but a devout worshipper of “the Supreme Being.” And Robespierre’s Supreme Being was, like the God of the US Founding, one who loved political liberty and hated tyranny. As he wrote in his “Cult of the Supreme Being”:
“The day forever fortunate has arrived, which the French people have consecrated to the Supreme Being. Never has the world which He created offered to Him a spectacle so worthy of His notice. He has seen reigning on the earth tyranny, crime, and imposture. He sees at this moment a whole nation, grappling with all the oppressions of the human race, suspend the course of its heroic labors to elevate its thoughts and vows toward the great Being who has given it the mission it has undertaken and the strength to accomplish it.”
Jefferson and Franklin coined the “motto” “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” Dave Kopel traces it to an earlier Protestant thinker. However, such motto also perfectly describes Robespierre’s “Supreme Being.” And by the way, the “Supreme Being” was also one of George Washington’s many generic terms for God. He once said:
“No Man has a more perfect Reliance on the alwise, and powerful dispensations of the Supreme Being than I have nor thinks his aid more necessary.”
The Biblical God, on the other hand, seems wholly unconcerned with political liberty, but rather SPIRITUAL liberty.
This isn’t to say the two revolutions were identical events. No two historical events are identical. And there were some notable differences in ideology. For instance, the US was more influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment and less by the French Enlightenment. Rousseau’s “fingers” were more present in the French Revolution.
The ideological origins of the US Founding have been studied in great detail and seriously argued over. If we view the US Founding as a unique historical nexus, and look back in hindsight, we see many ideological tributaries flowing to and from it. Certainly there were tributaries of Christian thought flowing into that point. Jim Babka once detailed all of the Protestant historical documents that recognized subjects’ rights to resist tyrannical kings. And Tom Van Dyke has stressed the idea of inherent natural rights can also be traced from our Founders, through various Christian natural law scholars to Aquinas. And Aquinas of course, traces back to the non-Christian Aristotle who was explicitly listed by our Founders (Jefferson in particular) as inspiration.
Yet, the Declaration is a generically theistic document with no discernible “Christian” content. That’s not to say it is incompatible with Christianity. Just that it is “a-Biblical,” not necessarily “anti-Biblical.” Indeed, given America’s Declaration of Independence so greatly influenced the French Revolution, the principles contained therein must have been compatible with the original principles of the French Revolution. Indeed, as noted, the French’s Declaration of the Rights of Man was modeled after America’s DOI, with Jefferson, America’s Declaration’s author, helping to write the French’s original Declaration.
When arguing over the ideological origins of America’s Founding, other historical events and documents are often offered as analogies. I therefore stress the closest historical analogy to the American Revolution is the French Revolution. And the most analogous document to America’s DOI is the French’s Declaration of the Rights of Man. That is, the ideas contained within the US’s Declaration of Independence may bear *some* resemblance to, for instance, Philippe Duplessis-Mornay’s Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, published in 1579 and the other documents of Protestant origin Jim Babka discussed here. But the US’s Declaration’s ideas are most similar to the those in French’s Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Plus, the events which triggered the writing of those Protestant documents occurred some hundreds of years prior to the American Revolution. Even the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain occurred in 1688 almost one hundred years prior to America’s Revolution. The French Revolution began in 1789, right when the US was ratifying its Constitution.
So those who want to contrast America’s Revolution with the French’s and then attempt to, by way of historical analogy, credit “Christian” sources with America’s Founding ought to tread very carefully. An honest examination of the historical record shows the American and French Revolutions to be the closest historical analogies. At least, that’s the way James Madison — the father of America’s Constitution — saw it. (See above quotation.)
Thus, if we view the US’s Founding as a historical nexus with ideological tributaries flowing to and fro, my point is simply the French Revolution took place slightly down river to the left. And then the waters got real rough over there, whereas in America, there was smooth sailing along the river…at least until 1861.
Filed in The Belfry, The Bureau
The French altered Jefferson’s formulation of rights from a Creator to the nebulous “natural and imprescriptible rights of man.” This is key.
In fact, the current current (?) is to alter the American Founding into something like the French revolution, where if you recall, they renamed the cathedral of Notre Dame the Temple of Reason. Nuh-uh.
The French altered Jefferson’s formulation of rights from a Creator to the nebulous “natural and imprescriptible rights of man.” This is key.
I don’t disagree that they did this, of course, but I guess I don’t see why this is so important. The difference that matters, think, is not about where they think rights come from. It’s about what limits there should be to state power. The French Revolution never found any convincing limits, while the American was mostly about setting them out as clearly as possible. I doubt, for instance, that Jefferson or any of the founders would have had much of a problem with rights that were held to be natural and imprescriptible (indeed, in the debates over the Bill of Rights, many of them expressed the opinion that natural rights could never be fully codified in any event). Where they parted company was over the General Will, whether this was at all a useful political concept, and whether governments could be trusted to work for the best interests of the people in all cases with neither institutional limits nor countervailing powers (these last were antithetical to the French revolutionaries).
Oh, they knew exactly what they were doing in monkeying with the D of I concept, Jason. It was not just an alternate phrasing.
The difference between the French revolution and the American Founding is the whole point hereabouts: where the Americans instituted a change of regime and (only partially) political system, the Jacobins sought not only to reinvent society, but man himself. That Edmund Burke discerned this and derivative thinkers Jefferson and Madison did not should put up a red flag in reading the “key” Founders like gospel.
“Imprescriptible” is sheer nonsense, which is why the French Revolution, unlike the American one, descended into chaos, as Burke predicted. How do you prescribe the imprescriptible? Take two Rousseaus and call me in the morning?
the Jacobins sought not only to reinvent society, but man himself.
I agree with that — no dispute at all. But the attempt to remake the Christian God into a Supreme Being was not the cause, only an effect, of their overall intentions.
If you believe that “imprescriptible” rights are nonsense, then I will only refer you to the debates over the Ninth Amendment, which refer explicitly to unenumerated rights, and the sheer impossibility of writing down all the things that free people have a right to do.
How do you prescribe the imprescriptible? It’s very simple, and the American Constitution got it right: Enumerate the powers of government, and declare all the rest to be at liberty.
And the Tenth Amendment reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.”
The US constitution is not the sum of all government. The states ban all sorts of things, like cruelty to animals, having sex on the sidewalk, eating each other’s dead bodies. The abstractions of liberty cannot justify these bans, but on the whole, we’re good with them.
As to the Jacobins, this is (IMO, of course) a serious misreading. The philosophical underpinning of the Founding, if located in the D of I (there’s some dispute to that these days), grounds rights in a Creator. The Jacobins do not ground them at all, making man the measure of all things. The Temple of Reason was not dedicated to any Supreme Being, unless you count man himself.
“The French altered Jefferson’s formulation of rights from a Creator to the nebulous ‘natural and imprescriptible rights of man.’ This is key.”
But, Tom, I don’t see much altering. They also noted: “Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen….”
Tying rights to God certainly helps to make them “unalienable,” or otherwise “settle” the question. I see the same thing going on in both circumstances. One of those rights, btw, was a right to revolt, which is hardly Biblical. As Lino Graglia put it:
America’s Declaration is a document that really can’t be “highjacked” by either the secularist-materialist left or the religious right. It grounds its theory of rights in theism which obviously conflicts with atheistic-materialist politics. Yet, it relies on the law of God to attempt to justify revolutionary, arguably subversive politics, whose connection to “Biblical” ideas is tenuous at best.
Religious conservatives can either then 1) posit myth and pretend, it’s really okay, the Declaration’s ideas are “Biblical,” or 2) downplay its importance, which I think honest, smarter social and religious cons do. Russell Kirk, Robert Bork, Lino Graglia, Thomas Fleming, and others all realize that there is nothing “Biblical” about the Declaration and the notion that it’s part of the US’s “organic laws” doesn’t help their cause and can be quite harmful to the conservative social order they are trying to preserve (or bring back).
And even though I don’t quite agree with such legal positivism, that 8 out of 9 members of the Supreme Court do suggests one can make a serious case that we are governed solely by the Constitution, not the Declaration. Those two documents are interesting to contrast; the Constitution is more atheistic than the Declaration (hence in some ways more amenable to leftist-atheistic politics, one reason why Barry Lynn and Michael Newdow can’t turn to the Declaration because they want to get “under God” out of the pledge). Yet, the Constitution makes no references to “sweeping” ideals of “unalienable rights” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It rather seems to make many compromises with those ideas and suggests that those rights might be alienable indeed.
Tom Van Dykeon 01 Jul 2007 at 4:08 pm wrote:
“…where the Americans instituted a change of regime and (only partially) political system, the Jacobins sought not only to reinvent society, but man himself….”
Pretension to “reinvent man” is closely related to claiming possession of an all-encompassing ideology that defines the “Truth”. So, from where I stand, when a committed religionist criticizes another all-encompassing ideology claiming to be the “Truth” for trying to “reinvent man” there is a kettle calling the pot black, please look in the mirror, irony.
Jonathan Rowe on 01 Jul 2007 at 10:24 pm wrote:
“….Tying rights to God certainly helps to make them “unalienable,” or otherwise “settle” the question….”
Does it really? Isn’t it more accurate to say that all introducing a God does here is to redirect the question to how we reliably and accurately determine what this god decrees? God is a sweep the problem under the rug kind of approach to “resolving” questions. By substituting god for reason we are left with no (peaceful) means to resolve differences between incompatable, non-negotiable assertions of “divinely created” rights.
The French Rights of Man explicitly states that government is an act of (human) will. The question remains whether the US is founded on the recognition of a higher law or order or simply will. (So too, international law theory through Grotius, Suarez, etc. is based not on will, but on an underlying natural law.)
I agree with Mr. Rowe that “Biblical” is not quite appropriate here—that’s an invocation of Luther, et al’s sola scriptura, as if there is nothing more to Christianity than the Bible itself. This view excludes the 1700-odd years of theology, political philosophy and reason that led to the concept of the inherent dignity of the human person, later perfected into what we today call “human rights.”
“Will” has nothing to do with them. The French asserted them, but did not and could not ground them: indeed, the freedom and protection of religious expression of the US Founding is nowhere to be found in the desecration of the cathedral of Notre Dame. It was a reasonable thing to do, perhaps, per Mr. Atheist’s comments above, but puts the Jacobins decidedly at odds with the character of America’s Founders. They are by no means peas in a pod.
It’s untoward to post twice in a row, but I wanted leave Jonathan’s consideration of the current Supreme Court makeup as separate albeit equal.
It’s said that Thomas is a natural law guy—he’ll vote his conscience. Alito and Roberts we don’t know about yet. The four liberals, I dunno either—they could be voting their view of natural law or simply substituting will, like the French.
Scalia’s seems the most conciliatory position, that voters and legislators may follow their hearts in their interpretation of natural law, that it’s a valid yardstick. Except for judges, who must bow to the what Jefferson called the “American mind,” the consensus discernment of what natural law obliges. Altho Mr. Atheist views religion as a dogmatic monolith, the ever-increasing number of sects indicates that’s not so, and their proliferation was exactly what Madison had in mind if you read him closely. (Adam Smith, too, and Madison, more than most of the Founders, was a Smith fan, bigtime. What they opposed was any sect cornering the market and attaining a monopoly.)
The funny thing about the modern philosophical project, of which the French Revolution was a symptom, is that it’s been fancied that “reason” would lead humanity to self-evident consensus. We know now that that’s not so either, and I submit that it’s the asserting rather than grounding of human rights that’s at the core of the chaos.
Tom,
I think I’d agree that the concept of “Will” in the French Revolution reflects Rousseau’s greater influence on it than he had on America’s.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.” [Emphasis yours.]
There are indeed multiple interpretations of the Tenth Amendment. There are two things, though, that it almost certainly can’t be: First, it can’t be a repeal of the Ninth Amendment. The same institutions and individuals approved of both of these amendments at virtually the same time, and it was nowhere believed at the time of ratification that the one repealed or in some way destroyed the other. (If it did, presumably they would not have approved of the Ninth Amendment in the first place.)
Second, it can’t be a grant of additional power to the states. This is because whenever the Constitution grants a power, it makes at least some effort to declare what that power is. Even the legislative power given to Congress consists only of those powers “herein granted,” and there then follows a discrete list of powers. It’s not all legislative power imaginable (at least not under the original meaning of the words). The same is true of the executive and even more so for the courts, both of which have only delimited powers. Nowhere does the Constitution ever grant a plenary or unspecified power, and as if this were not enough, even the language of the Tenth Amendment speaks only of powers “reserved,” not of powers granted.
What the Tenth seems designed to accomplish is to allow states to govern in the same areas that they had been all along — things like crimes against person and property, for example, about which the federal government would only have jurisdiction if they implicated an interstate or federal interest. The Tenth Amendment concerns the relationship between states and the federal government; the Ninth Amendment concerns the relationship between individuals and the federal government; they do not speak to one another at all.
In other words, the most reasonable conclusion, at the time of ratification, was as follows: The Ninth declared that the citizens’ unenumerated (and really innumerable) rights would not be touched by the federal government; the Tenth declared that states’ powers were not to change in any ways that were not already spelled out in the Constitution. We may argue later about what incorporating the Ninth might mean for the states, and this may mean a very great deal indeed, but I can’t really accept that the Tenth was meant at the time of ratification as a limitation on the extent of the Ninth.
As to the Jacobins, this is (IMO, of course) a serious misreading. The philosophical underpinning of the Founding, if located in the D of I (there’s some dispute to that these days), grounds rights in a Creator. The Jacobins do not ground them at all, making man the measure of all things. The Temple of Reason was not dedicated to any Supreme Being, unless you count man himself.
I don’t agree. The French Constitution of 1791 was very awkward on the subject of religion, since its authors were pulled in two different directions: France was still a monarchy, and the monarchy was inextricably tied to the Catholic religion. Yet the Catholic Church, even at the time, was deeply hostile to the Revolution — and it was considered treasonous to attack the church-state nexus! There were quite simply no good answers to this conundrum; while liberals favored religious toleration and the separation of church and state, actually accomplishing these goals was virtually impossible given the institutional power of the Catholic Church at the time.
The early French Revolution, prior to the founding of the Republic, was in large part a fight about religion. It faced problems that were nearly insoluble: What to do with the enormous wealth of the Church (which it had attained mostly by being a creature of the state). What to do with the inequality of taxation between clergy and laity, the tithes, the consistory court system, the right of mortmain, the monastic system, and so forth. What to do with the supposedly sacred quality of the French king. What to do with the Jews and with the Protestants, the latter of whom were only afforded civic toleration two years before the Revolution.
Precisely because these were live issues, the French Revolution was unable to agree on where rights came from: If at any moment the legislators conceded that rights came from God, then the Church would assert all of its traditional political power, and even the moderate liberals would have to abandon many of their stronger (but entirely just) claims against the oppressive power of the church-state complex. But if they argued that rights came from any other source, they would also be surrendering: They would be labeled atheists. Hence there is no attempt, either in the Declaration of the Rights of Man or in the Constitution of 1791, to give even a rudimentary theory of the origin of rights.
As to the specific cults of the French Revolution — those of Reason and of the Supreme Being — I hope I can be forgiven for saying that they seem like simply another variety of religious fanaticism, and one that the state had no business enforcing on anyone else. They may have been replacements for the Catholic Church, and temporary ones at that, but they were no improvements.
I think we’d both agree that it was to the credit of the American Revolution that it never addressed these questions or attempted to dictate any religious beliefs to anyone. But the Americans had the advantage, of course, that they never really had to address religion at all. The French, if they really wished to liberate their polity, did. (Yes, they made a botch of things. But something has to be done when a single Church enjoys the vast privileges of the pre-Revolution French Catholic Church, privileges which made the Church and the state virtually the same creature.)
The funny thing about the modern philosophical project, of which the French Revolution was a symptom, is that it’s been fancied that “reason” would lead humanity to self-evident consensus. We know now that that’s not so either, and I submit that it’s the asserting rather than grounding of human rights that’s at the core of the chaos.
There is reason, and there is reason. It’s one kind of reason when you declare — as the Jacobins did — that everything must be made anew, and that we know exactly how to do this. But it’s also a kind of reason to declare that some specific thing is clearly broken, and that it might be possible to fix it. As to your last sentence, I have to say that I would prefer to live under a government that acknowledged my rights, in preference to a government that did not.
When they are asserted and not grounded, I do not know what “rights” are. The right to health care? FDR’s Four Freedoms, including freedom from want? My right to property, including torturing my dog, if I see fit?
I certainly agree that the French were not already blessed with competing sects as the Americans were. The question persists, if the French revolution was founded on will, was the American Founding? May we read the constitution as superseding natural law?
Me, myself, I don’t see the Signers signing under that understanding nor the states ratifying. In fact, I can’t picture a Founding at all under those conditions. If originalism has any value as a tool, we might start with what I consider an essential and common sense question.
When they are asserted and not grounded, I do not know what “rights” are. The right to health care? FDR’s Four Freedoms, including freedom from want? My right to property, including torturing my dog, if I see fit?
This is why a list of rights is so problematic to begin with: Any list will be incomplete, and “whatever” is obviously inadequate too. The answer, found in the enumerated powers of the Constitution, and in the Ninth Amendment, is to describe the finite powers of government, and to leave rights unspecified. The former prevents positive rights, since the government does not (in theory) have the power to provide them.
Torturing your dog, which is your property, is another matter. I would think you a reprehensible person for doing so, and I admit that a strictly Lockean libertarian political theory would have a hard time forbidding this. If I am a conservative in any sense at all, it is that I would leave laws like this in place, even if I am not certain that I can justify them from a theoretical standpoint.
I wouldn’t pass any new ones though.
Mr. Kuznicki, I was genuinely interested in your opinion on whether the constitution supersedes natural law.
If your answer is no, then it wouldn’t be difficult to come up with a natural law argument against cruelty to animals, and it would be a state’s right (and the people’s) to codify a ban. If your answer is yes, that opens up a whole ‘nother bag of bananas, including a great deal of turning over in their graves on the part of the Signers, methinks.
The Constitution was intended to embody natural law, of course.
That said, the founders realized that they were not omniscient, and that sometimes their decisions would have to be corrected, particularly if subsequent generations continued to discover — not invent — the principles that make up natural law.
The process of amending the constitution provides for just this, and it is intended to be (insofar as it is possible) a device for working according to natural law, within a system that aspires to reflect natural law, to make the system itself more reflective of its overall intentions than the founders themselves were capable of grasping or enacting. Many of the subsequent amendments can be seen in just this context — further extending the promise of natural human equality in moral worth, dignity, and legal status.
If you wished to amend the Constitution in support of animal rights, then you would be acting within the system, but I would almost certainly oppose this gesture, since it does not accord with my own understanding of natural law. Who is right? That is for posterity, and possibly the Creator, to judge.
Thank you. I myself would rather take my chances with reasoning out natural law than trying to reason with the will of the French people.
The French also tried to obliterate the Christian calendar, replacing it with a metric one. Did not take, though. See,
http://gayspecies.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-evangelicals-are-way-off-base.html
TVD commits the Fallacy of the False Dilemma.
Either A or B. Not B. Therefore A. It’s a simple logistical disjunction.
But the Disjunction, by the additive rule, could add a third premise: C.
Either A or B or C.
Not A.
Not B.
Therefore C.
(Either Natural Law or French Intellectuals or Darwinian Biology.
Not Natural Law — a fallacy
Not French Intellectuals — no one makes sense
Therefore, Darwinian Biology.)
False Dilemma Resolved.
In 1787, Darwin wasn’t born yet.
In 1787, Darwin wasn’t born yet.
I believe the Gay Species was making a joke.
Either the Will of the People.
Or Natural Law.
Or sex, drugs, and rock n roll.
We’ve ruled out the first two, see…
Dang, Mr. Species makes his first joke, and I go and miss it.
Altho “Darwinian biology” risks falling into the naturalistic fallacy that he so despises, we must here quote the eminent philosopher Mick Shrimpton—”As long as there’s sex and drugs, I can do without rock and roll.”
See, man, in his state of nature, cannot make rock and roll because as Mr. Rowe will confirm, there is no rock and roll without electric guitars; there were none at the Founding and they are conspicuously absent in the French Rights of Man.
Or, perhaps the Jacobins ain’t dead yet, and we shall place our belief in human progress after all. In that case, may the Supreme Being and/or the Temple of Reason bless Les Paul and Leo Fender.
Cheers.