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Summary Of The Paine's Rights Of Man By Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke was heavily involved in the life of the public of England as a Whig politician who served from 1765 to 1794. His experience in politics convinced him that governments have a duty to fulfil the realistic needs of the population and that political crises do not all surrender in the same manner. When he heard of what was unfolding in France in 1789 and 1790, Burke became anxious that the revolutionaries were ignoring the knowledge gained by many years of experience and they were acting on assumptions that were opposing to human nature. Reflections on the Revolution in France was published by Burke in November of 1790. The political pamphlet has since become one of the best-known academic strikes against the French revolution. The …show more content…

It hypothesized that a revolution such as the French one is permissible when a government does not protect the rights of its people. Using this idea and many more it defends the revolution against Burke’s unnecessary attack. Unlike Wollstonecraft however, Paine claims it is not the French King’s fault that the revolution began and that we should see it as an attack on the tyrannical principles of the French monarchy. He then goes on to use the storming of Bastille to symbolise the dictatorship that had been overthrown. One of the points that appears in both responses to Burke is the opposition to the tradition of inheriting a government and that dictatorship is necessary due to man’s essentially unethical predisposition. In Reflections Burke puts forth his view on how he believes social stability can only arise if the poor majority are governed by the wealthy minority. He claims that through hereditary government the legitimacy of political power remains exclusively the domain of the nobility. Paine however counters this claim of the nobility’s inherent wisdom and the conclusion that the people have no right to a government that runs and presides over itself. Burke defines government as "a contrivance of human wisdom", Paine argues an alternative of the government as a man made scheme …show more content…

By shaping her work around the concept of Enlightenment and its morals we are shown exactly how Wollstonecraft created what can only be described as one of the most dependable arguments for the expansion of equality within democracy in the history of modern politics. Consequently I believe that if we were to say that Wollstonecraft was the founder of modern feminism, it began as an attempt to tie together civilisation and democracy. . “The poor wretch, whose inelegant distress has extorted from a mixed feeling of disgust and animal sympathy present relief, would have been considered as a man,- whose misery demanded a part of his birthright, supposing him to be industrious; but should his vices have reduced him to poverty, he must then have addressed his fellow-men as weak beings, subject to like passions, who ought to forgive, because they expect to be forgiven, for suffering the impulse of the moment to silence the suggestions of conscience, or reason, which you will; for, in my view of things, they are synonymous terms.” Furthermore, Wollstonecraft’s revolutionary claim that democracy and savagery were, and still are, synonymous, was

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