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The French Revolution was not the first time that the right of the people to chose their destiny or equality of rights was rights. Just read the Declaration of Independence
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But
I am not saying that this was the first time !
Here is what I say: "The ideas more particularly associated to the french Revolution, like the right of people to chose their destiny, or equality in rights, can be regarded as morally positive".
It does not mean that french Revolution initiated it but that it is another and innovative
application of those ideas versus what was done by the Declaration of Independance, and therefore its influence has to be examined separately.
And even though this is not the first time that such an idea was promoted as one of the main principles of a society, the more people contribute to promote the Human Rights, the best it is, so this can be - and thus the french Revolution influence on that aspect can be - regarded as positive.
What makes the originality of the french Declaration of Human Rights versus the Declaration of Independance is really the promotion of equality
in front of the law: any constitutionnalist will agree if I say that, in the American Declaration, the liberty of an individual is the general principle that would have for consequence - that would "generate" - equality; while at the same period in France, the equality in front of the law appears as the way to get freedom, which is fundamentally different.
The way the Declaration of Independance regards equality is directly inspired by the British tradition so there is literally nothing new in here.
Not to mention another major difference: Human Rights as seen by the french Declaration are organized by nobody else than the Law, itself an expression of the Nation, while in the American Declaration it is organized by God. So the french Declaration of Human Rights frees the people from the supervision of God.
Social contract in the Declaration of Independance is more inspired by Hobbes than Locke or Rousseau unlike the french Declaration, and thus it is there to protect against anarchy, while in the french Declaration the social contract is to be voluntarily submitted to the Law. It does not tend to protect people against supposed abuse of public power as in the Declaration of Independance which as a consequence promotes individual liberty above equality; on the contrary it uses public power - the Law - to guarantee equality and through it, liberty.
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I am well aware that you and other have been arguing this, as my arguments throughout this thread have been based on the fact that all of these things were expanding before the era of revolutions. So stop trying to imply that I'm dense.
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But still the french Revolution as explained contributed to expand ideas of Enlightenment - more specifically human rights and equality as explained above - in Europe especially in the following decades as already explained previously in that post with the examples I gave.
You yourself recognized that the french Revolution accelerated the changes, so isn't it a "positive influence" ?
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you are attacking a straw man here. All throughout these threads I've been arguing that these things were expanding, not merely appearing, before the French Revolution.
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You're focusing one one - probably badly chosen - word, so I can rephrase it without changing the main point which remains true:
It is one thing to say that those ideas
expanded before, and as I already explained some of them existed long before Enlightenment, democracy being as old as history, it is another thing to see which events contributed to their application in some countries: revolution !
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You are conflating different arguments here.
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No I don't, I'm just trying to react to the other part of the thread because it interests me...just tell me if I don't have the same rights as anybody here ^^
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"The ideologies of the nineteenth century seem to tend towards extremisms more so than the thought-systems of the eighteenth century, and to a very large extent those isms were exhausted. What constitutes the bulk of the modern worldview--economic liberalism (Adam Smith), human rights(Enlightenment in General), secularism(again Enlightenment in general), empiricism (Francis Bacon and John Locke), social contract theory (Thomas Hobbes and John Locke ), skepticism (David Hume), protectionism for the promotion of national industry(Alexander Hamilton and John Baptiste Say), monism (Spinoza), separation of powers (Montesquieu)--precedes the revolution,"
Now, I understand that the part that says "those [nineteenth century isms] were exhausted" would imply a judgment here, but in fact I was trying to point out that the isms that specifically evolved from the French Revolution didn't have as much durability as the ideas that preceded it.
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Well that was at least my understanding that what you call "the bulk of modern view" which is partially an emanation of the ideas of Enlightenment - thus XVIIIth century - was positive, as opposed to "ideologies of XIXth century" that "tend towards extremisms" but maybe this is my misunderstanding...
Consequently either the ideas that precedes the french Revolution - ideas of Enlightenment - are positive unlike the isms that followed and thus my answer to that point makes sense otherwise I completely missed what you meant.
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