Posts Tagged ‘natural rights’

Oct
09
2009

The Political Revolution in America

The Political Revolution: America

Made by “new men,” new money created new forms of power for the newly educated and newly educated professionals and businessmen who began to chafe under the old-fashioned notion of “the divine right of kings.” Looking back, it is clear that the aristocratic class—an anachronistic class that produced nothing—was doomed to extinction.  In some nations, the dinosaur elite faded gently into the good night, but, in other countries, a revolution was necessary to dislodge the ancien régime. The social revolution would inevitably be followed by a political revolution.  It is worth noting, however, that these so-called “revolutions” did not include women, people of color, or the poor.  Only white men with a certain amount of property and income were eligible for the enormous cultural changes that marked the beginning of the Nineteenth Century.  The first of these political revolutions was in America and had a limited effect, at first, perhaps because America was such a great distance from Europe.  The French Revolution, which was inspired by the War of Independence in America, was far more impactful upon European politics and society.

Even before the revolution in industrialized production, several important political revolutions cemented the middle class into power.  In 1776, the American Declaration of Independence from England had resulted in a successful Revolutionary War in which the American Colonies freed themselves of the hereditary monarchy of Great Britain.  The American politicians, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Hamilton, were well born, well educated, and well bred, but they were not European aristocrats.  As “colonists,” they, like all Americans, were subjects of a King and, as such, could never be the nobility.  Colonists could be only two classes, middle or lower, regardless of social prominence or income.  Like the philosophers of England and France, American leaders were socially ambitious middle class men who were sensitive to the winds of change.  Influenced by the British Philosopher, John Locke, and the French philosophers, (François-Marie Arouet) Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Americans began to question their subservient roles and to challenge the British right to rule them. Britain was the strongest maritime power in the world, well on its way to becoming a huge colonial empire, but England was far away, and the Americans had become accustomed to taking care of themselves and ran their affairs.  The resulting revolution was predictable and inevitable.

In comparison to the horrors of the French Revolution, the American Revolution was a civilized affair.  Based upon philosophical ideals that, by the end of the Eighteenth Century, were widely accepted, the Americans fought for their “natural right” to freely determine their own social contract.  The role of the state was to ensure the happiness of the inhabitants, and, according to Rousseau, had a rather limited role as protector.  The concept of “natural rights,” put forward since the Seventeenth Century, clashed with the imperial and mercantile desires of the British Empire.  The clash between natural rights and economic imperatives was a bellwether of things to come.  Writing in 1776, while Thomas Jefferson was penning the Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and saw capitalism as a juggernaut that cared much for economic imperatives and little for “natural law.”  The British, naturally, felt that the American colonies must play their proscribed role in the mechanism of imperialism.  The Americans had other ideas: freedom, independence and the pursuit of happiness.  The conflict was between competing philosophies—Rousseau against Smith.  Inspired less by the noble ideas put forward by the beleaguered colonists and more by the opportunity to avenge their failure in the Seven Year’s War, the French lept to the defense of their American ally.  Baffled by the unreasonable demands of their subjects, the British found themselves in a new kind of war, an unequal war, that any occupying power must confront: insurgency and guerilla (“little war”), complicated by long supply lines.  That said, the Revolutionary War itself was fought according to the traditional rules of warfare and the British were outflanked and outsmarted by the combination of a stubborn native army and its determined French partner.  The defeated British withdrew to establish their Empire elsewhere but invaded once more in 1812, attacking America, now an ally of Napoléon, but the young nation held firm, even when the White House burned.

To the astonishment of Europeans, many of whom shuddered at the though of “democracy,” the upstart American colonies had not only won their freedom but had also written a very serviceable Constitution by 1789.  To the amazement of Europeans who dreamed of equality but seemed unable to achieve it, the “American Experiment” worked. Because the American Revolution was so unique, it was difficult to appreciate how remarkable the victory of the Thirteen Colonies was.  The Thirteen Colonies were fortunate in their leaders and their philosophy.  The men who composed the Declaration of Independence (re-writing Thomas Jefferson’s original draft) and the Constitution wanted to create an entirely new Social Contract, based upon principles of equality, democracy, and a balance of powers.  In contrast to the democratic system devised by the Americans, most revolutions are fought to replace one power source with another, for a revolution is essentially a “revolving” of power, not a change in the way power is distributed.  Americans accepted self-governance with equanimity.   Although about one third of the population did not care who ruled America and one third were loyal to the English, there was no civil war and no social disorder, only a need to establish a firm legal foundation for the new nation.

Using the rational thinking of the Enlightenment, people like John Adams and Benjamin Franklin guided the nation to the concept of a government by consensus and based that agreement upon enduring documents, from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution to the Bill of Rights. Only when the American Revolution is contrasted to other upheavals in power can one appreciate the value of a George Washington, who refused to be King and agreed to be President reluctantly and only temporarily.  Power was to be handed off after an election of a successor.   Rarely in history does a group of good people come together with good intentions and create a good thing.  A far-flung colony somehow managed to produce a large number of astute political thinkers guided by Enlightenment philosophy, Christian religion, and something the expatriate Englishman and revolutionary upstart, Thomas Paine, called “Common Sense.”

The American democracy was far from perfect and was, indeed, incomplete.  The rights of democracy—government by the people and for the people—were extended only to white men with property.  The contradictions of Eighteenth Century America are obvious today, but the conflict between demanding democracy for the few while limiting democracy for the many were not unknown to the Founders.  The rights of women and slaves were debated in Europe and America, and yet, despite the existence of the discourse on human rights, the writers of the Constitution decided, deliberately, to leave women out and to postpone the problem of slavery for the next generation to solve.  The result was a delayed democracy for women and people of color.  But even this limited democracy was a source of wonder for all outsiders who observed the United States with amazement.  A social revolution had become a political revolution.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Sep
25
2009

The Enlightenment and Society

The Enlightenment and Society

The question was how to create new world without God?  What would be the basis of this new life?  Spirituality was replaced with technology; religious laws were replaced by rational virtues, ethics, and morality.  “Bon sens”, extolled by René Descartes, could be determined by logical deduction, based upon observation of human psychology and conduct.  The Enlightenment sought empirical and pragmatic foundations for society for the material era.  The expectation was that peace and harmony would come into being through the minimum use of laws, instead of the heavy-handed tyranny of kings. In the past, the law was the will of the sovereign, in an Age of Reason, law was based upon the will of he people who voluntarily came together under the light hand of the state. The Enlightenment was characterized by this strong sense of humanity and by a belief that all humans are basically good and are deserving of basic rights and freedoms.  Humans could come together and rule themselves according to rational principles that all can come to know and live by.

The challenges to the authority of religion as a form of governance were directly related to the rise of nationhood. As early as 1534, Henry VII broke the power of the Catholic Church in England by the Act of Supremacy and made himself the head of the Church of England.  Without refuting religion, the King asserted the primacy of a nation in its own affairs.  The rising tide of the Protestant Reformation allowed European princes to likewise breakaway from the interference of the Vatican.  The Protestant idea that each person has a direct line to God and therefore could worship as s/he pleased led to not only a split between the Catholics and the Protestants but also among the Protestants themselves.  The result was the Thirty Years’ War, which ended in 1648.  After three decades of conflict, it was clear that religious ideology could never be allowed to disrupt the order of society and the power of religion as a dominant force was at an end. It is perhaps no coincidence that René Descartes who died in 1650 decided that the only point of certainty was the self: “I think, therefore I am.”  But Descartes was concerned as to the ground of his thinking—how did he know he wasn’t hallucinating or deluded?   He reverted to his faith in God, that God would be the guarantor of the validity of his thinking.  In his appeal to God, Decartes would be the last of his kind.  Indeed, one hundred years later, Diderot would assert that “…the philosopher teaches the priest what the gods are.”

The philosophers substituted “natural religion,” called Deism, a kind of watered-down theism and reconstructed religion in line with modern science for the mysticism of traditional “superstition.”  The abolition of God was also the abolition of hierarchies and the social theory of the Enlightenment stressed the discussion of social problems from the standpoint of the individual–the “true person,” not from the perspective of the state, which was only an artificial machine. The philosophes were the intellectual (and spiritual) leaders of Europe.  Natural Law was at the center of Enlightenment thinking and would be the instrument that severed morality from religion and would establish new bases for morality and ethics. If God was to be found anywhere, it was in “natural law.” Philosophers thought deductively about the origins of human society.  In Two Treatises on Government, 1680-90, John Locke projected his mind back in time and imagined a race of humans who were free and equal, their “natural” state” or State of Nature.”  The question that bothered Locke was why people had given up their freedom to come together into society, which so clearly curtailed their natural freedoms. He reasoned that the state was the entity that gave surety to these rights and used the words “social compact” or agreement that people made with their government to come together under “natural law.”  What made Locke so attractive to the budding American revolutionaries was his stress on the individual making a free decision to live within a state that, in turn, had the obligation to protect “natural rights.”

In his book, The Social Contract, 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau also went back to nature and considered the question of why humans would give up their natural freedoms.  His philosophical deductions led him to also consider the consequences of their decision to create a “Social Contract.”  Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind, 1754, asserted that the original human equality had ended due to the creation of private property.  The first person, who asserted “this is mine” ended the natural paradise of equality, according to Rousseau.  This idea that private property was to the root of the Fall of Humanity would be taken up by Friedrich Engels in 1884, and, indeed, Rousseau made a suggestion that the problem of inequality of wealth could be remedied by redistribution.  But beyond equalizing wealth, there is a general will of the people, which ultimately overrules private interests. Equality is natural law and natural law is based upon reason.  Rousseau understood the state as a function of the will of the people who look to the state to preserve and respect their “inalienable rights.” Even as Rousseau was writing, Adam Smith was rethinking the role of government, recasting the activities of society, not in terms of “natural rights,” but in terms of the new economic realities of mercantile society.

In 1776, Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, proposed that the sole purpose of a state was not to protect the rights of citizens but to safeguard the protect economic activities and property.   Like Locke and Rousseau, Smith was being perfectly rational.  Starting with a founding assumption that wealth was served the greater good, he gave priority to commerce, assuming that the wealthier the population, the wealthier the nation.  In separating the state from the economy and giving the economy free rein so that the “invisible hand” could enrich everyone, Smith also released the state from its moral obligation to protect people and gave voice to a new kind of political economy based upon the interest of capitalism.  Smith’s ideas are eminently reasonable and rational but they also give pride of place to impersonal forces—science, technology, and industry—that will change the face of Western society and reorder how people would interact with one another.  Smith himself was sympathetic to the plight of the poor and concerned over how the factory system dehumanized people but the logic of the “invisible hand” of capitalism gave rise to a ruthless exploitation of human capital in the name of economic prosperity of the nation.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Sep
11
2009

The Enlightenment: Introduction

The Enlightenment: Introduction

Like any great cultural change, the Enlightenment was long in gestation.  By the Eighteenth Century, a critical mass of philosophical thinking and social custom had emerged, and, with it, certain famous intellectual heroes.  The Enlightenment can be understood precisely in terms of its entomology–that which sheds light: light into the darkness of religious “superstition”.  The principal conflict of the Enlightenment was the contest between established religious beliefs and a growing body of scientific knowledge that grounded knowledge, not in the will of God, but in an exercise of empirical evidence.  Upon this dialectic, struggles for social, political, and economic parity would be launched and would last to this very day. It is important to remember that the Enlightenment way of thinking is very Western and is a singular result in a particular place due to the impact of science and technology, resulting in the “death of God.”  Other areas of the world, such as Africa, were left out of technological progress and its benefits, and other areas, such as the Mid-East chose to not follow the secular path of the Europeans.  The result, two centuries later, would be a world split between those who took part in “Modernism” and those who did not.  The Enlightenment was a Western phenomenon, which established not only new philosophical ideas concerning the grounds of knowledge but also new ideals, such as “liberty, equality and fraternity,” “all men are created equal,” and the “inalienable right” of the “pursuit of happiness.”  These ideals would not be forgotten, but it would take time for the Enlightenment to become more than the ideals of speculative philosophers and to become a gradually unfolding reality.

A complex phenomenon, the Enlightenment was defined by one central question: how can life be lived and understood without God?  If God was “dead,” as Friedrich Nietzsche proposed, then the Deity was certainly an animated corpse, going to its demise, kicking and screaming, and becoming reanimated at unpredictable intervals.  The Enlightenment was confronted with Counter-Enlightenments, such as Romanticism and Catholic revivals, but politics, society and economics continued their inexorable march down the secular path.  Over time, Christianity came to occupy a smaller place in Western culture and ceased to be the basis for society’s belief system.   Once religious faith had permeated Western life and the answer to all questions was “God’s will.”  Unquestioning belief in God was challenged by two forces that proved to be critical to Enlightenment thinking.  First, was the idea  of “natural rights,” that is, the notion that people were created free and equal and had, as human beings, certain rights that could not be violated.  The concept of “natural rights” would be articulated by Enlightenment philosophers, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Thomas Jefferson but it dated back to the Twelfth Century and was present in a nascent from during the Medieval era.  The second was the explosion of scientific experimentation and hypothesis that shattered doctrines supported by the Church. Although there were certain scientific discoveries that particularly irked the religious authorities, such as the findings of Copernicus and Galileo, the combined weight of empiricism and the scientific method undermined the ability of religion to insist upon unquestioning belief.  Doubt entered into society.  Western culture shifted decisively towards secular questions and secular answers.

The result of secularism was a ripple effect that questioned the validity of the “divine right to rule,” creating a question of how could society be governed without God.  It was not just a question of government in the sense of whether or not to continue with Kings and Emperors but government in the sense of self-governance.  Without religious edicts telling people what to do, what kind of system would take the place of God’s law?  Just as scientists rewrote the knowledge of the universe, philosophers sought a new epistemology or ground for social relations. But even more urgent was the problem of knowledge.  Without God, what was knowable and how?  A new epistemology of knowledge also had to be established.  The new philosophical system proposed a new society and a new form of knowledge that would have profound impact upon art and artists, creating new ways of defining both art and artist and developing an entirely new branch of philosophy called “aesthetics.” The idea of “artistic freedom” is an outgrowth of the Enlightenment introduction of the concept of the “individual.”  The idea of the defiant artist, challenging the establishment and shocking the conservative public is an Enlightenment concept of rethinking received wisdom.

The profound secularization that is the Enlightenment has installed suspicion of authority, tradition, and divine right to rule…at least in the West.  Using the deductive and logical practices of science, rational thinking, and the powers of human reason discovered universal laws, which appear to have taken the place of God, the Enlightenment ended eighteen hundred years of spiritualized thinking.  As Thomas Carlyle said, “Philosophers strove to sink the supernatural to the natural”.  The concepts of “Nature” and “Natural Law” and “Natural Rights” and “Progress” could be used as powerful weapons against traditional powers that once ruled by “divine right.”  The Enlightenment also had a dark side.  The proponents of this unsettling upheaval in society were able to go only so far in their thinking.  The concept of “nature” or the “natural” could be used as powerful weapons to deny participation and power to those declared to be outside the confines of progress, such as women and people of color who were tied to Nature and therefore were beyond the forces of History and thus, the democratic fruits of the new social system.  Emmanuel Kant once stated, “If someone asks are we living in an Enlightened Age today?  The answer would be, ‘No,’ but we are living in an age of Enlightenment.”  The Enlightenment could not guarantee fully enlightened thinking, but the alternative to the Enlightenment, with all of its a prorias was, as David Hume, remarked, “..stupidity, Christianity, and ignorance”.  The men who made the new laws were bold, brave and even arrogant, quite capable of using enlightened modes of thinking to justify slavery and imperialism, all in the name of European superiority.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Sep
04
2009

What is “Modern?”

What is “Modern?”

“Modern” is essentially a Western concept, based upon cultural forces, specific to European countries and transplanted to their colonies.  As a small and compact continent, Europe was a site of circulation for new ideas and new ways of living in the world.  Other continents, such as Asia and Africa, were isolated and self-sufficient and would not be touched by European ideas and values until the age of imperialism.  The Middle East, equally self-sufficient, chose, according the Princeton professor, specializing in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, to sidestep, not so much modern life, but the implications of modernism.

The characteristics or events usually associated with the “modern” were invented in Europe, developed in Europe, and played out to their logical (and often tragic ends) in Europe.  Both as a British colony and as an independent nation, America played a significant role in developing the modern way of life, but the American “modern” would be significantly different from the European “modern.”  When did “modern life” begin? The answer depends upon one’s historical perspective.  Some would argue that modern life, the life we in the West have inherited, can be traced back to the Renaissance period in Europe. For the purposes of this website, it is more efficient to move beyond the nascent beginnings of the middle class and capitalism and international trade to the outcome of these tendencies, the most significant of which, it might be argued, being humanism. For the modern age, the human being is firmly situated at the center of the universe.

Most discussions of the Modern can be divided into distinct parts, all of which are interlocked. There is no “first,” there is no “beginning,” in absolute terms.  For convenience sake, it can be stated that the Seventeenth Century saw a significant shift away from God and towards scientific discovery and experimentation. The trend to empirical observation and material research not only expanded the discourse of knowledge based upon observable facts but also threatened the role of religion in society.   By the Eighteenth Century, the culture was more secular than spiritual and a new breed of people, called “new men” were able to build upon the scientific bases to develop a more rational means of production that evolved into industrialization and mass production.

These “new men” were an ever-growing group of professionals, doctors, lawyers, financiers, and business owners who were middle class and ambitious.  They financed, built and serviced the Industrial Revolution, supported on the backs of the lower classes. Women formed a support system, either at home or in the fields or in the factory and were denied the benefits of the modern. Human labor was needed for industrialized modes of productions and people, both proletariat and peasant, began to drift away from traditional artisan occupations and rural employments and towards factory work.  Mass manufacture and trade encouraged the increase in the size of cities, and by the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, London was the largest city in Europe.

Urbanism and industrialism and the trend away from an agrarian society, which was ruled by the landed gentry, began in England and America.  The combination of a concentration of people in urban areas and alternatives to traditional life styles that brought pressure on the political system to grant “natural rights” to the people. The concept of a “natural” right to freedom and happiness was essentially a middle class and secular concept.  As opposed to pleasure being the sole pursuit of the upper classes, human beings had the “natural” right to be happy.  As opposed to the Divine Right of Kings, as sanctioned by God, people began to think of themselves as the “natural” rulers of their own society.  Monarchs ruled with the consent of the governed and had the obligation and responsibility to preside over their subjects wisely and benevolently.  The Seventeenth Century Benevolent Despot gave way to the Citizen King or Enlightened Monarch, answerable to the people.

The emerging “Modern” way of life would have major consequences upon Western culture.   The “modern” that was emerging was unprecedented and needed to be articulated.  Explaining the social and cultural and economic changes was the task of the philosophers who referred to their period as the “Enlightenment.”  Enlightenment philosophy articulated a social reaction to scientific achievements, was the achievement of several societies.  French and English and German philosophers all made major contributions to Enlightenment thought, the cornerstone of which was Reason. The center of philosophy was human reason, not God’s ideals.

Human reason was capable of establishing a new kind of society, based upon what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called “the Social Contract,” established by the free will of humans who agreed to come together and live in democratic harmony, without Kings and without God dictating the terms.  The philosophy of the Enlightenment inspired two political revolutions, one in America and one in France, and was the impetus for political change in other parts of Europe.  Thus the “Modern” can be characterized by a number of “revolutions:” 1. A philosophical revolution,  2. A social revolution, 3. A political revolution,  and 4.  An economic revolution.  The task of artists, poets, novelists, musicians, and the visual artists was to give subjective expression of the new age in new languages, which would produce new forms.  The artist is the product of all of the “revolutions” of the Modern, which are discussed in the next chapters.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.

info@arthistoryunstuffed.com


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