Declaration Of The Rights Of Man Essay

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The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, composed by the National Assembly in August 1789, is one of the key texts of the French Revolution. The National Assembly, which composed the Declaration, was primarily populated by bourgeois members of the Third Estate. Though George Rudé’s assessment of the authorship of the document is correct, it implies that the ideals propagated and codified in the Declaration are solely bourgeois. The Declaration was constructed from basic tenants of Enlightenment thinking in the eighteenth century; equality, merit, popular sovereignty, and reason. The Enlightenment was spearheaded by aristocratic thinkers – these were the men in France with education and with the means to publish texts. Rousseau’s influence, for example, is clear in articles Three and Six, which confer sovereignty …show more content…

The cahiers de doléances demonstrate the prevalence of the ideas reflected in the Declaration in the bourgeois class. The cahier of the bourgeois Third Estate of Berry, for example, called for collaboration with the King, tax equality, freedom of the press, merit-based admission to civil and military ranks, and the consent of the nation in matters of law and tax. Concerns echoed in later Articles, such as property rights, seem explicitly bourgeois. Yet the cahiers echoed by the Declaration are not solely the product of the bourgeoisie; those of the non-bourgeois Third Estates of Levet and Marcilly both call for an end to financial and seigneurial privilege. Even Berry’s Second Estate cahier echoes Articles of the Declaration, demanding freedom of the press and the sharing of powers with the King. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is not based alone on revolutionary bourgeois ideology. Rather, it reflects broader trends in thought in eighteenth century French

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