Thomas Paine's Rights Of Man

Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" was written in a response to Edmund Burke's earlier work, "Reflections on the Revolution in France", in which Burke describes his displeasure with the acts of rebellion against the monarchy and aristocratic governments. In the "Rights of Man", Paine goes on to attack Burke's claims of the power and role government has in all men's lives. Both works offer a highly differing viewpoint on how much liberty and equality each person may possess while under the rule of their countries hierarchy.

The main issue that can be found in Thomas Paine's, "Rights of Man" is that Edmund Burke lacks the underlying knowledge of freedom that all of man receives once they are born into this world. People are not created to serve

under a ruler or group of powerful leaders that they never elected, and to be bound by their laws that they see fit to be enacted. Paine's refusal to accept Burkes ignorance towards our fundamental rights, and his strong belief in the equality of every person is what drives him to strongly question Burke's statements. One of the biggest reasons for this comes from Edmund Burke's belief that all rights, if they even exist, that have been given to mankind since the first King or rulers rose to power, none can ever be changed or altered at any moment in time. According to Paine, Burke is saying that the laws written by dead men must be enforced towards those currently living and for those that come to live in the future, despite the changes that will more than likely occur. What Thomas Paine states is that every man that is born is created with the same rights of liberty and equality among all those that are living, once that person dies, their rights die as well. To him, it is entirely unacceptable to carry on being obedient towards a power that might not have your best interests in mind, or live a life in unquestionable servitude just because our ancestors had done so.

What appears to be one of the most important criticism in Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" is that there is a total lack of reasoning and evidence of the facts that Edmund Burke examines in his "Reflections on the Revolution in France." Also, he finds it absurd that one can even write about rights, when the author himself (Burke) never successfully establishes if man has rights at all. As Paine questions himself when he asks, "Does Mr. Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he must mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, and that he has none himself; for who is there in the world but man? But if Mr. Burke means to admit that man has rights, the question then will be: What are those rights, and how man came by them originally?" Edmund Burke's attempt at denying the rights and actions of those that rebelled against, what Paine and many others considered, a tyrannical ruler is something that Thomas Paine strongly feels is never accomplished or can be deemed as being credible.