Are Robespierre’s Arguments True to Rousseau’s Ideals? Essay Example

Maximilien Robespierre was a great politician and lawyer during the French Revolution. “He made choices by his beliefs that the ends justified the means.” (“Napoleonic Guide”). He was very aggressive, ruthless and let nothing stand in his way for what he believed in until he was overthrown in 1794. His political works dominated the Committee of Public Safety during the Revolution as well as The Reign of Terror which comprised a large conflict of violence that discerned nearly one year and one month after the initial commencement of the French Revolution. The Revolution marked grave executions and fighting between the Girondins and the Jacobins. It is in this Revolution that the guillotine became infamous for executions. The French nobility loss it’s upper class status during this Revolution as well as the Roman Catholic Church vehemently opposing the Revolution prima facie. Robespierre was known by his followers as a ‘bloodthirsty dictator’ yet his adversaries called him ‘the tyrant’.

It is through the opening statement of the subject of the first book that Rousseau first explains to the reader that there may be justification for the use of terror because man’s freedom that has been given at birth has been taken away. Here is the quote, “MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks he is the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.” (Rousseau, 2010).The very next paragraph speaks of force in the sense that it works if people are taught to obey by the use of force with the premise that they will follow orders. Force is a form of terror used to restrain people from having their own individual thoughts and ideas and further used to repress them from using political and wartime forces.

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz speaks of the use of terror as a last means to extract information out of detainees in situations of wartime and capture. Torture is to be used only in the most extreme circumstances for measures that affect our nation’s security. Liberals view cruelty as a sinful gesture and have no tolerance for such forms of torture. Dershowitz does not claim to support torturous measures but speaks of torturous forms in three means in his books written at the Harvard School.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau justifies the use of terror through Rousseau’s Social Contract by stating, “There is no justification for those who took freedom and liberty away, social order is sacred in all ways and forms and must be protected with full assertions.” (“Social Contract”). Every person has the right to be his own master and with that comes the right to master his own family. Common liberty is the result of inalienable rights of man. Slavery is a prime example that most human power is in favor of the government but it would be folly to believe that this is the fact for most rights of man. This would be contrary to logical reasoning and most favorable to tyrants and dictatorship form of governing. Essentially this would put the power in the hands of the government and leave little to no power with the people that a democracy is found upon. In a democracy the President orders the use of terror in extreme situations for the protection of the security of the country as a whole. Dershowitz proposed the use of terror warrants in order to control terror through legislative and judicial measures. It was thought that controlling the use of terror at these levels with warrants would limit excessive use of terror tactics and abusive uses of tactics such as ‘water boarding’, etc.

Robespierre believed in the premise that as long as all persons were working for the preservation of all good of mankind then all would be duly rewarded equally as well. With respect to the laws and rules of the Government, they should be pronounced clear and definitive and all will run smoothly and accordingly. Even through the simplest and indigenous of the peasants of the world will the world run smoothly and without corruption. “But when the social bond begins to be relaxed and the State to grow weak, when particular interests begin to make themselves felt and the smaller societies to exercise an influence over the larger, the common interest changes and finds opponents: opinion is no longer unanimous.” (“Social Contract”).

Rousseau’s ideals of a civilized political ideology and clearly defined political agenda consisting of intelligent divinity, national religion, declaration of the general will of the people at large, regulation of morality and defining of a Constitution, censorship of corruption, just and fair rulers and basic equality to all before the law and courts. Robespierre believed in the same principles of Rousseau however his principles were defined as a whole for the good of the community rather than a defined and refined contract or social status as refined by Rousseau’s Social Contract. Kings are ministers under priests who are the real masters who are led by God himself. Everything in life is made and defined by the almighty Savior himself. Nature is explained in relation to an existence created from a Divine force. “The right of the strongest is only justified and true if laid down in principle.” (“Social Contract”). Force does not create any given right. We only adhere to obedience if we are obliged to obey those powers which are legitimate or which are created by God.

For a man to renounce all of his liberty is for a man to renounce his true morality in life. Without the freedom to choose a man has no true self or inner dignity. Is he considered a slave to himself or a slave to his peers? Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers. In that case, my original question recurs. There is true salvation outside of the church despite what others may say. Keeping in mind within the church priests are the real masters and the kings are the ministers that follow. Rousseau shares the same political philosophy of Montesquieu of encumbrance of a state of “unperturbed by inequality of which nature faded into a state of man’s distinction of a fallen state of nature and was no longer a state of a civil society.” (Scott, 2006). Man is essentially a human animal which is intended to eliminate its competition through war and any nuisance which come in his way. Montesquieu believed that man’s inability to actively socialize has mobilized this inability to keep this state of mind which keeps this peaceful state of mind with nature and promotes a civil society. His analysis of a ‘de facto society’ comes in close relation with Hobbes’s depiction of an “image of man in a perfect or image of nature.” (Scott, 2006). This depiction of nature is a superficial escape from the inevitable escape from tyranny and war or an inevitable escape from the generalization of want and fear or war which co-exists with these senses. Hobbes’s finds that there is oppression that lies with mans fear whereas Montesquieu finds there is freedom, conscious and virtue that lies within a man when he is able to release fear and the desires of wanting.

War is simply needed for a man to gain retrospect of an ideology of the establishment of law in Rousseau’s mind and ideologies. “There is a sense of force that a law of the land would be a man’s own with the fight of war”, says Rousseau. (Scott, 2006). With that feeling comes a moral understanding though no complete fulfillment. Compassion is eventually starved out of a person’s inner sense hence the person cannot comprehend empathy for another. As a result, the act of violence triggers more violence and social restlessness or ‘etre to paraitre.’ This motive in itself is ‘made of evil’ even if it does not actually lead to the use of violent force. In a civil society there is agreement there is no use of violence. Man is free to exercise the motivation he wishes to exercise within the constraints of the law. Man is allowed to express the use of autonomy as long as it is a good practice. The causes of violence must be eliminated at the core in order to eliminate violence of an uncivil society as a whole. Violence does not lie in the core of human nature in Rousseau’s view as the core of human behavior. It is a symptom of something wrong in nature or the imbalance of nature. Violence leads to the use of terror and terroristic measures to prevent future violence. If violence is cut at the core then there is no need to justify the use of terror. The need to create a civilized society must commence at the core of the people through justified and meaningful coercion and understanding.

Rousseau’s Social Contract provides the exact formula through which a justified and able means can be establish a ‘civil society’ where evil propensities can be eliminated and evil can cease to exist. Rational law will flourish as a result of common good decreed by the good wills and desires of the people. There is no paradox to the Social Contract rather a more serious nature by goal. There appears to be an extreme absence of ‘supreme power’ to mandate the law and set goals for people to follow according to the law. The laws of nature and the land are more a voluntary nature than supreme law of the land. There is a state of ‘international anarchy’ which exists and makes the nation’s security at risk particularly with the state of mind of people. There is deemed to be a deficiency in the basis of the foundation of the law stated on observation by others rather than true and solidified facts. Rousseau is often accused of believing in a ‘totalitarian democracy’. He stated man is incapable of making common sense decisions against agnostic believers in the sense of those true to nature with the idea of having a civil society in mind. Does this mean he is in favor of a demoralized or decentralized society? Does this mean he is in favor of a totalitarian form of government? No! He is in favor of a society driven by the forces of nature, peace and a commonality of no violence. Just how does he expect to achieve this state of mind amongst men? He hopes to make men morally and virtuous by going to the core of the issues. He desires universal peace amongst the government with a supreme government free of tyranny and violence. At present the hope for cease of fighting among nations are very bleak because fighting amongst nations are worse than the fighting amongst men. There must be elimination of ‘competition’ amongst men in general and restoration of peace and unity. “The state of war weakens the common unity in a ‘de facto society’ and further weakens the persuasion of common interests for the good of all people.” (Scott, 2006). Arguments as a result escalate and the competition becomes stronger and more escalated amongst the people and the nations.

References

Napoleonic Guide (1999) Retrieved April 15, 2010 from, http://www.napoleonguide.com/leaders_robes.htm

Rousseau (2010) Social Contract Retrieved April 15, 2010 from, http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon_01.htm

Scott, J. Political Principles and Institutions New York: Taylor and Francis, 2006