Philosophy: The Classics by Warburton Nigel

Author:Warburton, Nigel
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Criticisms of Rights of Man

Overoptimistic about human nature

Burke’s position in Reflections on the Revolution in France was more subtle than Paine allowed. He did not share Paine’s optimism about humanity and was deeply sceptical about appeals to reason as the basis of social change. Human reason, Burke believed, is limited and it is dangerous to let individuals shape a society from scratch: far better to build on the wisdom of successive generations, a wisdom that is not necessarily conscious, than to attempt to design a new way of life with all the risks of violence and disruption that accompany that reorganisation of society. This wisdom is preserved in precedent and established ways of living. In other words, Burke had arguments against the sort of wholesale revolution that was going on in France, and large-scale social reorganisation in general. The descent into bloodshed and terror that resulted from the French Revolution was exactly the sort of consequence that Burke predicted and feared. He preferred a more gentle reform from generation to generation than the radical overhaul that Paine supported so enthusiastically. Burke’s conservatism about progress finds many modern day proponents, against the more idealistic, optimistic and passionate polemic for change that is embodied in Paine’s writings.

Relies on rhetoric rather than argument

The Rights of Man is unashamedly a polemic and it relies heavily on rhetoric, and, as in the critique of the monarchy, on humour. Paine was self-taught in political theory, and his position lacks the complexity and sophistication of that of philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke. He ridicules and caricatures Burke, but rarely engages head-on with Burke’s reasoning – that’s not his style. He sometimes just asserts rather than argues for his own position. In his defence, though, Paine is never obscure, always interesting to read, and discovered a voice that was entirely appropriate for his wide readership. Furthermore, many of his points, such as those against monarchy, are far more memorable and effective for having been made through ridicule than they would have been had they been expressed in a systematic and detailed tome of political philosophy. His genre was the political tract, not the academic treatise.

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