C'est la fusion des populations qui les composent. C'est par le contraste que ces grandes lois de l'histoire de l'Europe occidentale deviennent sensibles. Les principes, en pareils cas, se font jour par les surprises les plus inattendues. Nous ne devons pas trouver mauvais qu'on nous imite. Mais qu'est-ce donc qu'une nation?
Une telle loi, cependant, est-elle absolue? Il faudrait avoir le secret de l'avenir. Les mots de patrie et de citoyen avaient repris leur sens. Ce qui reste ferme et fixe, c'est la race des populations. La situation est tout autre. L'Allemagne est germanique, celtique et slave. Est-elle un pays germanique pur? Elle n'a pas d'application en politique. Pour tous il est bon de savoir oublier. On viendrait dire au patriote: L'importance politique qu'on attache aux langues vient de ce qu'on les regarde comme des signes de race.
Rien de plus faux. Comme ils firent bien! De nos jours, la situation est parfaitement claire. La division des nations en catholiques, protestantes, n'existe plus. Avec cela, on justifie toutes les violences. Mais il ne faut pas que ces concessions aillent trop loin. Non, ce n'est pas la terre plus que la race qui fait une nation. Que faut-il donc en plus? L'homme, Messieurs, ne s'improvise pas. On aime en proportion des sacrifices qu'on a consentis, des maux qu'on a soufferts. En fait de souvenirs nationaux, les deuils valent mieux que les triomphes, car ils imposent des devoirs, ils commandent l'effort en commun.
Elles ont bien le droit d'avoir un avis dans la question. Le texte de Qu'est-ce qu'une Nation?
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A cette double condition seulement, il est possible de parler de Nation. Un texte de combat. Il est difficile donc d'imaginer texte plus didactique que celui de Renan. Et dans cette perspective, Qu'est-ce qu'une Nation? Lorsque l'auteur de Qu'est-ce qu'une Nation? Leurs arguments, comme on va le voir, ne sont pas sans ressemblances. Indiscutablement ici, le Fustel de Coulanges de ouvre la voie au Renan de In , he was ordered to redact some propositions contrary to the teaching of the Church; having proposed 74, years for the age of the Earth , this was contrary to the Bible which, using the scientific method on data found in biblical concordances , dated it to around 6, years.
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This effort to research and elucidate universal laws, and to determine their component parts, also became an important element in the construction of a philosophy of individualism , where everyone had rights based only on fundamental human rights. There developed the philosophical notion of the thoughtful subject , an individual who could make decisions based on pure reason and no longer in the yoke of custom.
In Two Treatises of Government , John Locke argued that property rights are not held in common but are totally personal, and made legitimate by the work required to obtain the property, as well as its protection recognition by others. Once the idea of natural law is accepted, it becomes possible to form the modern view of what we would now call political economy.
In his famous essay Answering the Question: Aie le courage de te servir de ton propre entendement! Enlightenment is the release of man from a state of bondage for which he is himself responsible.
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In this state of bondage he is unable to fulfill his intentions without the help of another. He is himself responsible for this bondage, where the cause is not a lack of understanding but a lack of resolution and courage to use it unguided. Have the courage to use your own understanding! As well as physical laws, this included ideas on the laws governing human affairs and the divine right of kings , leading to the idea that the monarch acts with the consent of the people, and not the other way around.
This legal concept informed Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's theory of the social contract as a reciprocal relationship between men, and more so between families and other groups, which would become increasingly stronger, accompanied by a concept of individual inalienable rights. Hobbes, who lived for three quarters of the 17th century, had worked to create an ontology of human emotions, ultimately trying to make order out of an inherently chaotic universe. In the alternate, Locke saw in Nature a source of unity and universal rights, with the State's assurance of protection.
This "culture revolution" over the 17th and 18th centuries was a battle between these two viewpoints of the relationship between Man and Nature. This resulted, in France, in the spread of the notion of human rights, finding expression in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , which greatly influenced similar declarations of rights in the following centuries, and left in its wake global political upheaval.
Especially in France and the United States, freedom of expression , freedom of religion and freedom of thought were held to be fundamental rights. In England, America and France, the application of these values resulted in a new definition of natural law and a separation of political power. To these values may be added a love of nature and the cult of reason. Today we receive three different, conflicting, educations: It is only when we know the last that we can reject the first two. Reason and sentiment went hand-in-hand in their philosophy.
It was stated without any proof that one of their number, Voltaire , had shares in the slave trade.
At the time, there was a particular taste for compendia of "all knowledge". Published between and it aimed to lead people out of ignorance through the widest dissemination of knowledge. Anticlericism was not the only source of tension in France: A relaxing of morals fomented opinion against absolutism and the Ancient Order. According to Dale K.
Van Kley, Jansenism in France also became a source of division. The French judicial system showed itself to be outdated. Even though commercial law had become codified during the 17th century, there was no uniform, or codified, civil law. This social and legal background was criticised in works by the likes of Voltaire.
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Exiled in England between and , he studied the works of John Locke and Isaac Newton, and the English monarchy. For Voltaire, it was obvious that if the monarch can get the people to believe unreasonable things, then he can get them to do unreasonable things. A contrary point of view that developed, arguing that such a process would be swayed by social conventions, leading to a "New Truth" based on reason that was but a poor imitation of the ideal and unassailable truth.
At the same time, with various monarchs' reforms, there was a piecemeal attempt to redefine the order of society, and the relationship between monarch and subjects. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Compared with the rather subjective metaphysics of Descartes, Kant developed a more objective viewpoint in this branch of philosophy.
On the contrary, it is the advance of human reason that reveals this constant structure. Romanticism is the exact opposite of this stance. As the century grew older, more literature and art turned its back on free forms and a lightness of touch, regarding them as aristocratic and worldly. They turned towards the serious, the authentic and the natural, that fit the utilitarian morality of the bourgeois public whose taste was for neoclassicism: This resulted in reflections about urbanism. This paradigm resulted in a change of style in the middle of the 18th century: Rococo was dismissed, Ancient Greece and Palladian architecture became the principal references for neoclassical architecture.
That which is rational, and thus based in the understanding of nature, cannot be at the same time utopian. Le Discours sur la Servitude Volontaire.
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There was considerable coverage in the English and French Press, but less so in Germany and Italy; in Spain and Russia very few knew about it save a few intellectuals, senior officials and grand families participated in the movement. The mass of the people could not care less: This did not stop at social and political upheaval: Thomas Jefferson had had a legal education but was equally at home with archaeology and architecture ; Benjamin Franklin had been a career diplomat and was a physicist. Condorcet wrote on subjects as wide-ranging as commerce, finance, education and science.
The social origins of the philosophers were also diverse: Some had had a religious education Diderot, Louis de Jaucourt or one in the law Montesquieu, Jefferson. The philosophers formed networks and communicated in letters; the vitriolic correspondence between Rousseau and Voltaire is well known. These thinkers and savants formed an international community.
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Because they criticised the established order, the philosophers were chased by the authorities and had to resort to subterfuge to escape prison. In , Thomas Jefferson wrote a report on behalf of the Virginia delegates to the First Continental Congress , which was convened to discuss the grievances of Great Britain 's American colonies. Because its content, he could only publish it anonymously. From to , he went to many European countries.
Faced with censorship and in financial difficulty, the philosophers often resorted to the protection of aristocrats and patrons: From to she held a fortnightly salon , inviting artists, intellectuals, men of letters and philosophers. In the s, Voltaire exiled himself in England, where he absorbed Locke's ideas. The philosophers were, in general, less hostile to monarchical rule than they were to that of the clergy and the nobility.
Philosophers such as d'Holbach were advocates of " enlightened absolutism " [21] in the hope that their ideas would spread more quickly if they had the approval of the Head of State. This process of dissemination of new ideas was increased by new methods of communication. Newspapers and the postal service allowed a more rapid exchange of ideas throughout Europe, resulting in a new form of cultural unity. This intellectual movement supported the idea that there was a structural model of both scientific and moral knowledge, that this model was innate and that its expression was a form of human liberation.
This raised questions on who should have the liberty to get hold of such information; the Press played an important role in the dissemination of ideas during the French Revolution. Their defining characteristic was their intellectual mix; men would gather to express their views and satisfy their thirst for knowledge and to establish their world-view.
But it was necessary to be "introduced" into these salons: Each hostess had her day, her speciality and her special guests. Talented men regularly decamped there to expound their ideas and test their latest work on a privileged public. Having strong, relatively liberated personalities, they were often writers and diarists themselves.
Clergy and, to a lesser extent, nobility formed the majority of the membership. Their social composition shows that privileged men were less prominent than in Paris: