French Revolution Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

cut rotary motion - Essay ExampleThe new order, or at least the aim of the new order, was the establishment of a peoples republic where private property is owned by the feudal lord is berated, religion does not play any role in politics or in the lives of the people and a general will is represented by a group of capitalist leftists. Although when the revolution ended, France was ruled by an emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.If we look at 1789 France and try to determine the causes of the French Revolution, maven fails to identify any decadence of its system. For instance, it was the largest, wealthiest and most powerful state in Western europium. Its intellectuals led the renascence and then the Enlightenment era. French bourgeoisie was prosperous and well-established. Peasants owned and cultivated 40 percent of the land. What causation was there for a revolution Norman Gash (1989) quoting Napoleons statement argues that the reason for French Revolution was nix but vanity and that liberty was just a pretext. One can see the argument. The aristocracy, only 2 per cent of the population, enjoyed a privileged position which their actual services to the state hardly seemed to justify. What the urban and master middle classes clearly wanted was greater social recognition, easier access to rank and power and wider careers for their talents. Ambition and invidia are impelling motives. (Gash, 1989)Lefebvre (1939) on the other hand asserts that the reason why French Revolution took go into was the rise of the bourgeoisie presented by the Enlightenment philosophes as a better alternative to absolute monarchy. The philosophes of Europe appeared to have turned against the age of empires and monarchical rules supported largely by the clergy and the aristocracy. In bourgeoisie, the intellectual connection invested lot of hopes perhaps for the reason that they opposed the aristocracy and offered an economy that was more egalitarian and involved for the first-class hono urs degree time in Europes history the people.This paper will make an attempt to examine the interrogate whether Rousseaus fantasy of the Social Contract had a foremost influence on the intellectual development of the French Revolution and inspired its leaders. The paper will describe the salient concepts of Rousseaus Social Contract theory and enlist the events that took tush during the ten years of the French Revolution (1789-1799). An attempt will be made to answer the question by studying the development of the Revolution and comparing that with Rousseaus social contract theory.It is important to note that the French Revolution was not influenced by Rousseau alone but it would not as well be exclusively out of place to assert that he wrote down the manual and the revolutionaries built the revolution by following his step-by-step instructions. In fact, Rousseau was one of the philosophes of Enlightenment which basically pushed the idea of liberalism based on virtue, reason, t oleration and so on. Other philosophes