Abbé sieyes what is the third estate

Enlightenment And French Revolution

Immanuel Kant, What is the Enlightenment? , 1784. Excerpts

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's

inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred

is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and

courage to use it without direction from another. Dare to think! "Have courage to use

your own reason!"- that is the motto of enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the

reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them

from external direction, nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so

easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age.

If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for

me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not

think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me. That the

step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind

(and by the entire fair sex) - quite apart from its being arduous is seen to by those

guardians who have so kindly assumed superintendence over them. After the guardians

have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid

creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they

are tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go

alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they

would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and

ordinarily frightens them away from all further trials. For any single individual to work

himself out of the life under tutelage which has become almost his nature is very

difficult. He has come to be fond of his state, and he is for the present really incapable

of making use of his reason, for no one has ever let him try it out. Statutes and

formulas, those mechanical tools of the rational employment or rather misemployment

of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting tutelage. Whoever throws them off

makes only an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch because he is not accustomed to

that kind of free motion. Therefore, there are few who have succeeded by their own

exercise of mind both in freeing themselves from incompetence and in achieving a

steady pace. But that the public should enlighten itself is more possible; indeed, if only

freedom is granted enlightenment is almost sure to follow. For there will always be

some independent thinkers, even among the established guardians of the great

masses, who, after throwing off the yoke of tutelage from their own shoulders, will

disseminate the spirit of the rational appreciation of both their own worth and every

man's vocation for thinking for himself

. . . .

For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the most

harmless among all the things to which this term can properly be applied. It is the

freedom to make public use of one's reason at every point. But I hear on all sides, "Do

not argue!" The Officer says: "Do not argue but drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue

but pay!" The cleric: "Do not argue but believe!" Only one prince in the world [Frederick

the Great of Prussia] says, "Argue as much as you will, and about what you will, but

obey!" Everywhere there is restriction on freedom. . . .

If we are asked, "Do we now live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, "No ," but we

do live in an age of enlightenment. As things now stand, much is lacking which prevents

men from being, or easily becoming, capable of correctly using their own reason in

religious matters with assurance and free from outside direction. But on the other hand,

we have clear indications that the field has now been opened wherein men may freely

dea1 with these things and that the obstacles to general enlightenment or the release

from self-imposed tutelage are gradually being reduced. In this respect, this is the age

of enlightenment, or the century of Frederick.

Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (eds.). Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1751-1766. Excerpts.

Let us at last give the artisans their due. The liberal arts have adequately sung their own

praises; they must now use their remaining voice to celebrate the mechanical arts. It is

for the liberal arts to lift the mechanical arts from the contempt in which prejudice has for

so long held them, and it is for the patronage of kings to draw them from the poverty in

which they still languish. Artisans have believed themselves contemptible because

people have looked down on them; let us teach them to have a better opinion of

themselves; that is the only way to obtain more nearly perfect results from them. We

need a man to rise up in the academies and go down to the workshops and gather

material about the arts to be set out in a book which will persuade artisans to read,

philosophers to think on useful lines, and the great to make at least some worthwhile

use of their authority and their wealth.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/education/education-terms-and-concepts/liberal-arts
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/education/education-terms-and-concepts/liberal-arts
Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, 1764. Excerpts

Equality, therefore, is at once the most natural thing and the most fantastic. As men

go to excess in everything when they can, this inequality has been exaggerated. It has

been maintained in many countries that it was not permissible for a citizen to leave

the country where chance has caused him to be born; the sense of this law is visibly:

"This land is so bad and so badly governed, that we forbid any individual to leave it,

for fear that everyone will leave it." Do better : make all your subjects want to live in

your country, and foreigners to come to it. All men have the right in the bottom of

their hearts to think themselves entirely equal to other men : it does not follow from

that that the cardinal's cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner; but

the cook can say: "I am a man like my master; like him I was born crying; like me he

will die with the same pangs and the same ceremonies. Both of us perform the same

animal functions.

If the Turks take possession of Rome, and if then I am cardinal and my master

cook, I shall take him into my service." This discourse is reasonable and just; but

while waiting for the Great Turk to take possession of Rome, the cook must do his

duty, or else all human society is perverted. As regards a man who is neither a

cardinal's cook, nor endowed with any other employment in the state; as regards a

private person who is connected with nothing, but who is vexed at being received

everywhere with an air of being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that

many monsignors have no more knowledge, wit or virtue than he, and who at times

is bored at waiting in their antechambers, what should he decide to do? Why, to take

himself off.

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EVALUATING THE EVIDENCE 19.2

Abbé Sieyès, What Is the Third Estate? In the flood of pamphlets that appeared after Louis XVI’s call for a meeting of the Estates General, the most influential was written in 1789 by a Catholic priest named Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès. In “What Is the Third Estate?” the abbé Sieyès vigorously condemned the system of privilege that lay at the heart of French society. The term privilege combined the Latin words for “private” and “law.” In Old Regime France, no one set of laws applied to all; over time, the monarchy had issued a series of particular laws, or privileges, that enshrined special rights and entitlements for select individuals and groups. Noble privileges were among the weightiest.

Sieyès rejected this entire system of legal and social inequality. Deriding the nobility as a foreign parasite, he argued that the common people of the third estate, who did most of the work and paid most of the taxes, constituted the true nation. His pamphlet galvanized public opinion and played an important role in convincing representatives of the third estate to proclaim themselves a “National Assembly” in June 1789. Sieyès later helped bring Napoleon Bonaparte to power, abandoning the radicalism of 1789 for an authoritarian regime.

1. What is the Third Estate? Everything. 2. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. 3. What does it want? To become something.

. . . What is a Nation? A body of associates living under a common law and represented by the same legislature. Is it not more than certain that the noble order has privileges, exemptions, and even rights that are distinct from the rights

of the great body of citizens? Because of this, it [the noble order] does not belong to the common order, it is not covered by the law common to the rest. Thus its civil rights already make it a people apart inside the great Nation. It is truly imperium in imperio [a law unto itself].

As for its political rights, the nobility also exercises them separately. It has its own representatives who have no mandate from the people. Its deputies sit separately, and even when they assemble in the same room with the deputies of the ordinary citizens, the nobility’s representation still remains essentially distinct and separate: it is foreign to the Nation by its very principle, for its mission does not emanate from the people, and by its purpose, since it consists in defending, not the general interest, but the private interests of the nobility.

The Third Estate therefore contains everything that pertains to the Nation and nobody outside of the Third Estate can claim to be part of the Nation. What is the Third Estate? EVERYTHING. . . .

By Third Estate is meant the collectivity of citizens who belong to the common order. Anybody who holds a legal privilege of any kind leaves that common order, stands as an exception to the common law, and in consequence does not belong to the Third Estate. . . . It is certain that the moment a citizen acquires privileges contrary to common law, he no longer belongs to the common order. His new interest is opposed to the general interest; he has no right to vote in the name of the people. . . .

In vain can anyone’s eyes be closed to the revolution that time and the force of things have brought to pass; it is none the less real. Once upon a time the Third Estate was in bondage and the noble order was everything that mattered. Today the Third is everything and nobility but a word. Yet under the cover of this word a new and intolerable aristocracy has slipped in, and the people has every reason to no longer want aristocrats. . . .

What is the will of a Nation? It is the result of individual wills, just as the Nation is the aggregate of the individuals who compose it. It is impossible to conceive of a legitimate association that does not have for its goal the common security, the common liberty, in short, the public good. No doubt each individual also has his own personal aims. He says to himself, “protected by the common security, I will be able to peacefully pursue my own personal projects, I will seek my happiness where I will, assured of encountering only those legal obstacles that society will prescribe for the common interest, in which I have a part, and with which my own personal interest is so usefully allied.” . . .

Advantages which differentiate citizens from one another lie outside the purview of citizenship. Inequalities of wealth or ability are like the inequalities of age, sex, size, etc. In no way do they detract from the equality of citizenship. These individual advantages no doubt benefit from the protection of the law; but it is not the legislator’s task to create them, to give privileges to some and refuse them to others. The law grants nothing; it protects what already exists until such time that what exists begins to harm the common interest. These are the only limits on individual freedom. I imagine the law as being at the center of a large globe; we the citizens without exception, stand equidistant from it on the surface and occupy equal places; all are equally dependent on the law, all present it with their liberty and their property to be protected; and this is what I call the common rights of citizens, by which they are all alike. All these individuals communicate with each other, enter into contracts, negotiate, always under the common guarantee of the law. If in this general activity somebody wishes to get control over the person of his neighbor or usurp his property, the common law goes into action to repress this criminal attempt and puts everyone back in their place at the same distance from the law. . . .

It is impossible to say what place the two privileged orders [the clergy and the nobility] ought to occupy in the social order: this is the equivalent of asking what place one wishes to assign to a malignant tumor that torments and undermines the

strength of the body of a sick person. It must be neutralized. We must re-establish the health and working of all organs so thoroughly that they are no longer susceptible to these fatal schemes that are capable of sapping the most essential principles of vitality.

EVALUATE THE EVIDENCE

1. What criticism of noble privileges does Sieyès offer? Why does he believe nobles are “foreign” to the nation? 2. How does Sieyès define the nation, and why does he believe that the third estate constitutes the nation? 3. What relationship between citizens and the law does Sieyès envision? What limitations on the law does he

propose?

Source: Excerpt from pp. 65–70 in The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, edited, translated, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt. Copyright © 1996 by Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press. Used by permission of the publisher.

Just as the laboring poor of Paris had decisively intervened in the revolution, the struggling French peasantry also took matters into their own hands. Peasants bore the brunt of state taxation, church tithes, and noble privileges. Since most did not own enough land to be self-sufficient, they were hard-hit by the rising price of bread. In the summer of 1789, throughout France peasants began to rise in insurrection against their lords, ransacking manor houses and burning feudal documents that recorded their obligations. In some areas peasants reoccupied common lands enclosed by landowners and seized forests. Fear of marauders and vagabonds hired by vengeful landlords — called the Great Fear by contemporaries — seized the rural poor and fanned the flames of rebellion.

Great Fear The fear of noble reprisals against peasant uprisings that seized the French countryside and led to further revolt.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen [1789] Adopted by the National Assembly during the French Revolution on August 26, 1789, and reaffirmed by the constitution of 1958.

Preamble

The representatives of the French People, formed

into a National Assembly, considering ignorance,

forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of man to be

the only causes of public misfortunes and the

corruption of Governments, have resolved to set

forth, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, unalien

able and sacred rights of man, to the end that this

Declaration, constantly present to all members of the

body politic, may remind them unceasingly of their

rights and their duties; to the end that the acts of the

legislative power and those of the executive power,

Article first

Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.

Social distinctions may be based only on considera

tions of the common good.

Article 2

The aim of every political association is the

preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights

of man. These rights are Liberty, Property, Safety,

and Resistance to Oppression.

Article 3

The source of all sovereignty lies essentially in

the Nation. No corporate body, no individual may

exercise any authority that does not expressly

emanate from it.

Article 4

Liberty consists in being able to do anything that

does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural

rights of every man has no bounds other than those

that ensure to the other members of society the en

joyment of these same rights. These bounds may be

determined only by Law.

Article 5

The Law has the right to forbid only those

actions that are injurious to society. Nothing that is

not forbidden by Law may be hindered, and no one

may be compelled to do what the Law does not

ordain.

Article 6

The Law is the expression of the general will.

All citizens have the right to take part, personally or

since they may be continually compared with the aim

of every political institution, may thereby be the

more respected; to the end that the demands of the

citizens, founded henceforth on simple and uncon

testable principles, may always be directed toward

the maintenance of the Constitution and the

happiness of all.

In consequence whereof, the National Assembly

recognizes and declares, in the presence and under

the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following

Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

through their representatives, in its making. It must

be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.

All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally

eligible to all high offices, public positions and

employments, according to their ability, and without

other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.

Article 7

No man may be accused, arrested or detained

except in the cases determined by the Law, and

following the procedure that it has prescribed. Those

who solicit, expedite, carry out, or cause to be carried

out arbitrary orders must be punished; but any citizen

summoned or apprehended by virtue of the Law,

must give instant obedience; resistance makes him

guilty.

Article 8

The Law must prescribe only the punishments

that are strictly and evidently necessary; and no one

may be punished except by virtue of a Law drawn

up and promulgated before the offense is commit

ted, and legally applied.

Article 9

As every man is presumed innocent until he has

been declared guilty, if it should be considered neces

sary to arrest him, any undue harshness that is not

required to secure his person must be severely

curbed by Law.

Article 10

No one may be disturbed on account of his opin

ions, even religious ones, as long as the manifesta

tion of such opinions does not interfere with the

established Law and Order.

Article 11 The free communication of ideas and of

opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Any citizen may therefore speak, write and publish freely, except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty in the cases determined by Law.

Article 12 To guarantee the Rights of Man and of the

Citizen a public force is necessary; this force is there fore established for the benefit of all, and not for the particular use of those to whom it is entrusted.

Article 13 For the maintenance of the public force, and for

administrative expenses, a general tax is indispensa ble; it must be equally distributed among all citizens, in proportion to their ability to pay.

Article 14 All citizens have the right to ascertain, by them

selves, or through their representatives, the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to watch over its use, and to determine its proportion, basis, col lection and duration.

Article 15 Society has the right to ask a public official for

an accounting of his administration.

Article 16 Any society in which no provision is made for

guaranteeing rights or for the separation of powers, has no Constitution.

Article 17 Since the right to Property is inviolable and

sacred, no one may be deprived thereof, unless pub lic necessity, legally ascertained, obviously requires

it, and just and prior indemnity has been paid.

The French Declaration of The Rights of Man and of the Citizen

Designed as a preamble to the constitution still under preparation in 1789 by the National Constit uent Assembly, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen summarized a large amount of Western thought concerning the individual and the individual's personal freedom in civil society. Evolving from the Estates General meeting at Ver sailles in the spring of 1789 to address growing un rest in France, the Constituent Assembly initially convened in late June of 1789. The idea of a written declaration of human rights was under discussion in various sectors of French society during these early months.

On July 6, the Constituent Assembly established a committee to set the agenda for the drafting of a constitution and selected 30 of its members to serve on this panel. A report on behalf of the committee three days later recommended that a declaration of rights should be prepared and attached to the con stitution as an inseparable preamble to the text. Also, a somewhat elaborate plan was proposed for facilitat ing discussion of constitution articles within the As sembly's 30 bureaus. Adopting this proposal, the Assembly created a coordinating committee of eight members to distill the bureau deliberations. Subse quently, on July 27, the chairman of the coordinat ing committee initiated a debate in the Assembly

when he inquired about the type of rights declara tion being sought by the membership. After consider ing the relationship of the declaration to the constitution, the content of such a statement, and the merits and demerits of such instruments, the Assem bly agreed on August 4 that plans should proceed with the drafting of a short delineation of rights which would become a preamble to the constitution.

Dissatisfaction with the slow pace of the draft ing effort, however, resulted in the creation of still another committee. Mandated on August 14, this panel of five members was to collect and review all available draft declarations, produce an agreed upon model, and present it within three days to the As sembly for consideration and approval. When the committee of five made its offering on August 17, the proposal was greeted with rejection and a lengthy debate ensued. A new course was then chosen: the whole Assembly would review the existing drafts and vote, article by article, upon the composition of the final declaration. The task was begun on August 20 and completed six days later when the Assembly, on August 26, approved the final content of the decla ration. After undergoing some restyling, text re arrangement, and editing, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was accepted by Louis XVI on October 5, 1789. It was later given modern-day reaffirmation bv the French Constitution of 1958.

VISUAL SOURCES

Gabriel Lemonnier, Reading Voltaire's tragedy L'Orphelin de la Chine at Madame Geoffrin's salon, 1812. Oil on canvas. Source: Getty Images

Eighteenth- century Viennese coffeehouse. (Private Collection/Erich Lessing/Art Resource,