Convocation of the estates general

Who are the four constituent groups in the nation as defined by Sieyes? Why?

The four constituent groups in the nation as defined by Sieyes are agricultural workers, merchants, brokers, administrates and those selling the products, Elite (Fourth class), Clergy (lower level, and those who work for a living (doing service such as servants).

Sieyes wrote this pamphlet in 1789, in 1788, Louis XVI of France proposed the convocation of the Estates-General of France. Consequently, this proposal and Jacques Necker’s invitation to French writers to state their views on the organization of society by Estates enabled Sieyes to publish his famous pamphlet “What is the Third Estate.”This pamphlet played a crucial role in shaping the currents of revolutionary thought that propelled France towards the French Revolution. Sieyes also describes the desires and frustrations of the alienated class of people that made up the third estate. In this pamphlet, he’s trying to demonstrates that the Third Estate is a better representation of the country,

Which group in French society does Sieyes criticize? Why?

Sieyes criticizes the nobility because he states that they are the ones that are ruling the entire society. Therefore it's because of their poor ruling that the country is divided and in poor conditions. He states that the nobility only cares about themselves, and not about their people. Sieyes is blaming the nobility for their insignificant contributions to society, their unequal representation, and injustice. He realized that the decisions made by the nobility were of particular interest, thus did not represent general will.

“Is it not evident that the noble order has privileges and expenditures which it dares to call its rights, but which are apart from the rights of the great body of citizens? It departs there from the common law. So its civil rights make of it an isolated people in the midst of the great nation. This is truly imperium in imperia.” (Sieyes, What is the Third Estate?)

This shows that Sieyes is trying to say that by allowing the Third Estate to have more seats that are equal to those of the nobility and clergy, creates a better-represented society. Giving equal seats to the Third State will allow for a balanced representation of all classes to occur, instead of unfair representation.

During the excerpt he also states:

"It is not sufficient to show that privileged persons, far from being useful to the nation, cannot but enfeeble and injure it; it is necessary to prove further that the noble order does not enter at all into the social organization; that it may indeed be a burden upon the nation, but that it cannot of itself constitute a nation"(Sieyes, What is the Third Estate?)

Therefore, Sieyes is affirming that letting the minority rule only leads to the creation of a weak society, whereas a class with the majority should be in charge of the nation because they will take more care of their people and make justly rules that will help the country flourish.

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1. According to Sieyes, the Third Estate bears the most burdens of public administration. In his writing, he states "...the Third Estate attends to nineteen-twentieths of them, with this distinction; that it is laden with all that which is really painful, with all the burdens which the privileged classes refuse to carry." He also points out that despite carrying most of the burden in public administration, there is a "prohibition" on them, from what appears to be the second and first estates by his use of the terminology "may not pass beyond", which implies a strict limitation on what they can and cannot do, which would come from those in power. So though they carry the majority of the weight, they are not recognized or celebrated for doing so; they are not given credit. He goes on to state "...the pretended utility of a privileged order for the public service is nothing more than a chimera; that with it all that which is burdensome in this service is performed by the Third Estate..." which shows that everyone in classes above the Third Estate do not, in fact, carry the burden of public policy, but pass it on to the Third Estate in such a way as though it looks like they themselves are carrying out the service. This is, I think, a key structure of hierarchical society. The passing on of work/burdens found to be unsavory and the expectation that they still are done by someone further down the food chain is seen within every instance of hierarchy, and society is no exception

2. How is Liberty Defined?

Liberty is defined as one of the rights that men are born with (liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression), but only to the point in which you are not limiting someone else's liberty as the text states "Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights". Liberty is defined as those rights but only exists in so far that you are not infringing upon someone else's rights, and the law shall dictate what those instances of infringement are, and whether or not an action was an infringement. Again, as always with the use of the word "man" I find it interesting that in general the word "man" is used to refer to people, but comes with the immediate defense against the inclusion of women. Women were most definitely excluded from the right of owning property, but I would hope that they were not immediately excluded from the other rights granted by birth.