No problem. Raymonde Monnier and Jacques Guilhaumou are also good sources, though the latter can be a bit dense if you're not into linguistics.
Roger Barny wrote about the influence of Rousseau on the Revolution and it can be rather instructive to read him, since he went in assuming (because that's what all the literature says) that he would find the most influence on the left, but it turns out, not only was everyone from Robespierre to Marie-Antoinette reading Rousseau, Rousseau was actually more influential on the right than on the left.
I noticed this too in my research on educational systems proposed under the various assemblies and what role they accorded to girls/women. Though they universally encouraged breast-feeding and made it clear that it was the responsibility of parents to care for very young children - which shows a clear rousseauiste influence - the most rousseauiste on the question of the education of girls were Mirabeau and Talleyrand, who both invoked Émile to justify not instituting public education for girls, but rather leaving them at home with their mothers (Talleyrand did, to be fair, come up with a kind of trade school for girls for whom this wouldn't be possible, but he made it very clear that this was not ideal). The least rousseauiste on this point were Condorcet (not surprising since he was one of Rousseau's encyclopédiste adversaries) and Lepeletier (which is to say Lepeletier's plan, presented by Robespierre after the latter's assination).
And so, I don't think it's any more ironic that Bastiat would be influenced by Locke than that Mirabeau - not to mention outright counterrevolutionaries (who obviously were not included in my research, because they wouldn't be presenting plans for public education in revolutionary assemblies). It all hinges on your understanding of the ambiguity in Locke's definition of property. Constant, who is, as I said, pretty much the inventor of the brand of liberalism Bastiat appears to subscribe to, was influenced by Locke as well. Of course, there's nothing inevitable about the dichotomy between civil and political rights (again, invented by Constant). The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, an outgrowth of natural rights philosophy, ignores both categories in favor of a kind of liberty that is neither that of the Ancients nor of the Moderns, but of reciprocity/non-domination. Again, I'm afraid I'm still rather busy, so I'll refer you to Fl. Gauthier's Triomphe et mort du droit naturel en Révolution for a more complete explanation. Suffice it to say that Constant's dichotomy was so non-inevitable that it didn't occur to Volney, in 1795, who shared Constant's belief in a society based not on rights inherent to humanity but on the ownership of material goods, to do anything but reject the very concept of rights as incompatible with the society he envisioned.
I should add that understanding natural rights philosophy pretty much invalidates not only Constant's analysis of the Revolution, but also anyone basing their analysis on Constant's - which includes not only people who agree with Constant, but also Marx, who adopted Constant's categories (though, as you can imagine, drew rather different - though equally erroneous - conclusions).
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-05-20 10:08 am (UTC)Roger Barny wrote about the influence of Rousseau on the Revolution and it can be rather instructive to read him, since he went in assuming (because that's what all the literature says) that he would find the most influence on the left, but it turns out, not only was everyone from Robespierre to Marie-Antoinette reading Rousseau, Rousseau was actually more influential on the right than on the left.
I noticed this too in my research on educational systems proposed under the various assemblies and what role they accorded to girls/women. Though they universally encouraged breast-feeding and made it clear that it was the responsibility of parents to care for very young children - which shows a clear rousseauiste influence - the most rousseauiste on the question of the education of girls were Mirabeau and Talleyrand, who both invoked Émile to justify not instituting public education for girls, but rather leaving them at home with their mothers (Talleyrand did, to be fair, come up with a kind of trade school for girls for whom this wouldn't be possible, but he made it very clear that this was not ideal). The least rousseauiste on this point were Condorcet (not surprising since he was one of Rousseau's encyclopédiste adversaries) and Lepeletier (which is to say Lepeletier's plan, presented by Robespierre after the latter's assination).
And so, I don't think it's any more ironic that Bastiat would be influenced by Locke than that Mirabeau - not to mention outright counterrevolutionaries (who obviously were not included in my research, because they wouldn't be presenting plans for public education in revolutionary assemblies). It all hinges on your understanding of the ambiguity in Locke's definition of property. Constant, who is, as I said, pretty much the inventor of the brand of liberalism Bastiat appears to subscribe to, was influenced by Locke as well. Of course, there's nothing inevitable about the dichotomy between civil and political rights (again, invented by Constant). The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, an outgrowth of natural rights philosophy, ignores both categories in favor of a kind of liberty that is neither that of the Ancients nor of the Moderns, but of reciprocity/non-domination. Again, I'm afraid I'm still rather busy, so I'll refer you to Fl. Gauthier's Triomphe et mort du droit naturel en Révolution for a more complete explanation. Suffice it to say that Constant's dichotomy was so non-inevitable that it didn't occur to Volney, in 1795, who shared Constant's belief in a society based not on rights inherent to humanity but on the ownership of material goods, to do anything but reject the very concept of rights as incompatible with the society he envisioned.
I should add that understanding natural rights philosophy pretty much invalidates not only Constant's analysis of the Revolution, but also anyone basing their analysis on Constant's - which includes not only people who agree with Constant, but also Marx, who adopted Constant's categories (though, as you can imagine, drew rather different - though equally erroneous - conclusions).