The enlightenment and the French Revolution question

Question

How was The Enlightenment NOT the cause of the French Revolutio?

Answer 1

I agree with the comment because it is logically correct. At least, there is no easy answer.  

 

Perhaps the question is really asking about whether there were other causes as well, maybe equally or more important.  Another way to look at it is: would think thhere have been a Fr. revolution without an enlightenment?

 

Historians are still filling libraries debating about whether the Fr. revolution was really influenced by the enlightenment, and if so whether that was a good thing.  Did  Enlightenment ideals even survive the Fr. Revolution?

 

Bet you did not think this was so complicated?

 

the trouble with compressing history into a single course that claims to cover everything is you have to oversimplify.  Textbook writers and teachers have no choice but they may also tend to skew the focus to what they think is most important. This is not necessarily as bad thing provided students know this is what is happening.

 

The Enlightenment is still listed as A cause in most textbooks.  But no two historians are going to agree on how important a cuase it was even if they agree it was a cause.  Heck here is still a lot of debate about what the Enlightenment actually was!

 

So the only way I can make sense of this question is to restate it a little:  Can you argue that the Enlightenment did not cause the Fr. Revolution?

 

One could point out that ideas about personal liberty and natural rights come out of the Enlightenment and those ideas were really important in the Revolution.  True, but look what happens.  the Reign of Terror seems like a big contradiction, right?  Further the totalitarian governments that took over in france, beginning with the revolutionary leaders themselves and followed by napoleon, are not usually seen as shining examples of enlightenment thought.  

 

A lot of people I really respect, like John Green bless him, argue that the Fr. revolution had a more lasting impact on human rights than the American revolution and so really took the enlightenment to the next level.  Sorry, but i can't buy it. I can't excuse France for the Terror or napoleon.  While the new form of government created in the new United States was far from perfect (slavery anone?)  the Constitutional form of government here both came first and survived.  (And no I am not ignoring the Civil war.)  While slavery was certainly a form of terror, here we had a new system and  people kept working at it continually.And when France finally got around to a Republican form of government they studied the US Constitution as most countries have done since 1789. Don't blame us (U.S.) if most of them screwed it up.  At least we did not go back to totslitarian givernment (although this gets argued a lot also).

 

Some people while the Fr. rev. was going on (Edmund Burke) did blame the Enlightenment for things like the Terror and so argued the Enlightenment was a bad thing.  I think a better way to answer your question is to look for other causes of the Fr. revolution that might better explain the mess it turned into.  And there were other causes, the main ones usually cited being:  france was broke and had to tax the heck out of its people to pay for huge war debts incurred by fighting with England over the New World throughout the 18th century (including helping us in our revolution), the financial problem was made even worse by the extravagant spending of the king and the very small nobility which led to a great deal of resentment, the three estate form of government that really scresed the vast majhority of the people (the third estate were the onlt taxpayers),  economic depression in the 1770's and 80's and bad harvests.

 

So I'd argue that some form of rebellion against the established government in france was inevitable.  the enlightenment did supply ideas that revolutionaries could glom onto to support overthrowing a king, but conditions for the vast majority of the people were at least arguably the real causes of the Fr. R.

 

And feel free to jump into the debate because there is a lot to disagree about here!  That's what makes history fun, n'est-ce-pas?  

Answer 2

It is evident that the Enlightenment spawned a variety of ideas that influenced and motivated the French Revolution. Enlightenment theorists like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu challenged the existing social and political order, denying kings' divine right, pushing for separation of powers, and defending natural rights.

However, the Enlightenment was not a cohesive or monolithic movement. It represented a wide range of viewpoints and beliefs, from moderate to radical.

These concepts resonated mainly with the French elite and the impact of the Enlightenment was unevenly spread throughout French society.

While it may have been significant among the educated elite, it received little attention from the public. The French Revolution was a complicated phenomenon involving a wide range of social, economic, and political forces, and attributing it entirely to the Enlightenment would be overly simplistic.