Interrogating Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice - Essay Example

In addition, all sermons that do not have this purpose should be considered as nonsense and hypocritical. I believe Paine is among the greatest theorists of the modern age; he never supported feudalism and aristocracy instead he supported egalitarianism. I would identify two principles that would be extremely applicable in justice; people ought to behave as a unit and not as individuals. Considering Paine’s argument, it is upon the consciousness of justice that the revolution energy will emerge and multiply natural resources such as vegetation.

It is the process of unjustly obtaining resources through the name of civilization that has made people either extremely poor or affluent. The success of any plan that is beneficial to the society depends on the number of individuals interested in supporting it, brought together with the justice of its principles. Poverty according to Paine is not in the natural state of things since it gets created by the so called civilized life. He based his arguments upon concerns about the extreme sides of poverty and wealth that have since emerged in the evolution of the present modern society, and their impact on personal anguish and social wreckage.

He says that has worked in two ways; ensuring one portion of the society is much wealthier and the other more wretched (Thomas 7). The rich continue getting richer while the poor get poorer. This can be witnessed in many capitalist countries where economic inequalities have sparked economic revolution, for example, in France during Paine’s period. Similar conditions led to the outbreak of the French revolution. He states that the most prosperous and miserable man of the entire human society is found in the civilized countries.

He observes a condition that generates the equivalence between progress and civilization (Thomas 6). It is not clear whether civilization has promoted or injured the general happiness of man. Paine is interested in showing the greatest divide between the rich and the poor in the construction of state affairs. Both men and women must assume responsibilities for their functions within the society. He describes civilization as an artificial or constructed condition, and that it results from human will and choice (Thomas 8).

Furthermore, he strives to use that essential truth in the progressive enhancement of the poor and civilization as a whole. Paine describes civilization as a construction he needs to further differentiate from the previous state of affairs which he refers to the natural state - mythical original state in which humans initially existed on the planet. Paine believes that the Indian people of Northern America represent the ideal natural and primitive state of man (Thomas 7). He argues that the spectacles of human misery present in Europe cannot be found among the Indians.

Paine views The Indian condition as neither enriched by factors of civilized progress as the European upper and middle classes nor as degraded by poverty as the poor in Europe; the life of an Indian is a progressive holiday, compared to the poor of Europe; moreover, it appears to be object when compared to the rich. Thomas Paine uses the Indians to demonstrate egalitarianism that he can relate with the natural state (Thomas 7). This helps him to show the extreme poverty of modern society as the interference of the natural order of things.

Personally I do not believe that civilization has created out rightly negative things. Through civilization, we have seen