Robespierre: The Evolution of Virtue - Essay Example

29 December Robespierre: The Evolution of Virtue Robespierre: The Earliest Years of Virtue That the vision of virtue in Robespierre was visible throughout his earliest writings is undeniable. In his Speech Denouncing the New Conditions of Eligibility, dated October 22 1789, as well as in his speech regarding the flight of the King, Robespierre is absolutely clear in his commitment toward virtue. In Robespierre’s eyes, virtue is a unique combination of individual sovereignty and equality of the people in France. Since the earliest years of his political career, Robespierre sought to establish his own vision of virtue, through the pursuit for equality, citizenry, and individual sovereignty. In one of his speeches, Robespierre claimed that “the Constitution establishes that sovereignty resides in the people, in all the individuals of the people. Each individual has the right to participate in making the law which governs him and in the administration of the public good which is his own”.1 To a large extent, virtue for Robespierre was a matter of politics and had to work for the benefit of the masses. Robespierre did not simply assert that every individual was a citizen, but granted citizens a broad range of individual and social rights, irrespective of the amount of fortune they possessed.2 Robespierre was confident that the amount and scope of the individual rights did not have to depend on the amount of money an individual was able to invest in his country.3 Otherwise, such a position would deny the relevance and meaning of virtue, equality, and justice in the human society. The humanistic nature of Robespierre’s beliefs was difficult to ignore, and it produced a multitude of positive effects on the development of the political and ethical consciousness in France. As part of his political and individual evolution, Robespierre slowly transformed and expanded his beliefs about virtue. By 1791, he no longer perceived virtue as a combination of sovereignty, equality, and justice in the masses. For Robespierre, virtue came to exemplify a sophisticated framework of attitudes and decisions that continuously affected the lives of the thousands in France. Robespierre slowly came to associate virtue with patriotism. The latter, at times, bordered on nationalism. He was willing to reach a compromise with the émigrés and promote eternal fraternity, peace, and amnesty in France.4 For Robespierre, peace, fraternity, and amnesty were the principal preconditions for avoiding military conflicts with the perceived enemies.5 Robespierre moved even further, by denouncing the King’s political and military power: he claimed that the French society had to everything possible not to let the King back to the throne.6 At that time, the act of denouncing the power of the King was the best form of virtue Robespierre promoted and offered to his followers. He was no longer willing to tolerate the King. In his view, the King had abandoned his people.7 He was confident that true patriots had sufficient power and decisiveness to change the political situation in France and further improve it. He did not want to accept a situation, when ministers and the King persecuted everyone, who was considered a patriot. Later, Robespierre’s commitment to patriotism would turn into nationalism. The latter, in turn, would transform the virtuous image of Robespierre into a carrier of terror, blood, and suffering. Still, in 1791, Robespierre is irradiating the joy of power and positive political change. His speeches are overfilled with virtuous ideas and decisions. In 1791, Robespierre’s speeches look like a solid foundation for re-directing the course of the French history. It should be noted, that Robespierre’s views on virtue and his beliefs about politics, sovereignty and equality of the French citizens were greatly influenced by his passion for the ideas of the Enlightenment, commitment to Roman jurisprudence, and the belief in classical legal and political traditions.8 Years of university education left their traces in Robespierre’s political and social mission. Robespierre was profoundly influenced by his university professors. Simultaneously, he exerted significant influence on his fellow citizens in the college he was attending, while young. In her memoirs, Camille Desmoulins, one of the closest friends of Robespierre, discussed and described the evolution of Robespierre’s thought in the earliest years of his political career. Desmoulins wrote that college students, including Robespierre, had been nourished by the ideas and beliefs of Cicero.9 They had been unanimous in their beliefs in individual and collective freedom.10 Brought up by the Roman and Greek political schools, college students in France, including Robespierre, developed a unique and, mostly, unexpected abjection toward the monarchy.11 Desmoulins suggests that “it was foolish to imagine that we would be inspired by the fathers of the fatherland of the Capitol, without feeling horror at the maneaters of Versailles, and that we would admire the past without condemning the present”.12 Those were the times, when Robespierre was slowly shaping his ideas about the revolution and developed his unique and terrifying vision of virtue – the virtue equally positive and negative. It was under the influence of the Roman jurisprudence and politics that Robespierre arrived to a single and undeniable definition of what was the best for France. He was slowly coming to see the point of republicanism and the hidden threats of the monarchy. He applied to Cicero, in his striving to adopt the best and most objective view on the future of France. Finally, he realized that only one definite act could guarantee the future prosperity and stability in France – that act was the denunciation of the King and the French monarchy. Robespierre’s ideas about virtue: The roots Surprisingly or not, the vision of virtue in Robespierre was not solely the product of his university influences. What Robespierre expressed in his speeches was deeply rooted in the existing political context and influenced by a broad range of political factors. Linton writes that Robespierre’s politics and, virtue, in particular, reflected the broad tradition of human natural rights.13 Simply stated, Robespierre kept to a belief that sovereignty, citizenry, equality, and other rights were deeply engraved in the human heart and could not be isolated.14 Robespierre nourished his ideas, based on the belief that reason and consciousness were the principal factors of using natural rights wisely and for the benefit of people; those beliefs, in turn, emerged from the Enlightenment ideas, which profoundly affected Robespierre.15 Those ideas and influences were readily noticeable in his earliest speeches regarding citizen rights and the need to denounce the crown. Robespierre regularly emphasized the fact that monarchy could not promote positive growth and the development of the true national consciousness. Rather, the monarchy in France was a form of persecuting the most committed partisans and patriots for their ideas.16 He perceived the monarchy as the reflection of an ancient regime, equally outdated and inefficient. He could not but view the monarchy as the instrument of the disguised military and aristocracy, who unmasked themselves in their actions, decisions, and deeds.17 In many instances, Robespierre was both a concentration of the most important ideas of his time and a reflection of the emerging political and philosophic trends in France. He exemplified an idealization of the new, anti-monarchical regime and served an efficient support of the masses in their striving to improve their social position. A supporter of the Enlightenment ideas, Robespierre shared a conviction that politics had to work for the benefit of the masses and make their lives happier.18 He cherished an idea that the society possessed resources and skills needed to improve their lives and could accomplish this mission without preserving the aristocratic order in France. Even at the peak of his political career, Robespierre did not abandon the hatred toward materialism of the privileged classes and called for the need to frighten the word “property”.19 However, those were the most popular, general ideas Robespierre wanted to communicate to the French people. Apart from the general ideas, Robespierre was deeply loyal to the philosophic ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau. Numerous commentators discussed the relationship between the ideas of Robespierre and those of Rousseau.20 Rousseau’s philosophy was always believed to be at the core of Robespierre’s ideas about virtue. Robespierre was deeply fascinated by the emotionality of Rousseau’s rhetoric, and he further used Rousseau’s principles and beliefs to develop his own theory of virtue. Here, Linton describes the three principal themes in the relationship between Rousseau and Robespierre. First, Robespierre applied to Rousseau in the development of his idea of the virtuous self.21 In other words, Robespierre claimed that private conscience was the main element driving the individual evolution of personality.22 Rousseau had been a popular promoter of the idea of the virtuous self, saying that he himself wanted to devote his life to virtue and defend virtue against the background of hostility and isolation.23 Thus, it comes as no surprise that Robespierre, like Rousseau, later developed a sense of urgency in regards to virtue and even experienced something similar to insanity about it. Like Rousseau, Robespierre positioned himself as the defender of virtue, and his commitment to the virtuous self sometimes bordered on paranoia.24 The second major theme of relationship between Rousseau and Robespierre’s ideas was a common belief in that virtue could be found in ordinary people.25 Robespierre experienced the sense of disgust toward the corrupted values and principles of the privileged layers of the French society. Influenced by Rousseau, Robespierre was confident that material wealth and a privileged social status changed the beliefs and principles, which the wealthiest people and classes in France pursued. He could not escape the feeling that ordinary people were much closer toward the realization of virtue, uninfluenced by material wealth and a pursuit for financial values.26 The idea that privileged classes and individuals lacked virtue awareness was not exclusive of Robespierre, but had its roots in the writings and studies of the numerous supporters of the Enlightenment: for example, La Bruyere compared and contrasted the moral corruption of the privileged classes to the moral simplicity, virtuousness and good-heartedness of the poor people.27 The differences in how social classes perceived virtue owed much to the prevailing rhetoric of that time, which reduced the relevance of the materialistic ideas and emphasized the value of self-development and moral growth. It was the idea of virtue in the ordinary people that lay the ground for the development of the sovereignty and equality ideas in Rousseau and, later, Robespierre. Robespierre developed a belief that the distribution of the rights and freedoms in the French society did not have to depend on the material wealth; more importantly, that ordinary people possessed virtue to a greater extent than wealthy populations gave them a unique right to exercise their natural freedoms to the fullest.28 In this context, the virtue of the ordinary people and their participation in the political processes in France had to create a foundation for the expansion of the free will principles, which reflected the third common theme between Rousseau and Robespierre. The general will doctrine, promoted by Robespierre, implied that virtuous people had the right and even obligation to replace the power of the single monarch with the power of the virtuous majority.29 The doctrine of the general will further governed Robespierre toward imposing his views about virtue on the French people. This view of the virtuous self would further predetermine the course of the historical evolution in France. Unfortunately, much of what Robespierre believed in and promoted across the masses was too idealistic to be true. That Robespierre grounded his ideas in the traditions of Roman republicanism and jurisprudence made his convictions and principles complicated and, sometimes, inapplicable in the French political realities. His ideas were too beautiful to be efficient and realistic.30 His reference to Greece and Rome was sometimes paradoxical and distanced from the historical fact.31 Many of those, whom Robespierre considered as his teachers, including Montesquieu and Rousseau, believed in the ideal of the virtuous republic but recognized the unattainability of their ideals in real-life circumstances.32 That was, probably, why many of Robespierre’s contemporaries did not want to agree with his claims, ideas, and beliefs. That was, probably, why Robespierre emerged as the carrier of the political disagreement, controversy, and argument in revolutionary France. Robespierre: virtue vs. non-virtue The times of Robespierre in France were also the times of disagreement, violence, non-compassion, and doubts about the future of the monarchy and its effects on the political stability within the country. The figure of Robespierre reflected a continuous disagreement in public beliefs and attitudes. Robespierre’s ideas and beliefs further fueled the expansion of the mental, spiritual, and political gap between the supporters and opponents of the monarchy in France. Influenced by political confusion and revolutionary moods, dozens of people came to view themselves as capable of promoting their political ideas into the masses. Some of them supported Robespierre in his virtuous ideals, although in somewhat less philosophic manner (namely, Sieyes). Others presented a new, unusual view of the future republic (e.g, Barnave). More often than not, those who did not accept Robespierre’s ideas seemed more realistic in their discussion of the political future in France. Understanding these views and considerations is important, to see what led Robespierre to his tragic end. Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes’s The Third Estate speech exemplified the triumph of the republican thinking in enlightened France and fit in the anti-monarchical atmosphere within the country. It is at least wrong to say that did not support Robespierre’s ideas about political virtue; rather, Sieyes’s beliefs and ideas looked more realistic and advanced, compared to the political idealism of Robespierre. Sieyes suggested that, for any nation to develop and prosper, two essential conditions were to be met: (a) individual effort; and (b) public functions.33 All individual efforts, according to Sieyes, had to be divided into the four basic classes: (1) families and agricultural labor; (2) processing agricultural products between their first sale and consumption; (3) additional processes that add value to products between manufacturing and consumption; and (4) a series of efforts that meet the needs of individuals other than manufacturing and consumption.34 Sieyes created and promoted the idea of the Third Estate, which had to put forth and protect the execution of all four public and individual functions.35 Sieyes’s idea of the Third Estate seemed the first and one of the most successful attempts to defend equality and justice in the French society. Sieyes tried to prove that the Third Estate would serve the principal source of the political power in the state, as long as no class, how privileged it could be, had the right to be separated from the public effort to develop and sustain a republican society. The situation, when the government served the interests of a narrow privileged class, had to be changed. Based on the historical experience of Egypt and Indian Voyages, monarchy and the royal power had been equally monstrous, unreasonable, and detrimental to the social progress.36 In that situation, the benefits of having a privileged class were not more than a chimera, and having no privileged strata, the society would always find out how to fill in the social void.37 Apparently, Sieyes’s ideas went in line with those of Robespierre: the latter voted for the abolition of the monarchical order in France and took equality, individual sovereignty and citizenship as the indispensable elements of the political virtue. However, certain differences between Robespierre and Sieyes were also evident: less philosophic than Robespierre’s political position, Sieyes’s ideas presented a more comprehensive picture of France without monarchy. Those ideas lacked unnecessary idealism and were grounded in a reasonable justification of the collective and individual economic processes in the country. Sieyes’s writings lacked a “violent” angle that was characteristic of Robespierre: in one of his pro-virtue speeches, Robespierre called for the use of arms to denounce the crown and eliminate monarchy in France.38 To “rise in order to annihilate all the aristocrats in La Vendee” turned out to be the primary purpose of Robespierre’s political activity.39 Unfortunately, Robespierre and his vision of virtue were clearly an example of the unwise, almost absolutist striving to establish a new political order, which Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave discussed in one of his works. Barnave’s ideas are a frequent topic of scholarly discussion in the context of the revolutionary changes in 18th-century’s France. Barnave supported Robespierre’s beliefs about republicanism and enlightenment but, in distinction from Robespierre, intentionally avoided idealism and unreasonableness. His work reproduced a relevant image of a republican state, in which political and social stability would depend on the people’s ability to manage their resources and efforts effectively. Really, it is not enough to want freedom, as Robespierre wanted it, but it is essential that people know what it takes to be free and how to use this freedom wisely.40 Freedom can be equally threatening and damaging, if the society does not know how to interpret its meaning and use the opportunities it provides with reason. Any society that fails to grasp the meaning of virtue and cannot understand the nature of the republican government will necessarily resemble the tragic historical picture of Sparta and Athens.41 Therefore, it is not enough to have an elector pushing forward an idea of freedom, but the qualifications and skills of such elector are the factors that matter for the success of these freedom endeavors.42 In distinction from Robespierre, who considered himself eager and able to force a political change, Barnave avoided bold claims. On the contrary, he tried to assess what had to be done to establish a republican government. In his view, only the enlightened had the right to hold the public opinion in their hands and manage it.43 The absence of interest to press the people had to be greater than the common interest of all citizens and their striving toward equality.44 Unfortunately, Barnave’s writings and principles did not find their reflection in those by Robespierre. Moreover, by the end of his political career, Robespierre came to exemplify a combination of the features and decisions least desired by Barnave. Pressure, armed conflicts, and terror became the distinctive featured of Robespierre’s philosophy and regime. Virtue came to be associated with violence, blood, and opposition. By the time Robespierre emerged as an undeniable leader of the Mountain faction, he no longer favored the lack of rigidity and pressure in the political decisions. He arrived to the top of the political pyramid with an urgent desire to reverse the order of political things and impose his own view of the republican reality on everyone, irrespective of their opinions and will. Robespierre: the final countdown The significance of Robespierre’s political growth and transformation of his political consciousness cannot be underestimated. However, it would be fair to say that the change in Robespierre’s vision of virtue was not momentous. Rather, that change accompanied his gradual movement toward the top of the political pyramid. The magnitude of the change that took place in Robespierre’s consciousness is difficult to ignore. At the very beginning of his political career, influenced by his professors and the ideas of Rousseau and Montesquieu, Robespierre treated virtue as the simplest thing in a republic.45 Virtue for Robespierre was as simple as “love of the republic; a sensation, and not a consequence of acquired knowledge, a sensation that may be felt by the meanest as well as by the highest person in the state. When the common people adopt good maxims, they adhere to them more steadily than those whom we call gentlemen… the love of our country is favorable to a purity of morals, and the latter is again conducive to the former”.46 Step by step, Robespierre’s speeches reflected the growing resentment and emphasis on violence. In 1793, he discussed the principles of a revolutionary government, stating that it was high time a new revolutionary order had been established and that a political storm was everything a slave and tyrant would have wished to accomplish.47By the end of his political career, Robespierre turned into an ideal of terror, which forever engraved his name into the history of anarchy and political disarray in France. Robespierre’s The Flight of the King speech revealed the first signs of the growing acceptance of terror.48 He wanted to shift the course of the French history by all possible means. He openly recognized that he would not consider the flight of the king a dreadful event.49 On the contrary, he would treat that day as the day of fairness and savior to the millions of the French people.50 At that point of his personal and political development, Robespierre was still far from the ultimate point of his violent decisions, but the speech marked the initiation and subsequent expansion of violence from Robespierre. His becoming a leader of the Mountain faction was the turning point in the slow movement of France toward bloody terror. Before Robespierre’s appointment to the Committee, little execution and purging had taken place.51 Two principal reasons were responsible for the absence of violence within the Committee. First, purging before Robespierre had rarely involved executions, for it had been enough to expel those, who disagreed, from the Committee and render them powerless.52 Second, as a member of the Committee, Robespierre had not really possessed power and authority needed to order executions.53 Therefore, Robespierre’s arriving to occupy the highest position in the Committee was the beginning of a new, bloody stage, in its development. Even the purest motives and Robespierre’s commitment to virtue could not justify the mass executions and violence he sought to promote. Robespierre was blinded by his virtuous intentions and did not notice the hidden threat of his violent decisions to his own future and the future of his country. In 1793, in his speech in favor of an armed people, Robespierre declared a new policy of change in France. He addressed the Parisians, saying that the monarchs or the feudal masters, as he called them, presented a serious danger to the stability of the humanity in France.54 He pictured the political and social anarchy in France in dreadful colors. He could not but state that peaceful methods of political resolution no longer influenced the political situation in France but required more intensive actions and decisions. For the first time, Robespierre openly favored and justified the necessity of an armed attack, to promote and push the expansion of his “virtuous” intentions that had to denounce the King and eliminate the monarchy. Robespierre’s primary mission was to extinguish the monarchy in a single blow and annihilate all aristocrats.55 Constitution of 1793 had to shape the ground for the implementation of egalitarian principles in France but, on the contrary, turned French citizenship into a curse.56 The Law of Suspects gave the Committee a legal right to try anyone suspected of political treason.57 The figure of Supreme Being was used as an example of a superior power that hated the mere presence of the privileged social strata in France.58 The end of revolution for Robespierre was in the enjoyment of liberty that would be graven in the hearts of men, slaves, and tyrants who disown them.59However, by the time Robespierre became the leader of the revolutionary movement in France, he was no longer satisfied by the mere fact of extinguishing the monarchy – he was willing to extinguish the former monarchs, too. His virtuous intentions grew and transcended to reflect a profound shift in his revolutionary consciousness: he believed that a dethroned king would present a serious danger to any republic.60 Consequentially, only violent elimination of the former monarchs, their supporters, and aristocracy would seed the contempt toward monarchy in the hearts of ordinary men in France.61 Robespierre’s commitment to violence and a rapid shift in his political values became the beginning of his political and personal end. A detailed analysis of Robespierre’s political decisions will help to delineate the main factors responsible for his ultimate fall. Robespierre: a political suicide What Robespierre committed during the few years of his political leadership was similar to a political suicide: Robespierre was not able to establish a new political order but threw his country into blood and violence. Several principal mistakes and factors were responsible for his ultimate fall. First and foremost, Robespierre gave up his initial mission of promoting virtue into the masses. His sense of fairness and justice transformed to become exaggerated and extreme. He lost the trace of virtue and changed his attitudes toward the objective political reality. He was not able to control the masses, nor was he able to pursue the desired political end without applying to executions and murders. A democratic, republican nation will never accept violence for granted, even if it were justified by the purest motives. That, however, was not the only reason of Robespierre’s failure to establish the vision of virtue in France. Robespierre’s political narrow-mindedness and shortsightedness doomed him to the fall.62 His emphasis on the equality and justice crossed the boundaries of reason and took Robespierre’s objectivity away.63 He was no longer able to look at the situation from a different angle. He failed to predict the end, to which the road he had chosen would lead him and his nation. Also, he failed to establish himself as a strong leader, who would be able to keep the power and authority in his hands, without applying to terror. Barnave was correct in that it could not suffice for a country to be free, but it was essential that a free nation had a leader with efficient leadership skills and knew how to use freedom reasonably.64 Following the fall of Danton, Robespierre felt that his powerful position was tenuous and fragile. He also felt that Terror was the only instrument of retaining the power in his hands. Violence turned Robespierre into a figure, equally admired and hated by the French people. The Law of 22 Prairial Year II of 1794 virtually released Robespierre of any responsibility for his violent decisions. Based on the law, anyone considered an enemy of the people, “those who have instigated the reestablishment of monarchy, or have sought to disparage or dissolve the National Convention and the revolutionary and republican government of which it is the center”65, will have to be executed. Robespierre was a populist – he did not support his claims and decisions with the resources available in France. Simply stated, his economic and political decisions were deeply separated from the real conditions of the political and social performance in France. According to Palmer, Robespierre favored some degree of economic freedom and equality in France but failed to establish and sustain the equality of incomes in his country.66 With time, Robespierre realized the hidden complexity and impossibility of income equality in France. The idea of a progressive tax was interesting but ineffective, as long as the rates of the tax were not specified.67 Ultimately, Robespierre’s failure proved that the boundary between virtue and terror is increasingly blurred. Virtuous intentions alone cannot guarantee the stability and security of the political power. Robespierre failed to maintain a reasonable balance between citizenship, equality, national justice and political power. In his hands, terror became the instrument of authority. Executions replaced the humanistic philosophy of leadership and turned Robespierre into a carrier of blood and violence into the masses. Although evident in the earliest works of Robespierre, virtue in his eyes became the source of pain and hatred, turning Robespierre into one of the most violent leaders in the history of France. Conclusion Robespierre is fairly regarded as one of the most controversial figures in the history of France. Influenced by the ideas of Rousseau and Montesquieu, Robespierre developed his unique vision of virtue, which he further promoted into the masses. His earliest speeches positioned virtue as a combination of equality, fairness, and citizenship in France. Robespierre exemplified a commitment toward the good will of freedom and wanted to denounce the Crown. With time, his speeches and ideas acquired a different political coloring: he turned into a tyrant who lacked long-term vision and used terror to retain the power in his hands. In his hands, terror became the instrument of authority. Although evident in the earliest works of Robespierre, virtue in his eyes became the source of pain and hatred, turning Robespierre into one of the most violent leaders in the history of France. Works Cited Barnave, A.P. “Against Majority Absolutism.” Bartleby, 1791. Web. 30 December 2010. Constitution of 1793. Center for History and New Media, 2005. Web. 30 December 2010. Durant, W.A. Rousseau and Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977. Eagan, J.M. Maximilien Robespierre: Nationalist Dictator. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978. Linton, M. “Robespierre’s Political Principles.” In C. Haydon and W. Doyle, Robespierre, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp.37-45. Loomis, S. Paris in the Terror: June 1793-July 1794. New York: Lippincott & Co., 1964. Matrat, J. Robespierre, or the Tyranny of the Majority. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971. Palmer, R.R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941. Robespierre, M.F. “Asking the Death Penalty for Louis XVI.” Pp.47-51. Robespierre, M.F. “Concerning the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” Pp. 52-55. Robespierre, M.F. “His Last Speech.” Bartleby, 1794. Web. 30 December 2010. Robespierre, M.F. “In Favor of an Armed People of a War Against the Vendee.” Pp. 56-59. Robespierre, M.F. “On the Festival of the Supreme Being.” History Place, 1794. Web. 30 December 2010. Robespierre, M.F. “On the Principles of Political Morality.” Modern History Sourcebook, 1794. Web. 30 December 2010. Robespierre, M.F. “On the Principles of Revolutionary Government.” Pp.62-65. Robespierre, M.F. “Speech Denouncing the New Conditions of Eligibility.” Center for History and New Media, 22 October 1789. Web. 30 December 2010. Robespierre, M.F. “The Flight of the King.” Pp.41-43. Sieyes, A. “What is the Third Estate?” Modern History Sourcebook, 1997. Web. 30 December 2010. The Law of 22 Prairial Year II. Center for History and New Media, 10 June 1794. Web. 30 December 2010. The Law of Suspects. Center for History and New Media, 1793. Web. 30 December 2010. Read More