Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine; a story

Background, some of it relevant and some of it decorative: Paine was born in Norfolk 1737, as England was beginning its industrial revolution. He received basic schooling, but was forbidden to learn Latin by his father (curious “A.” because this is a bias he would hold onto, considering it a useless and wasteful effort, and “B.” because it suggests that his father did hold some of, what might vaguely be called, enlightenment ideas, such as the valuing of education and suspicion at tradition, i.e. a paternal source for Paine’s philosophy). In any case, his father did expect him to join him as an apprentice (corset-maker), but Paine ran away and eventually joined a privateer (at around age 13, thus already demonstrating incredible independence). This lifestyle was punctuated by a marriage that ended shortly in childbirth, a series of jobs, another marriage. Long story short, by 1774, Paine headed to the New World (a single man).

Supported independence, wrote Common Sense. War ends, various jobs, including designing a bridge which he went to Europe to present. Thus he got caught up in the French Revolution and responded to Burke in Rights of Man. The English condemned him for sedition in absence, as he left for Paris, where he arrived shortly before the September Massacre. He increasingly lost favour with the (increasingly Jacobian) Jacobians and was eventually arrested. Sent Age of Reason to be published and was eventually released qua American citizen. He died in America, alone, isolated by his deism and written attacks on Washington.

There is much to be amazed at in that story. The corset-makers apprentice who writes the most popular and inciting pamphlet of the American War… His ability to conjoin himself with major world events… etc.

For details’ sake, it would now be relevant to describe the contents of his major works. Which I may (or may not) get to. But for the moment, and considering that those details are available in their spread throughout my notes, I would rather contribute original content.

Let’s consider Paine the thinker…

There is not much in Paine that is unique. Similar ideas can be sourced in predecessors such as Rousseau, Locke, and Hume. Which leads me to ask and to think, “What is the philosophical foundation upon which Paine’s life, actions and writings, were built?” This is a question that gains its inspiration from Paine’s character, his motives and dispositions and choices that he makes. And, preferring to avoid hypocrisy, these should coincide with the motifs and principles expounded in his works. I gather: bravery, independence, a sense for justice, free-thinking and a taste for its force. I also see that he prefers maxims of fairness and reason, and supports them with a sense of existential freedom and fraternity,

To continue this exercise I should now choose the context and applications from which Paine’s philosophy can be moulded.

Although I will argue that Paine’s philosophy implies profound spiritual existentialism, the matters to which he turned his mind were almost always very practical. Man is born with wants, and these are best served by cooperation that becomes a society. Ideas like titles and religion are lies that distort this basic premise, which they hide by introducing unnatural concepts (e.g. kingship or chivalry, Catholicism or sin). Free reason is sufficient to reveal these falsehoods, and can also be used to provide an answer to the question those falsehoods caused to be forgotten. Society can be organized by a government, which is a necessary evil, and which should, therefore, be minimal. That requirement is served best by representational (aka democratic) order.

Paine signs a thought-provoking map when he draws the direction to morality in reason’s observation of the world. God and God’s will can be witnessed in the world’s order, and that order (in particular its fruitful abundance and inter-dependent nature) can inspire morality.

Radical Paineism…

Here I offer my imagined implications of Paine’s philosophy, taking their implications further than the limitations of its original culture and worldview. For the purpose of illustration, let me start by considering a dialogue between Paine and his successors. I’m considering Mill, Marx, and Nietzsche.

• Utilitarianism… The objects of society that are imposed by government (e.g. ministry, courts) are all either manifestation of natural objects or necessary limitations. Thus Paine would agree that utilitarian aims are equivalent to the rights of government (e.g. both would dismiss hereditary titles as evils). They differ in a manner similar to Paine versus Marx.
• Marxism… This is a curious point. Paine believed that since Man had a natural share in the world, he was owed welfare (when ill or old) and also a grant (to be received upon adulthood). But he admitted of uneven ability and allowed for men to gain more. The problem now is especially one of interpretation. What is Marxism that it may be contrasted. If it conflicts with commerce then that’s a problem, since free commerce is for Paine the bedrock of universal peace and wealth. He would definitely have sympathized against the oppression of workers (as unfair), but it’s difficult to make a place for this in his thought. So many changes between Marx and Paine that it makes it hard to compare. Paine is more concerned by dictatorship, unfair taxes, and the need for equality based on welfare, rather than absolute equality or absolute welfare.
• Nietzsche… This is intriguing, as it challenges us to take Paine to his most extreme. It is enough for Paine to show the kings and priests are liars. But can he call social norms lies too? He allows that men can find their own morality and purpose, but expects those to coincide largely with common expectations. Let me say that Paine would allow for a genealogy of morality. But: let me say that he agrees with Nietzsche’s challenge, but adds a premise, even if that is an idiosyncratic one. Morality is a vacuum in which man can create morality, and Paine recommends that man create a system based on his observations of the world. Nietzsche would have of-course found Paine’s deism distasteful. So let me imagine that Paine builds his morality as an aesthetic permutation upon a self-imposed (but otherwise baseless) foundation.

Didactography: I read the article on Paine in the SEP, then read Age of Reason, which sounded as the most universal and timeless of his famous titles. Overlapping with a reading of a VSI on the French Revolution (and Wikipedia readings), I also read the Rights of Man. I considered that I had already read some of Burke (although not his writings on France) and Wollstonecraft (although, again, not her writings that responded to Burke; on France).

Common Sense:

• “Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.”
• “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”
• Therefore a government is necessary, but to avoid its ills, should be of a minimum form. This coincides with a democratic government.
• Is an attack on George III, who is exclusively blamed for the colonies’ resentments (and not the British ministers).
• The British attempt at control is deemed unnatural.
• Provides a plan for American democratic voting, which is to establish districts within each state, which are to vote representatives which in turn are to vote for a (two-thirds majority) president.
• Contains a #digression on the biblical accounts of the origins of monarchy and later editions included an appendix denouncing Quaker quietism.

Rights of Man:

• “Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together…That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it.”
• Distinguishes between natural rights (as in rights of conscience) and rights that depend on the arm of society to enforce (as in property). Some attribute this as a response to Burke (who holds social rights to be those preserved from the state of nature), but others attribute this as a result of discussions (esp. with Jefferson and French sympathizers in America) on the need to include a bill of rights in a constitution.
• Social rights are formed by a collective of individuals’ natural rights.
• The sovereignty (qua collective powers) is (despite being a power) is limited by its having to support justice:
  • “The sovereignty in a republic is exercised to keep right and wrong in their proper and distinct places, and never suffer the one to usurp the place of the other. A republic, properly understood, is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.”
  • Thus common power is limited to having to secure civil rights (based on natural rights).
• “Republican government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively.”
• Did not see his American ideal government as “democratic”, a term he identified with the direct democracies of ancient Greece.
• He reanimates his distinction between society and government:
  • “Government is no further necessary than to supply the few cases to which society and civilisation (a new concept) are not conveniently competent.”
  • “…the more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself…”
• Nb. There is no mention of universal suffrage until 1792’s Letter Addressed to the Addressers (nb. Paine’s developing thoughts).
• Advocated taxes to be spent on welfare for the poor and pensions for those over the age of 50. He wished tax to be gradually reduced and simplified, seeing that in its current form it was largely wasted on military aims, which are in contradiction to commerce which in turn is of general benefit to all societies. (Nb. His welfare proposals oddly lack any defence by principles).
  • His short Agrarian Justice (1795-6) does contain a defence of welfare, due to the original equality of man and thus their equal right to a subsistence from the earth.
• Developed his thought between 1792-95, from holding that all taxpayers are owed voting rights, to holding that all are due voting rights given their natural equality.
  • “It is possible to exclude men from the right of voting, but it impossible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion; and when other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.”

Age of Reason:

• A Deist tract.
• Rejects religious claims to authority.
  • The fraud of priestcraft often coincides with despotism.
• Believes in an ordered universe created by the unmoved mover (i.e. God).
• Morality stems from the obligation to imitate the order of the universe, and that can be determined by use of reason.
• “The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it produces no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing, and it admits of no conclusion.”

Legacy:

• ‘Paine’s religious views, not unlike his political views, are not especially original or subtle. They follow much of the deist writing of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. But, as with much Paine wrote, the bluntness and sweeping rhetoric that alienates the more philosophically inclined modern reader were an essential element in his success and his continuing importance. Paine spoke to ordinary people—and they read him in their thousands—indeed, he was often read aloud in public houses and coffee shops. He claimed no authority over them but helped them to doubt those who did claim such authority, whether civil or religious, and he affirmed over and over again their right and responsibility to think for themselves and to reach their own judgment on matters.’
• ‘Paine was vehemently attacked in his own lifetime—if the scurrilous biography was not invented for him it certainly attained something of an art form in his depiction. He was outlawed in England, nearly lost his life in France, and was largely ostracized and excluded when he returned to America. A sizable collection of papers at his New Rochelle farm were destroyed in a fire, and his oeuvre remains contested, at least at the margins.’
• ‘Serious analysis of his ideas is relatively rare and tends to be more historically than philosophically orientated. In this sense, he remains on the edges of the canon of political thought, easily dismissed by those who want more substantial philosophical fare, and subject to fits of enthusiasm by writers who are either insufficiently attuned to the complexities of the period or are simply uncritical.’

My reading of AoR:

• “Revelation” applies only to the person receiving it, thereafter it should be called “hearsay” or similar.

Thinking of Paine qua biography:

• England was in the early stages of the industrial revolution. Note that France was slower to industrialize and was largely agrarian until well into the 19th century. Most children received only a rudimentary education and would begin working. The better-off would send their sons to grammar or boarding schools, where they would learn the classics (Greek and Latin) and mathematics. Girls were generally taught fashionable accompaniments (e.g. dancing, French).
• Still in England: Domestic service was common employment. Travel was uncommon, although the well-off would often undergo a cultural “grand tour” of France, Italy, and Greece.
• The French revolution received mixed responses in England. In any case, Paine’s publication Rights of Man led to the passing of a Royal Proclamation against Seditious Publications in 1792, due to fears of some form of domestic revolution. Furthermore, France declared war on Britain in 1973, thus endangering British travel in France.
• Fashion: In both France and Britain, fashions became notably simpler during this period. Men began to wear frock coats in place of cut-away tails, their clothes, in general, became much plainer, and by 1800, trousers had replaced breeches. In 1795, the British PM initiated a tax on hair-powder, thus ending the fashion for powdered hair.
  • Women gave up wearing the huge ornamented (e.g. plumes, ribbons) ‘Gainsborough’ hats and began wearing smaller felt or straw hats. Their elaborate gowns were replaced by simpler straighter dresses with high waists.
• Life in France preceding the revolution: Taxes were horrid to the peasants in France. And regarding beggars, consider scenes from Victor Hugo’s novels (notwithstanding their dating to a few decades later).
  • Lords could enter their peasants’ homes and take their fancy.
  • France was far more provincial (e.g. dialects, and exclusively local festivals).
  • Tithes and lords’ exactions varied widely, but to the west of Paris (for e.g.) was about 25%. Add to this high inflation and high food prices.
  • Women had few rights (and gained many via the revolution, e.g. ability to act as witnesses and fairer inheritance).
  • The revolution created a class of relatively wealthy peasants (cf. going shoeless).
  • Peasants lived under their lords’ whims/laws (ie. they served as Justices). The lords generally controlled monopolies.
  • http://www.h-france.net/rude/rude%20volume%20ii/McPhee%20Final%20Version.pdf
  • Cf life in America http://www.localhistories.org/18thcentcolonial.html