Prof. Mark Tunick tunick@fau.edu

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

1. The Burke-Paine Debate: Do we have intergenerational obligations?
2. Paine's life and works
1. Paine's commitments
1. political and social egalitarian
2. hostile to monarchy and privilege
3. pro commerce/economic growth
4. rationalist (compare with Hegel)
2. Youth
3. 1776: Common Sense
4. Return to Europe in 1787: helps draft Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens; 1791-2: Rights of Man published; charged with sedition; escapes to Paris; alienates himself from French Jacobins, is imprisoned; writes Age of Reason; James Monroe secures his release
5. 1802: Return to America, and death in 1809
3. Paine's political theory
1. Like Burke, not an academic, or systematic; addresses common man
2. Paine's theory of government and civil society
1. Distinction between the two: society is natural and necessary; government is the cause of social evils
2. Argues for limited government
3. Compare with Marx's distinction between state and civil society
3. Paine's republicanism (res publica)
4. Paine's theory of representative government
5. Paine's theory of consent
1. Paine's view
2. Thinking more deeply about consent
1. to what do we consent?
2. what counts as consenting?
3. is consent necessary at all for us to have obligations?
4. Other theorists on consent (Burke, Kant, Hegel, Mill)
6. Paine's theory of natural rights
1. Paine's view
2. Thinking more deeply about rights
4. How radical was Paine?