The Rights of Man

Introduction: Beginning in the seventeenth century, Europeans embarked upon a path of constitutional reform that ultimately led to the  constitutions currently in force across the continent.   These reforms began in England in the seventeenth century, spread to France in the eighteenth century, and ultimately reached every corner of the continent by the end of the nineteenth century.  Of course, all of the constitutions of Europe have undergone significant change over time, and an investigation of these changes would require an entire semester's work.   Rather than devote our entire semester to such an investigation, we will examine the establishment of two of the most important European constitutional structures--the English and the French--because these two systems of laws provided the models from which the others were developed.

Note: You may have noticed already that I use the term constitutional structure (and later constitutional system) rather than simply "constitution."  The reason for this choice of words is that in England no formal constitution was ever written, so what we think of as the English constitution is really a body of laws and traditional practices, rather than a single document that can be consulted.

Our consideration of the establishment of these constitutional systems will be broken into two parts.  Every constitutional system is profoundly influenced by its framers' understanding of human nature.  Therefore, our first task is an examination of several views of human nature that were popular among the elites (in other words, those in a position to influence constitutional developments) of England and France during the 17th and 18th centuries.  Our second task will be to examine the constitutional systems devised in these two states during these eras and to determine their relative merits and flaws, as best we are able.

Assignments: During the first week of this segment of the course you will be assigned to one of the three philosophers listed below.  Your task is to investigate his life and works, using the material available via this site, and to be prepared to answer the four questions I have posed for you.  You will need to prepare yourself for a debate on the relative merits of the ideas of your particular philosopher.  That means you will also need to review the information on the other two so that you can make an informed contribution to our debate.  The questions to be debated in class will be handed out on Monday, September 27, following my lecture.  In the second week we will focus on the documents listed in the right side of the following table.  For our discussions in class, you will be broken up into groups, each of which has one or more documents to discuss and later present to the entire class.