What was the contribution of Rousseau,montesquieu and Voltaire to the French revolutions ?
Answers
Baron Charles Montesquieu (1689-1755) had an inherited fortune and time to write. And he mixed with Parisian higher society, where he was a celebrated conversationalist. He satirized French society. He criticized France's monarchical absolutism and the Church, offending authorities but adding to his popularity. He was a Catholic who believed that people should think for themselves.
VoltaireFrançois Arouet, who became known as Voltaire (1694-1778), wrote poetry and plays, and for expressing his opinions he was twice sent to prison. He was in exile in England from 1726 to 1729. And, like Montesquieu, he developed an admiration for British institutions. Voltaire admired Britain's Tolerance Act of 1689 and its absence of censorship. He saw benefit in variety, claiming that if England had but one religion it would still be despotic, that if England had just two faiths those faiths would be at each others throat. But with thirty different religious groupings, he claimed, Britain lived as a happy land where the spirit of Greece lived on.
RousseauJean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is best known for his line about people being born free but finding themselves in chains. His mother had died a few days after his birth. His father abandoned him when he was ten, leaving him with relatives and friends. He was brought up a Calvinist, and although he had no regular schooling he was encouraged to pursue his precocious taste for reading serious books. At sixteen he began homeless wandering. In the 1740s in his thirties he appeared in Paris as a writer of poetry, opera and comedy, and there he made friends with a few other writers, including Denis Diderot, a year younger than he, but formally educated.
National Assembly
Equal vote
Montesquieu :Spirit of Law
Separation of power - Judiciary, Legislative,Excutive
1791 constitution