New at Reason

June 12, 2007

In a review from our July issue, Katherine Mangu-Ward weighs the modern relevance of Tom Paine.

Comments

|6.12.07 @ 8:00AM|#

"Every spot in the world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted around the globe," lamented Thomas Paine in Common Sense, the tract that sparked the Declaration of Independence and gave purpose and direction to the American Revolution. "The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.…We have it in our power to begin the world over again. The birth-day of a new world is at hand."

Within just a few months in 1763, Paine's pamphlet sold 150,000 copies.

Every Yahoo Search hit for Common Sense that I could find says that it was published in 1776.

|6.12.07 @ 8:11AM|#

Well to be more exact: just every search hit that I looked at; I certainly didn't look at all of them.

Grotius|6.12.07 @ 9:19AM|#

Paine and Tocqueville are a lot a like in that one can find anything one wants to find in their writings (if one is selective enough).

|6.12.07 @ 9:28AM|#

"He also became a stauncher opponent of organized religion, though not an atheist. "My own mind is my own church," he wrote in The Age of Reason."

Can we grow up already? Not an atheist? This quote is the exact kind of linguistic contortion even the bravest thinkers had to slap on their atheism in the 18th century (and later, I'm sad to say).

Even though it is probably unintentional in this case, can we stop trying to pile the God bullshit onto every historical figure, even when it plainly doesn't fit?

Grotius|6.12.07 @ 9:41AM|#

henry,

Well, Paine was a Deist. He did not believe in revealed religion (he considered all the claims of revealed religion to be a sham). This means that most modern Christians wouldn't recognize his belief as religious at all, or would consider him a pantheist or some such. At least if we take his statements to mean what they appear to mean.

You are right though. A lot of 18th century atheists did adopt language which tried to both hide and reveal their atheism. Some deists were clearly atheists for example, but they hid behind the term deist because it protected them from the legal regimes set up to punish atheists.

|6.12.07 @ 9:52AM|#

"Weak" deism of the type you ascribe to Paine is what we call agnosticism today. Agnosticism is functionally little different than atheism, despite the seemingly huge epistemological difference. And I say that as as avowed agnostic. The bottom line is this: the concept of God meant nothing to Paine in the conduct of his practical life. The same was true of Hume and Voltaire and many others who had to wear the mask, transparent as it may have been.

Grotius|6.12.07 @ 9:53AM|#

Note, at one time professing an atheist stance was an offense that could bring the death penalty in at least England (I don't know if the law passed by the English Parliament in the late 1600s* was ever adopted by Scotland).

Also consider all the crap thrown at Hobbes and how some considered him an atheist and/or a teacher of atheism.

*The 1697 Blasphemy Act that is.

Grotius|6.12.07 @ 10:04AM|#

henry,

Anyway, I think of Hume and Voltaire as being (radical?) skeptics.

Thomas Paine\'s Goiter|6.12.07 @ 11:49AM|#

Well, Paine was a Deist. He did not believe in revealed religion (he considered all the claims of revealed religion to be a sham).

Paine was at least Agnostic and at most Atheist. Read for context and setting, just don't look at the words -- they mean things, you know.

Grotius|6.12.07 @ 12:02PM|#

Thomas Paine's Goiter,

*shrug*

Lupito41|6.12.07 @ 12:15PM|#

Excellent piece. I'd love to see more like it.

twv|6.12.07 @ 1:21PM|#

From what I've read, Paine's Deism seemed honest to me. He believed a deity had created the world, and that the order of the world was INTENDED by that deity to be man's primary guide. This is the nature of his religiosity, and it does not seem to be a put-on.

Jefferson strikes me as less certain a deist. With Paine we're a long way from the Epicurean idea that the gods were themselves evolved and DO NOT CARE about man. For Epicurus, nature was to be learned from as one learns from traps, and predators, and parasites; nature was something to be dealt with, and worked around. The religiosity of Epicurus seems more of a hidden form of atheism than does Paine's. (Jefferson called himself an Epicurean at one point; I don't see any evidence that this sort of view appealed to Paine.)

I see no reason to make Paine fit with current popular categories of theological dispute. Or ancient ones. He seems enough of his own man to let his words speak for themselves.

|6.12.07 @ 8:03PM|#

"In Common Sense and The Crisis, he expertly vilified the British"

I've never read "The Crisis", but in "Common Sense" according to my interpretation he doesn't vilify the British but rather the British system of government underneath a monarchy.

As far as I can see the nearest he gets to vilifying the British/English (and the 2 are definitely not interchangeable) is when he says "The prejudice of Englishmen, in favour of their own government by king, lords and commons, arises as much or more from national pride than reason."

It could be argued that Englishmen are responsible for the system of government we endure.

But I think there is an interesting question here, as to how much a people are personally responsible for the actions of their government.

Are we the people more responsible in a democracy for the invasion of Iraq under suspect preventative national security claims than the people of Iraq were under a dictatorship for the invasion of Kuwait under suspect historical territorial claim.

Discuss?

|6.17.07 @ 1:09PM|#

Thomas Paine would be proud of the controversy
that is still brought of his works today. It is his words that have been the staple of patriotism and many of his actions that has founded the American Spirit, it is for others to tear apart. Just every once in awhile, a voice of reason is brought out, that should be the one pronounced, across the educational realm, yet, only with due diligence can reason be found.

The proffessors book will certainly do well, as have books of TJ, Washington, and Franklin, but we will be hard pressed to find a more overall view than what this article has proffessed.