Above you will see price and availability details for Rights of Man by Thomas Paine from the leading UK book stores.
To allow you to quickly compare prices, the stores are arranged in order of delivered price, cheapest first. Click on a store name to buy this book or to view further details.
Books Related to The Rights of Man Thomas Paine - ISBN: 0140390154
An Excellent Version of a Classic Work - Rated
I bought this book over a year ago and it is a joy to read. The introduction by Michael Foot is informative and concise and helps set up the book in the correct historical context. Common Sense is one of the most important and under-rated tracts in history, influencing as it did the American revolution and therefore the French revolution and The Rights of Man is an eloquent argument against authoritarian rule and a call for democracy which was way ahead of its time and still extremely relevent. I urge you to buy it.
CONTINUING TO DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF HUMANITY TODAY - Rated
The Rights of Man is a riposte to Edmund Burke's criticism of the French Revolution. Its message is the superiority of reason, in the form of Republican government armed with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, over despotism which holds populations in ignorance. With the American and French revolutions fresh in his mind, Paine was writing in a world on the threshold of freedom and that comes through in his forceful and forthright style. That said, and most important for the reader to appreciate, much of what he has to say still applies today. Paine in scathing in his critique of hereditary monarchy and privilege. He says "the idea of hereditary legislation is.......as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man." He rejects the notion of government laws being justified by tradition and therefore irrevocable. His argument against Burke's defence of the 1688 revolution in England is perhaps the best in the book. Paine argues that the only thing that is truly hereditary is the Rights of Man : "The Rights of men in society, are neither devisable, nor transferrable, nor annihilable, but descendable only." The book is a superb polemic when both understood in its historical context and applied to world politics today. His arguments for reform of the House of Lords strike a particularly pertinent note. He expresses liberal doctrines that many people take for granted but in our own genocidal times Paine reminds us that many of the topics that impassioned him should continue to impassion everyone with an interest in humanity. The style of the writing may put off a few as many themes disappear and reappear throughout the book instead of being dealt with in a coherant whole. The fact that it was written in two parts and that he is one of the greatest pamphleteers of modern times should compensate for this minor irritation.
