A Foundation Lost: Oh the Terror

If democratic politics is not guided by virtue and justice, liberty will destroy political community and action. The French, in revolting against a repressive tyranny, refused to establish even moderate restraints and succeeded only in creating a worse despotism. Robespierre’s Justification of the Use of Terror demonstrates the inevitable tyranny that arises from Rousseau’s singular adherence to the social contract. To avoid the negative consequences of revolution, Edmund Burke argued, a distinct veneration for the moral conscience and a reverence for traditional social consensus must be paramount.

One of the leading intellects behind the French revolution, Rousseau conceived a social contract theory wherein man’s liberty is predicated upon the consent of the majority. He explains, “The social order is a sacred right which serves as the foundation for all other rights.”[1] Rousseau’s social contract replaces traditional virtue and individual liberty with communal sovereignty. “What man loses through the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything that tempts him and that he can acquire. What he gains is civil liberty and the proprietary ownership of all he possesses.”[2] Because the moral imagination is commensurate to the individual, it was deemed disruptive, and thus surrendered to the sovereignty of the whole. “This passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a quite remarkable change in man, for it substitutes justice for instinct in his behavior and gives his actions a moral quality they previously lacked.”[3] Denying the legitimacy of conscience and instinct, this moral quality is one of abstraction and consent. The social contract holds no authority beyond that which society is prepared to recognize and establish.

The fragility of this system was most actively recognized by Robespierre, a principle leader during the French Revolution. While describing democratic virtue as the “love of the state and its laws,” he recognized a deteriorating tendency. People must “be regulated by the stormy circumstances in which the republic is placed.”[4] The intensity of these circumstances is expressed in his pamphlet entitled Justification of the Use of Terror. An overarching objective of any state is the maintenance of established government. Robespierre’s method is manipulation through terror. The purpose of terror is to preserve and even promulgate democratic virtue. When citizens are not exhibiting public virtue as defined above, they should be addressed with swift and severe force. In short, those who dissent are considered the state’s enemies and must be crushed with unflinching violence, to protect the public interest and thus the social order itself.

The glaring error in Robespierre’s use of terror is its lack of guidelines. Unconstrained violence naturally escalates to senseless brutality. Robespierre attaches one qualification to his theory, stating that virtue without terror is fatal: “terror, without which virtue is powerless.”[5] Virtue, in this case, however, is merely blind support for and submission to the state and its laws. Due to Rousseau’s denial of any other basis in his contract theory, Robespierre was unable to provide virtue a foundation in any other principle. Government was given absolute freedom to harshly punish or simply exterminate anyone who did not exhibit complete devotion to the state and its laws. This condition is clearly identified as despotism: “It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed.” Robespierre explains that the “government of the revolution is liberty’s despotism against tyranny.”[6] Thus, with virtue embodied in consensus, justice becomes a fluid construct—a despotism for the continued ordering of society. As the initial incentive and practical consequence for this rebellion, tyranny was both the beginning and end of revolution in France.

First virtue then justice, in the traditional sense, was “dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason.” Thus Burke observes, “In the groves of their academy, at the end of every visto, you see nothing but the gallows.”[7] With no great surprise, Burke maintains: “Such must be the consequence of losing in the splendor of these triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and right.”[8] This sort of reason, which discounts virtue and tradition, is incapable of engaging the affections of the commonwealth. “When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly what port to steer.”[9] Unconstrained terror does not bring justice to a democracy, but rather creates injustice.

The fires of liberty have great power to warm the mores of men, but left unchecked, liberty will destroy society under the flames of despotism. Burke harshly criticized the French for refusing to establish even moderate restraints: “But you, who began with refusing to submit to the most moderate restraints, have ended by establishing an unheard of despotism.”[10] Burke condemned France for failing to adequately restrain liberty through just laws, for not creating a balance of power among the different branches of government, and for not promoting religious tolerance to encourage justice and virtue. He states that justice and virtue are necessary: “Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”[11] Justice and virtue in politics encourage citizens to obey the law out of love and veneration rather than only responsive fear.

“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” In exploring the impetus for this change, Rousseau ascribes supremacy to the social contract as the “foundation for all else.”[12] Deprived of prior foundation or external purpose, social order becomes both the means and the destination. As seen in the Justification of the Use of Terror and establishment of tyranny in France, society can go in any direction. The act of consensus in decision is the virtue justifying the actions of society. Society can thereby become whatever it chooses. Denied prior virtue or external purpose, and in response to subsequent disorder, France adopted the use of terror for the purpose of the maintenance of order. Aristocratic tyranny was simply exchanged for the new tyranny of the masses. Because virtue was founded in the social contract, anything that society chose was naturally justified, including the reinstatement of despotism. The failure of the French revolution, as described by Burke, was initiated by the undermining of virtue and reinforced by the destruction of justice. Because virtue was established by contract, justice became the will of the majority; because the majority had no foundation for virtue, they had nothing more than base instincts with which to choose justice, resulting in chaos and disorder.

Burke propounds two principles as foundational to the entire European political tradition: “the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.”[13] These two things, for Burke, represent the characteristics that maintain a constructive, moral, and stable social and political order. The spirit of religion provides an outside foundation for the maintenance of justice and morality, and the spirit of a gentleman provides the reverence for societal structures and institutions that prevents the revolutionary character leading to tyranny that Burke witnessed in the French revolution. The destruction of tradition leads to the radical overthrow of societal institutions and the opportunity for the destruction and terror witnessed in the French attempt at liberty. While specific cultural context may vary, it is clear that the moral conscience must retain distinct and liberal veneration alongside reverence for social consensus, if a revolution is to succeed.

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take this and apply it to the spread of Western Democracy...it was the straw that broke my back...I could sleep for a week...but no, two more papers due tomorrow.