The Old Regime: Differences Between 1789 And The French Revolution

Prior to 1789, also known as the Old Regime, ideas about natural law and human being’s nature had remained the same for hundreds of years. These ideas were however challenged in the years leading up to 1789 and the French Revolution by enlightened people known as Philosophes. Philosophes like Voltaire, Lady Mary Montagu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Galileo Galilei believed in a new meaning for natural truth and human reason. These new ideas challenged the existing social, political, and economic order determining how a country and its people operated.
Before the enlightenment was a time when individuals had no real say in politics religion and science. A structured society existed composed of two distinct ruling bodies, church and state. Within this was another order of society or estates where individuals fell socially and
In his book the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau states, “men in a state of nature, having no moral relations or determinate obligations one with another, could not be either good or bad, virtuous or vicious” (Perry 35). Rousseau is saying that there is no in between, individuals are either good or bad in their natural habitat. He goes on to say, “compassion is a natural feeling, which, by moderating the violence of love of self in each individual, contributes to the preservation of the whole species” (Perry 36). This means that in order to preserve humanity individuals must stop perpetuating the violence and selfishness which can be seen in the absolutist monarchs like King Louis XIV and the nobility who continued to oppress individuals and keep society from changing. Rousseau like some other individuals saw the bad in society when under this oppression he felt that individuals where better off under no hierarchy with god at the top. This idea comes from the enlightenment views that the world is not