Thomas Paine's idea of revolution: Between the new and the old world

The political thought of Thomas Paine offers an interesting case study to investigate the idea of revolution in the XVIII Century. As it is known Paine had a good share both in the American and in the French revolution, but he was not a prototype of the professional revolutionary of the XXth Century; on the contrary he thought the revolution as an event intrinsecally connected with the building of a constitutional order, centered on the rights of man. In his opinion a revolution was not a violent putsch but a manifestation of a more refined stadium of civilization. He distinguishes between the passive and the active revolutions. The first ones are constructive, the active ones, instead, are often twisted by resentment. To understand this approach we must look to his intellectual outlook and his biography. Paine was permeated by the values of the Enlightenment. In his opinion it was possible to improve the world under many respect: government, religion could be radically reformed. Moreover, he was not American by birth, but was born in England where he lived until the age of 37. So, on the contrary of the others American founding fathers, he had’nt a colonial background but had an atlantic understanding of the current affairs. In his opinion the American revolution was justified if she gave birth to a new and more just and equal system of government, different from the corrupt system of the English government. His european background helps to explain, too, why he was interested to transplant in the old continent the representative government already successful tested in America. The impact that he had with the French revolution was traumatic. He was elected to the French convention of the 1792 and helped strongly Condorcet to draft the so called “girondine constitution”. He opposed the execution of the king and lived has a nightmare the triumph of the jacobine faction and the Terror. For Paine the French revolution was a failure because had’nt been faithful to the ideals of freedom, justice and humanity which were at the core of the revolutionary movement.