Common Sense - Conclusion
Conclusion
Quote
The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.
Notes
🔥 In the late 18th century, the word "revolution" took on a different meaning, more "linked to a belief in the advancement of mankind from barberism to civilization, based on the spread of enlightenment and on the inalienable rights of man." Thomas Paine was a leading figure in this shift of meaning and perspective.
🔥 He struggled to find his way growing up, but eventually landed in America and was immersed in the coffee-house culture of Philadelphia where the American revolution was being seeded.
🔥 His book, Common Sense, was a hugely powerful and popular pamphlet "that did more than any other publication to persuade America of the justice and necessity of independence."
🔥 His devotion was more to the ideals and principles of liberty and equality, less to the country of America. It was more a vehicle to amplify those principles. He got involved in other revolutions in Europe later as well.
🔥 The revolution, in Paine's mind, was not isolated to one place. It would have reverberations all around the world. It "marked the progress of reason and civilization through history."
🔥 He was mostly self-taught and didn't really hold up a main political or philosophical influence on his thinking. He said he never even read Locke, who was another massive influence on American revolutionary thinking.
🔥 Paine later wrote a book called Age of Reason which attacked Christianity and the authority of the Bible, which is strange since the Bible is used as an authority of history in Common Sense. This turn hurt his reputation in America and he died in "squalid isolation."
🔥 Paine's writing style was a big factor in why Common Sense was so popular and widely read. His writing was much more accessible and plain than other writing of the time. Though the trend was moving in that direction — towards simpler language — he really helped drive it that way.
🔥 Part of the reason he got in trouble with his writing was because his work was being read by common people who had "no business" thinking about such things. At least, that was the opinion of the more educated, political classes.
🔥 Paine argued for liberty and equality and not in an abstract sense. He didn't come to this subject as an aristocratic elite, but as a common person talking common sense.