Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was born in 1737 and died in 1809, living in one of the most revolutionary periods in human history and playing a key role in both the American and French Revolutions. He was a famous author and intellectual radicals. His first great pamphlet Common Sense, written in 1776, helped to produce ideological support for the American Revolution. Paine later played a central role in generating ideological support for the French Revolution and in response to the criticisms of Edmund Burke, he wrote Rights of Man in 1791 to explain what he regarded as the core ideas of Enlightenment political thought.

The point of Rights of Man, in Paine's mind, is to defend the French Revolution and the principles upon which (Paine believes) it is based against the attacks of Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France. He argues that the rights of humans are not rooted in...