Reason vs. Ignorance

'Reason' is the watchword of the Enlightenment, in which Thomas Paine is a major figure. Enlightenment intellectuals tended to see themselves as the defenders of pure reason against superstition and of science and liberty against ignorance. Thomas Paine is not exception. The primary distinction, the ultimate distinction he wants to draw between the old governments and the new between post-revolutionary American and France on the one hand and England and the other monarchies of the world on the other, is the distinction between reason and ignorance.

For Paine, ignorance is the heart of the old system, or ancient regime, as it came to be known. This system of social order included a powerful, hereditary monarch, disproportionate political representation of a historically entrenched landed aristocracy and a powerful established church. It subsisted on class hierarchy and often on feudal and later mercantilist forms of economic organization. The...