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IdentificationThe French Revolution refers to a number of highly dramatic and extremely symbolic events in the period 1789-1799. The revolution was initiated on 17 June 1789, when the representatives of the middle classes (“the third estate”) declared themselves the National Assembly. It continued on 14 July 1789 with the storming of the Bastille; it led to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 26 August 1789; it brought about a new constitution in 1791; it culminated in the death sentence on and decapitation of the French king in January 1793; it developed into an actual regime of terror in 1793-1794, which led to a new republican constitution in 1795; and it was finally brought to an end when Napoleon (1769-1821) seized power in 1799.
The revolutionary aspect of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789 is linked to two allegations: first, that the individual has rights which the community cannot deprive it of, be they of a family, religious or political nature; and second, that sovereignty, which in classical theory is the term for the highest principle of power, takes its origin in the people and the nation. This idea is formulated most succinctly in Article 3 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen: “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body or individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.” The sovereignty of the absolute monarch rested on the notion that he personified God’s order on earth. The sovereignty of the nation, by contrast, derives from human society. For the nation refers back to the people and their history. Power cannot be given, but is created. The transition from absolutism to democracy caused fundamental changes to the symbolic order of society. The establishment of democracy in France saw a shift from the king to the people as the legitimate basis of power, together with a shift from the throne to the rostrum as the centre of society’s symbolic system.Where the king’s throne represented divine power, the rostrum of the people became the symbol of the order of democracy. The people is not visible in the same way as the king whose power is made visible by means of the throne. It means that democracy is dependent on a rostrum, from where the people and nation is perceived as the source of sovereignty. If a speaker refuses to leave the rostrum, arguing that he is the incarnation of the people, democracy collapses.
“Article 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good. Article 2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. Article 3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual
may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.”
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This page is part of the electronic publication "The Danish Democracy Canon"