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The French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen is a remarkable document, not only because its main ideas found their way into many national constitutions and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is also notable as a piece of legislation that was directly derived from an originally philosophical discourse, a thing that doesn’t happen often in human history. But in this transition from theory to practice, the Declaration was conveniently adapted from its lofty philosophical roots to the social reality of its time, losing much of its bite. And so today it remains also notable for being a good example of how philosophical ideas get lost in translation when they are made to serve particular interests in a real-world, political discourse.
The Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen
The document is not long. Here it is in full (source: Wikipedia):
Article I — Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.
Article II — The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.
Article III — The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual can exert authority which does not emanate expressly from it.
Article IV — Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.
Article V — The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.
Article VI — The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents.
Article VII — No man can be accused, arrested nor detained but in the cases determined by the law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, dispatch, carry out or cause to be carried out arbitrary orders, must be punished; but any citizen called or seized under the terms of the law must obey at once; he …
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