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Thomas Paine's political, religious, and social philosophy burst upon the late eighteenth century scene to great acclaim. He emerged as one of the primary leaders of the Western enlightenment and played a role in both the American and French revolutions, while simultaneously attempting to garner the budding revolutionary movements within England. Altogether, his philosophy has maintained its appeal and preserved a lasting quality, not because of any particular gifts he possessed within the context of rigorous argumentation, but more because of his power of persuasion -- his rhetoric. This is not to say, however, that Paine's notions were not groundbreaking, or that they have not appeared convincing to many philosophers; but it was his fervent and idealistic vision for the future of mankind that made him both a man of great deeds and a great philosopher -- not, necessarily, his reorganization of classic philosophical problems.

In general, almost every ancient and early modern western philosopher has attempted to rationally construct foundations for human society. Necessarily, all of these notions have rested upon each philosopher's conceptions of the way human beings interact, their moral obligations to each other, and their relationship with the infinite. For each, out of these understandings grows a political system that facilitates appropriate human actions. In short, every philosophical political structure must adequately compliment the moral status of the individual. Although Paine was not the first to arrive at the basic premises of humankind's rights, he was one of the most gifted speakers and essayists to bring these philosophical ideals to the general populous.

This was an age of revival regarding the purer forms of social reasoning, and presented straightforward developments of the natural law. New ideas concerning free will and liberty were coupled, by these philosophers, with conceptions of justice and the political order. The major distinctions between these three perspectives can be seen in the nature of the social contract once a society has been formed. To Rousseau, once a social agreement has been formed it is possible for all the constituents of that society to be upon equal ground -- with no distinctions between the rulers and the citizens (Rousseau 169). Locke, however, contends that a society will become obligated to elect a representative government that merely exists so long as it adheres to the trust of the people (Locke 163). Hobbes believes that a society's best interests can be carried out by positioning an all-powerful sovereign who accurately represents the wants of the citizenry (Knight). Paine, ultimately, was more concerned with righting the injustices he directly perceived in his time. Because of this, his philosophy is lacking in a straightforward definition of the natural law, but still exhibits the strong ties between him and philosophers like Locke, Rousseau and Hobbes.

Yet perhaps better than any other philosopher of his time, Thomas Paine coherently laid the philosophical foundation for what modern democratic government should ideally be based upon. He endorsed suffrage, opposed slavery, opposed tyranny in all its forms, and he was even bold enough to attack established religion -- despite his very public image (Foner xxxvii). Overall, Paine remains one of only a handful of great philosophers completely worthy of admiration; though not all his work was philosophy in the truest sense, and though many of his dreams were idealistic, he still stands as one of the most significant political, social, religious, and philosophical figures to have ever written in the English language.

It would seem that Thomas Paine's ideas regarding politics and society were formed relatively early in his life, and he spent the remainder of this life relaying the truths he had arrived at to other people. Paine is one of the few philosophers whose work is almost wholly consistent with itself through time; he held a core set of beliefs, which he chose to argue in favor of from a number of different directions throughout his career. Among these beliefs was the concept that the basic rights of every human being are philosophically valid at the moment of birth. This was an essential premise of many philosophers before Paine, but Paine expanded upon the idea to bring it to more concrete consequences than those who came before him. It was this power of persuasion, this gift for writing speeches and political essays that won him the favor of revolutionary-minded populations around the world.

Paine was a largely self-educated man whose first encounter with politics came at the age of twenty-five. He was an exciseman, responsible for stamping goods and collecting duties on them in England. At one point he lost his job for stamping goods that he had not actually inspected; by the time he was reinstated, he had resigned himself to studying philosophy and politics. At this point in his career, he published his fist political essay, the Case of the Officers of Excise, and spent the better part of an entire year away from his post, distributing pamphlets in London. As a result of his commitment to social change, Paine permanently lost his job as an exciseman for inattention to his post. However, by this point, Paine was hooked upon the political process and upon arguing his case in the public arena. He later explained his basic political motivations, "I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity, as all honors, even that of kings, originated from the public, and the public may justly by called to the true fountain of honor," (Keane 97).

In 1775, Paine was able to travel to the American colonies and began to publish a number of his most famous political essays: African Slavery in America and Common Sense. In the former, Paine espoused one of the most powerful and early attacks upon the institution of slavery in the Americas. Naturally, his main contention was that slavery was wrong upon the basis that every human being is automatically entitled to their freedom by virtue of the fact that they are human. From this standpoint, he argued, although people could always act to deny one another of their freedoms in reality, this cannot morally prevent those who are oppressed from actively taking their freedoms back.

The second essay from this period, Common Sense, was an anonymous attack upon the imperialistic interests of the English Crown in the American colonies. The essay was so successful and timely that many of its readers did not recognize that the writer was an Englishman: "Soon after Common Sense had been published, friends at home guessed that it had been written by John Adams," (Hawke 49). Paine, within the essay, urged the Americans to declare their independence from England based upon many of the same premises that he used to argue against slavery. Namely, that the American people possessed a right to remove the shackles of tyranny and oppression because every population of people should be allowed to govern themselves. From this perspective, according to Paine, the colonies were justified in actively fighting for their independence. Ultimately, this was because Paine believed that not only was the idea of hereditary rule inconsistent with general human morality, but that if a nation could be founded upon the basic notions of human morality, then that nation had a duty to fight for the preservation of that ideal. In this way, to Paine, the English form of government was morally objectionable, while the philosophical foundations of democracy were the only notions worthy of establishing a government with. From this point-of-view, Paine believed, monarchies in general are unjustifiable. He writes, "it is more than probable, that, could we take off the dark covering of antiquity and trace them [royalty] to their first rise, we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian obtained him the title of chief among plunderers," (Paine, Common Sense 13).

Paine is also partially responsible for making anti-slavery language public for the first time in America. Overall, as inhuman as many people considered slavery to be, it was not until the Democratic foundations for the United States were laid that a government formally adopted a philosophy that was incongruous with its practice. When the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 the founders of the United States sought to put into writing the ideological basis for the nation they had recently created -- and slavery was an issue. The perpetuation of slavery was a direct contradiction to their premise that "all men are created equal," and many members of the Convention called for its abolishment. It should not be surprising, therefore, that growing from the ideals of this new nation were new hopes for African-Americans; those who sided with the colonists saw an end to slavery as a very real possibility. However, it was acknowledged by the Convention that the Southern economy could not function without it; slavery continued, but only where it was indispensable.

Shortly after Paine's initial successes in arguing against slavery and English imperialism, he enlisted in the American Revolutionary Army, and became the aide-de-camp to General Nathanael Greene. Throughout the duration of the war, Paine was responsible for publishing a series of propaganda pieces which were published in the Crisis. In these, he often addressed the British Crown and warned of the Americans' united spirit: "In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in you had only armies to contend with; in this case, you have both an army and a country to combat with," (Paine, Crisis 68). During this time he was also appointed to the position of secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs in 1777. Paine was partially responsible for securing supplying deals with France for the benefit of the American war effort. Yet overall, his role in the war was that of an essayist, in the aim of promoting American morale by artfully composing works that reminded the individual colonist of the ideals for which he or she fought and sacrificed. In this role, he attained significant acclaim and made a name for himself among commoner and elite political theorists alike.

The general philosophical movement within which Paine found himself in the late eighteenth century originated in the earlier English Revolution; but Paine was partially responsible for bringing the original ideals of John Locke and Rousseau into the context of the American and French Revolutions. From the seventeenth century on, Western societies increasingly began to question the legitimacy of the divine rule held by monarchs. In England this trend was seeded by the seemingly unjustifiable wars and taxes under King John, and became fully fledged following Henry VIII's utter overhaul of the English Church for purely personal aims. France, on the other hand, lacked the same tradition of limited government that their northern neighbors extolled, but seriously began to embrace radical notions of freedom and revolution as economic crises magnified the excesses and injustices of the noble class. In the American colonies, analogous inequities and encroachments upon freedom caused not only a movement away from the king who was deemed responsible, but a reincarnation of the forms of democracy birthed in ancient Greece and practiced in early Rome. The common notion to emerge from all three revolutions was that a collective government of representatives could more effectively address the needs of a society, and that these communal needs were philosophically more valuable than the singular ambitions of a monarch. Although, the eventual outcomes of the three struggles seem to illustrate the two most probable products of revolution, they all reveal the fact that quickly became apparent to all rulers in the west: that no government can stand without the support of the people.

Paine's involvement in these movements originated with his experience in America during the revolution. At the conclusion of the war, Paine argued in favor of the Pennsylvania constitution, and because of his actions, he was appointed to the position of clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly. This job allowed him to put together legislation that supported his most deeply held beliefs about mankind and the morally just functioning of government. Essentially, he pushed for the gradual emancipation of all slaves within Pennsylvania, as well as for the equal rights of women under the Pennsylvania constitution. At the same time, he argued in favor of the centralization of the American government, in the hopes of forming a powerful, cohesive federal government, rather than a mere collection of independent states. It was this vision, combined with his opposition of slavery that caused Paine to oppose the expansion of Virginia's territories into the West.

Still, political essay-writing, policy formation and philosophy were not Thomas Paine's only activities in the years immediately following the war. He dabbled in engineering as well. Paine designed a bridge he planned to have built across the Schuylkill River; when funds for this project began to fall low, he traveled to France to seek additional aid, but found himself in the middle of what was becoming the French Revolution. The monarchs of France had enjoyed near absolute power for nearly a century when Louis XVI came to power; Louis XIV had declared his divine right as ruler of France in 1715. Additionally, the aristocracy and clergy had positioned themselves such that their privileged place under the King was difficult to unseat. The result was that the economic depravity that should have affected the entire nation fell almost completely upon the commoners. The only means the government could offer to check the King's power was through the Estates General which was divided into three sections: the aristocracy, the clergy, and the commoners. Not surprisingly, as hardships fell unduly upon the members of the third estate they began to question the reasoning behind only possessing a third of the vote, and yet, representing almost the entirety of France. Although Louis XVI was willing to make some concessions to the common people, the fundamental structure of the government could not compensate for the changes that were necessary; revolution was the only answer. The years that the royal family had spent solidifying their position in society and the government ultimately backfired because it made them so impenetrable through conventional means that reforms from within could not soften their solid stance. Robespierre and other political leaders looked to the American form of Democracy as inspiration for what they could accomplish for the people of France.

Within this setting, Paine was inspired by the emerging political thought he encountered, and attempted to spread the theories of the revolution to England. He entered the fray of the pamphlet war in England, which had been initiated by Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Paine's answer to this was his famous essay the Rights of Man. This work praised and encouraged the activities of the French revolution; it also called for the English people to force a reorganization of aristocratic power on its own. Paine hoped that the seeds of revolution in France would eventually spread throughout the European world. However, the English government, in reaction to these developments, severely tightened their treason laws. This made many political essayists and speakers outlaws in the eyes of the crown. Paine was forced to flee to France, but was still found guilty by the English courts, and sentenced to exile. Mobs burned him in effigy, and viewed him as a traitor to his people.

Yet once he was back in France, Paine again lent his services to the revolutionaries. By virtue of his fame, he found himself a delegate in the new French Republic, and despite his inability to speak French, became a member of the Committee of Nine, which was charged with the task of putting together the French Constitution. He also put forward a famous defense of King Louis XVI's life, again, based upon the conception that human beings possess a basic right to their lives. Also, Paine contended that the philosophical truths upon which the French and American Revolutions were founded upon idea that could be arrived at through rational thought processes. Accordingly, Paine believed that an exiled King Louis would eventually be capable of fully comprehending the unjustifiable character of his previous rule.

After only a year of direct involvement in the French Revolution, events in Paine's life took a decisive turn for the worse. In 1793, France and England went to war; at this point, foreigners, particularly Englishmen, were seen as enemies by many of the French revolutionaries. As a result, Paine was arrested and imprisoned in Luxemburg. In a prison cell he stayed for over ten months. During this period Paine spent almost his entire sentence writing one of his most brilliant, though certainly his most controversial pieces of philosophy: The Age of Reason. This essay was an aggressive attack against institutionalized religion in all of its forms. Within it, Paine argued against the Catholic Church and the Church of England upon the grounds that they serve as tools of mass oppression, when the true path to God, in his eyes, was philosophical reasoning. By creating these institutions, he contended, the populous was afforded the luxury of not having to critically examine what God may truly be, but at the expense of their individuality and freedom.

Not surprisingly, Paine was criticized harshly once he was eventually released from prison and published the Age of Reason. He also lost most of his support from the predominantly protestant culture in the Americas. Paine also criticized George Washington in a letter which was also published. Thus, when he finally returned to the United States in 1802, he was hated by many of the same people who had sung his praises in the years prior. Among the leaders of the American Revolution, only Thomas Jefferson ever reconciled with Paine in his later years. Even in the end, Jefferson expressed great admiration for Common Sense: "Although Jefferson probably arrived at the same conclusions independently, he expresses complete endorsement of Paine's views, and seems to have valued them as highly as those of any of his contemporaries," (Wiltse 56). Ultimately, despite his fantastic career and everlasting fame, Thomas Paine died in relative obscurity. His final request to be buried in a Quaker cemetery was denied, so he was buried simply in a plot on his farm in New York State in 1809, at the age of seventy-two.

If Paine's overall philosophy can be characterized by a single premise, that premise would be that the oppression of any people by any particular institution is morally wrong, and can be justifiably overthrown. Paine was responsible for helping to unite the American colonists to the single cause of revolution; but upon very different ideals than revolutions of the past had been fought. Traditionally, in Western history, changes of power within governments occurred around specific hereditary leaders; nobles and lords were fought for by the lower classes in the hopes that these leaders would be more just than the existing ones. However, during the age of enlightenment, revolution evolved into something that formed around specific principles, rather than specific people. Nonetheless, it took individuals like Paine to relay the essential components of these principles to the masses. This is why one of Paine's first published essays, African Slavery in America, is such an important one for understanding both Paine's philosophical underpinnings and the revolutionary mindset in the late eighteenth century.

In 1775, Paine joined the first antislavery society in the Americas and published the essay in the same year. Within the essay, Paine contends that, despite many southern landowners' claims to the contrary, the African was a human being; as such, he possesses a natural right to his own freedom. The justification for this, Paine argues, is that each man is born with human rights that cannot be deprived of him upon moral grounds. Consequently the deprivation of the entire race of Africans in America of their freedom represented a grievous breech of human morality. In short, Paine hoped not only to free the Africans from slavery, but to free all of mankind from the bigotry and prejudice which he viewed as the elemental oppressive forces in modern society.

Still, Thomas Paine was not the only advocate for black freedom in the early years of the United States. People like Anthony Benezet, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and Benjamin Franklin overtly urged blacks to oust their oppressors and to seek total equality (Meltzer 31). In 1757, a Quaker named John Woolman routinely wrote of his reasoning for condemning slavery: "Men having power too often misapplied it; that though we made slaves of Negroes, and the Turks made slaves of the Christians, I believed that liberty was the natural right of all men equally," (Meltzer 32). These were the people and principles that formed the United States, so when war broke out it was quickly recognized that forcing slave forces to fight was not in accord with the moral foundation of the nation. It was asserted that the government should offer slaves their freedom in return for their services in the conflict. However, "Southern delegates in the Continental Congress opposed it. Their states feared that if many blacks enlisted, the slaves would become restless and might even revolt," (Meltzer 131). Accordingly, the door was left open for the British to make the same offer to existing slaves; thus, stealing the Americans' bargaining chip. This is how African-Americans came to fight on both sides during the Revolutionary War, but with a singular individual aim -- liberty.

Paine's other great early essay was Common Sense, in which he argued that the Americans had a right to release themselves from the social, economic, and legal bonds that tied them to Britain. Much of is argument relied upon the notion that America was a land made-up of a very diverse populous of freedom-lovers. To Paine, Americans were people who had escaped the social and political confines of Europe in order to pursue their own, individualistic dreams. In this way, Americans were wholly unsuited to the rigid manner in which the British sought to rule over them. Paine is careful to point out that it is definitively within the best interests of the English to attempt to hold onto the American colonies, because they provide a wealth of natural resources and other commercial benefits. Yet, as the vast lands of the American colonies continue to expand, Paine saw it as a natural reconciliation between the individual psyche of the American and the inevitable forces of economics that should propel the colonies towards revolution.

These concepts are used as the launch pad for Paine's contentions about the proper formation of a morally-driven government after independence has been achieved. Paine argues in favor of a representative form of government, upon the grounds that hereditary rule makes corruptible individuals king when, to him, the only king should be the laws upon which a nation is founded. He also appeals to the sprit of the American people; urging them to believed in themselves, and that independence is truly achievable. After all, to Paine, the Americans were superior both in will, and in their access to the essential tool of warfare -- knowledge of the land, bravery, and natural resources. Accordingly, Paine saw that while it was in the best interests of Britain to maintain the colonies, it was also in the best interest of the colonies to declare their independence.

These same essential themes pervade all of Paine's Crisis essays. In this way, Paine was one of the first writers to attempt to generate a theoretical framework within which one could conceive of what the "American spirit" was. Prior to the Revolution, it was difficult for members of different colonies to view all of the American colonies as possessing any overarching ties to one another -- beyond the ties to Britain and through the economy. Yet Paine was one of the individuals directly responsible for bringing the people of the colonies under a single banner; and for the first time in history, this banner surrounded philosophical principles rather than merely a reorganization of the ruling individuals.