Edmund Burke & Tom Paine Term Paper

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Burke therefore advocates an adherence to the past, because the past is the roots upon which the future of society is to be built.

The biggest contrast between Thomas Paine and Edward Burke in their views on the social contract is that Paine rejects the religious adherence to history that Burke advocates. Instead, Paine suggests that each society during each time period has a right to discard what no longer applies to them, and to create new paradigms, laws and institutions. His basis for this was the equality of all human beings in the eyes of God.

Paine's social contract is then based upon the current needs of society and the protection of individual right, rather than on the collective view of society. Like Burke, Paine also saw the contract as an agreement among various human beings. Paine's view is however much narrower than that of Burke: instead of over millennia of development, the social contract refers to the agreement among all members of society in order to establish a legitimate government (Steven Kreis).

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This contract ensures that all people retain their natural rights under the government, although the individual right to use force is prohibited. In this way, political rights and sovereignty lay with the people rather than the government. A government that is not chosen in this way is not legitimate according to the social contract.

In contrast to Burke, therefore, Paine's ideal focuses only on the present and on current social needs. Lessons from history are discarded in favor of something that focuses on the current needs and rights as seen by society. While Burke's social contract focuses on all society of all time functioning as an organic whole, Paine views society as made up of individual members, whose political rights are more important than anything else......

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