Hello!. For this week’s blog, I am going to talk about the estates, how they compare to the caste system, and possibly a few other things. To start, something I find very interesting was the bourgeoisie. I found this particular group of people interesting because of their placement in the estates. After doing some googling, found out that the bourgeoisie made up around 8% of the people in France back then. Now this 8%, around 2.3 million people, may seem small compared to the other members of the estate, around 30 million people, but if you compare it to what percentage of people were clergy (o.5%) and nobility (2%), it makes you think, maybe the bourgeoisie deserve their own estate. From what I’ve gathered, there seemed to be pretty concrete divides between the different estates. Like you couldn’t be sort of nobility and also sort of everybodyelse. If you had noble blood, you were noble. If you did your training and became a priest, you could be a clergy. If you weren’t these things, you were a part of everybodyelse. So, if there are such rigid fine lines between the estates, why is it that there were members of the bourgeoisie far richer than nobility and clergy, and then also people who spent their life as servants and beggars? This kind of seems like it is becoming an argumentative essay as to why there should be a separate estate between the 3rd and 2nd just for the bourgeoisie, so I’ll reel it in here, but my point stands. To look on the other side, the whole third estate paid taxes where the 1st and 2nd didn’t, so that could be a reason as to why they are all grouped together. I believe you can honestly argue both sides. Now, to switch gears, I want to talk about the similarities and differences between the caste system in India and the estates in France. One major difference is that the caste system still exists today, whereas the estates in France do not. Maybe the reason the caste system still exists is because to my knowledge, India has not had a major revolution and a shift in government. A similarity between the two is the way that people rank themselves and treat others how they believe they should be treated due to their social status. Finally, one last difference is the moving between social statuses. In the caste system, there really is zero moving. You are born into a family, and live your life in your caste. In the estates, there was plenty of moving. You could start out as a peasant and slowly work your way up to priest, or you could start as a member of the bourgeoisie and marry into a noble family looking for money. That, in my eyes, is the biggest difference between these two socially constructed rankings. With that, I will end my post. Thanks!
Month: March 2022
Blog post #4
For this week’s blog post, I am going to further expand upon the paragraph I wrote for homework talking about my thoughts about the four philosophers we have been learning about. Since writing the paragraph, I would say I understand the philosophers a bit more and I would actually like to tweak my answer somewhat. In my paragraph, I talked about how I mostly agree with Jean Rousseau, but after re-reading the info, I would say that I only agree with a few of his points, and I also only like him in comparison to the other philosophers. Let me explain. Of the four philosophers, he was the one I most agreed with I would say, but I think that it is all relative. I agree with him in that a King or single person should not have all of the power to make decisions, especially if they were not elected, but Rousseau’s ideas part ways here because I do believe that there should be an elected official governing a country, which Rousseau does not believe in. I’m not going to say whether or not I agree with this point, but I found it very interesting how Jean Rousseau believed that religion weakened government. I completely believe that anyone should be free to practice and worship however they want and whatever they want, but it is intriguing to think about what our society and societies around the world would look like without religion and religious divides. Religion often causes conflict, and in the past and even now makes people have a negative outlook on people who don’t necessarily believe the same things as them, so I believe that our world would look extremely different in its structure without religion. Like I said, I think I mostly agree with Rousseau out of the four, but there are little bits from each of them that I agree with. For example, I also agree with Locke that an individual should never have to give up their rights to a king, which was a shared view between Rousseau and Locke. I agree with Montesquieu in that there should be three branches, the legislative, the judicial, and the executive, in the government all keeping one another in line and making sure the power is equally divided. I do believe that I am somewhat biased because this is the system I grew up with. As you mentioned in class, the way one grows up can definitely impact one’s views, especially about government. All in all, if I had to give one of the four philosophers that I disagreed the most with, I would have to say, Hobbes. I credit this partly to his negative outlook on life, I like to think I am a pretty positive person, so it makes sense that we would not agree on much. That is all I have to write for this post, so thanks for reading!