The French Revolution occurred due to the curtailing of the estates’ rights under King Louis XIV, who attempted to rule as an absolute autocrat and was later executed for this. The Enlightenment made it permissible for people to speak and question the rights of the time. After the Enlightenment, social rights, religious rights, and gender rights were expanded and advanced. Document one speaks of natural rights that extends to all of humanity with natural rights being any right that doesn’t hurt another, “You have the most sacred natural right to everything that is not disputed by the rest of the species.” By being a natural right, it couldn’t be denied to anyone, no matter gender, race, or time period. Diderot asserts that the point in having natural rights is for the good of the general will, which will later benefit the individual. Document one was written when the Great Enlightenment was in full swing, fourteen years before the French Revolution, and when people began to question what are natural rights and why they were not granted to the average …show more content…
It states that to be fit to vote, which would be a natural right according to document one, a person must be French, old enough, live in France for at least a year, pay taxes equal to three days work, and not be a slave. Before the Revolution took place, only men who owned property could vote, and due to proposals like the one made in document five, all men could vote regardless of whether or not they owned property. The issue of slaves voting was solved because the National Assembly terminated slavery, where it was already not popular. The social requirement of being a white male who owns property dropped to just being a male due to the revolution. The French Revolution lead to the expansion of the rights of the average French men’s rights to one that was not defined by economic position in