Thomas Paine's Possible Obligation

179 Words1 Pages
Paine argues “what possible obligation, then, can exist between [those who have died and those not yet born] - what rule or principle can be laid down that of two nonentities, the one out of existence and the other not in, and who never can meet in this world, the one should control the other to the end of time?” Paine is adamantly against the notion that the dead, and those not yet born, should play any role in politics as they do not exist, and do not need to be accommodated. He further supports this claim on page 438 when he states that: The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which