Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Jacques Pierre Brissot was one of the most misunderstood men of his generation and ours. Best known for his prominent political role during the French Revolution , his earlier career as a publicist, journalist, and disciple of the French Philosophes provides the key to his lifelong commitment to reformist, egalitarian, and democratic ideals. Born in 1754 to a master chef and caterer of Chartres and a highly devout mother, Jacques Pierre was one of seven surviving siblings. He began studying for a legal career, but as a voracious reader of Enlightenment philosophic and deistic works , he soon felt driven to begin writing down his own reflections concerning religion, politics, society, and human rights. Early in life, Brissot experienced a wrenching crisis of faith, resulting in a violent break from the Catholic Church. From there he went on to condemn Catholicism for its despotic collusion with the state, reinforcing an exclusive, hierarchical system. Although he came to embrace a Rousseau-style deism, he adopted his own version of the humanitarianism of the Judeo-Christian tradition. He left Chartres for Paris, but his fierce ambition, intellectual curiosity, and the tumultuous events of late eighteenth-century society and politics led him to London, to the cantons of the future Switzerland, to Holland, and to the United States. His writings of the late 1770s, 1780s, and during ... log in or subscribe to read full text