Nowadays, many human rights such as the right for free speech, religion choice and a right to education for every child seem normal and commonly understood by us. However, back to the 18th century, these regularly protected as legal rights today were just been discussed which caused society abruption. If we looked into our history, our society was rebuilt through the blood of many revolutions and the battles for fighting the human rights. The most significant one was the French Revolution.

The French revolution was a revolutionary movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799. It was a movement that people demanded to abolish privilege of the aristocracy and established the individual human rights for man and French citizens. Whereas, it also provoked arguments for social reforms. Intellectuals whose writings to inspired to these arguments were certainly influenced the west countries, but they came to very difference conclusions.  There are the two most important perspectives about the French revolution.

Edmund Burke, one of the most famous British intellectuals accused the French revolution of being an irrational uprising that would end disastrously. His argument of the revolution that is was based on the “digest of anarchy.” He believed the revolution’s fervor would destroy the French society in the end. He thought the tradition of the society should be maintaining on its way, which means the absolute monarchic system of France. He worried that the French revolution would result in a huge impact on England and changed England more or less. Unlike Burke, Percy Bysshe Shelley has absorbed the thoughts of French evolutional deeply. He disputed the feudal system and advocated the French revolution. He saw the revolution was a change of a better world, which beginning from the rights that people pursuing in the French revolution.  The main opposite of them opinion was based on the reasons and the tradition. Burke believed the traditions had their reason to keep common people obeying, because that was the basic processing step of our society. The monarchy is the correct way to rule the society, which Shelley doubted and hold a verse view.

In spite of Burke and Shelley have difference opinions on the French revolution, but there also has similarities between them. Both they were valuing the existing meanings and spirits of human life, such as friendship, love and emotion. The abstract and philosophical ideas they wrote embodied and emphasized the rational human virtue.