Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737–June 8 1809), intellectual, scholar, and idealist, is widely recognized as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A radical pamphleteer, Paine anticipated and helped foment the American Revolution through his powerful writings, most notably Common Sense, an incendiary tract advocating independence from Great Britain. An advocate for liberalism and constitutional republican government, he outlined his political philosophy in The Rights of Man, written both as a reply to Edmund Burke's view of the radical revolution in France and as a general political philosophy treatise. Paine was also noteworthy for his support of deism, taking its form in his theology treatise The Age of Reason, as well as for his eye-witness accounts of both the French and American Revolutions.

Legacy

Thomas Paine's writings had great influence on his contemporaries, especially the American revolutionaries. His books inspired both philosophical and working-class Radicals in the United Kingdom; and he is often claimed as an intellectual ancestor by United States liberals, libertarians, progressives] and radicals. Both Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Alva Edison read him with respect. There is a museum in New Rochelle, New York, in his honour, and a statue of him stands in King Street in Thetford, Norfolk: his place of birth; the statue holds a quill and his book, The Rights Of Man; the book is upside down.

Related Topics:
Radicals - United Kingdom - Liberals - Libertarians - Progressives - Abraham Lincoln - Thomas Alva Edison - New Rochelle - Thetford

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