Sunday, October 25, 2009

Napoleon Trial

Personally, I agree with the decision of the jury that Napoleon violated the ideals of Enlightenment.

Ideals of enlightenment include equality of both status and gender, freedom, and liberty. Ideally, the government should be there to help maintain these aspects of enlightenment and should take care of everyone to the best of its ability. This means including the opinion of the general public as well.

One very obvious way that Napoleon violated these ideals is by making himself emperor. How can a society be equal is one man is in control of everything and does whatever he wants. Napoleon claimed to ensure equality within his people, but, in reality, he did a terrible job of this. First of all, he was in favor of having slaves. Also, under Napoleon, men and women were of very different social status. Even before the Napoleonic Code was enacted, men held the more powerful jobs while women usually just stayed at home doing chores. Then, when the Napoleonic Code was enacted in 1804, Napoleon gave even more rights to men. Men were in complete control of all of a family's property and a husband automatically had custody over his kids in the case of a divorce. Men were also able to divorce their wives if they suspected their wife of adultery. Women were not able to get a divorce if the circumstances were flipped.

All of this just shows that Napoleon did not do a good job in power and that he violated the ideals of enlightenment.

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