EthosThe Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen is a legal document, which means it's basically 100% pure ethos. Following the logic of popular sovereignty, it gets its power from the men (so...

A Really Important ListThe Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen begins with a really, really long sentence explaining what it's all about and why it was written. It's the kind of sentence y...

It's a mouthful, isn't it? The reason that it's so long is that the representatives in the National Assembly wanted to make it clear that they weren't actually offering rights to everyone. At first...

Technically the document begins by noting that it was approved by the National Assembly of France on August 26, 1789. That was the day they passed the final article and submitted the whole thing to...

There, um, aren't any.The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen just ends with Article 17, which is about property rights. They apparently didn't think that it was necessary to include any p...

(5) Tree LineThe Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen isn't the most exciting bedtime story you've ever read…but it also isn't going to send you searching through the dictionary trying to...

In-Text ReferencesLiterary and Philosophical ReferencesJean Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract (2.1)Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (16.1) John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Governmen...

The original version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen contained twenty-four clauses, but only seventeen were approved by the National Assembly. The rest were rejected because the...