Popular sovereignty, an idea championed by rousseau, stated that governments should express what

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, occurred across Europe in the late 1600s and into the 18th century. In England, scientists like Isaac Newton and writers like John Locke were challenging old ways of thinking. They were really shaking things up. Newton's laws of gravity and motion described the world in terms of natural laws, not spiritual force. Locke suggested that people should work to change any government that did not protect life, liberty and property.

In Europe, thinkers and writers believed that they were "enlightened" — meaning that they had more reason than the common person. The word reason meant a lot during this time. People believed that reason could be used to build a better world. Leaders of the Enlightenment opposed much of religion because of its demands for political obedience and truth based on religious belief rather than on evidence and proof. They also opposed the idea of inherited monarchy because it had no basis in reason and led to abuse of power. American leaders like Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were greatly influenced by many of these philosophers. These new views helped them to show others that the American Revolution wasn't just a rebellion. It was a new design for how to organize a society that was based upon reason and fairness.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau — The Champion of Democracy

Rousseau was born in Switzerland, but he was a resident of France until he died during the American Revolution. He was one of the most popular and respected philosophers of his time. In 1762, fourteen years before the Declaration of Independence, he wrote his most important work, The Social Contract. In it, he writes, "MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer." He goes on to say that politics and morality should not be separate and that when a government fails to act in a moral way, it has lost its power.

Rousseau was one of the first to stand up for democracy. He believed that individual freedom, equality and justice should always be the focus of a government. Yet he also recognized that in a democracy, individuals would have to give up some of their own wants for the common good. While these ideas may seem abstract, they echo the thoughts first brought up by John Locke. A major theme in the writings of both Locke and Rousseau was that when a government breaks the social contract to protect the common good, the people have a right and obligation to replace it.

Majority rules. The U.S government is built on the idea that we vote and the most votes win. But Rousseau says that there are times when the majority should not rule. Can you create an example of where you think that a single person's wishes should take precedence over the majority?

SKILLS: Create, Know

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet, best known by his pen name Voltaire, was another famous writer and philosopher whose views shaped the leaders of the American Revolution.

Voltaire was a great admirer of Benjamin Franklin. Near the end of his life, after getting to meet Franklin, he wrote, "When I gave my benediction to the grandson of the sage and illustrious Franklin, the most honorable man of America, I spoke only these words, God and Liberty! All who were present shed tears." The feeling was mutual. Franklin, who lived in France for many years, had brought many Enlightenment ideas to America. In France, Voltaire was the most outspoken crusader for reform. He was very critical of political and social issues such as cruelty and slavery. He was also a critic of the Catholic Church and the French aristocracy. His writing focused on corruption and religious intolerance — two things that many colonists experienced under British rule. Because of his criticism, he lived most of his life in fear of being jailed. After being imprisoned twice, he moved to England for more than two years to escape. While living there, Voltaire met important thinkers such as Isaac Newton and John Locke. Most of his writing was banned in France. Voltaire is famous for his strong belief in freedom of speech and once said, "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Are there any circumstances where it should be illegal for you to say what you think? Can you come up with a situation or can you always say whatever you want?

SKILL: Apply

Montesquieu

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, was another Frenchman who had a major impact on the Founding Fathers. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, was a big follower of Montesquieu's ideas. Eight years before the Declaration of Independence, Montesquieu wrote The Spirit of the Laws. In it, he described three main forms of government:

• monarchies, which were based on honor and headed by a king or queen;
• republics, which were based on virtue and headed by a popularly elected official; and
• despotisms, which were based on fear and headed by dictators.

In a republic, he said, there should be checks and balances on government to ensure that liberty is maintained. To do this, he said, governments should divide power between three separate branches of government: the legislative, the judiciary, and the executive. Montesquieu's work was well received in Britain and widely read in the colonies, but it created uproar in France because his concept of government was offensive to the French monarchy.

What two questions would you ask of Montesquieu about "the balance of Power" concept?

The Heritage of the Enlightenment

Today, the Enlightenment is often viewed as a rare, brief moment when a number of scholars all published their ideas about the perfect society. They believed a perfect society could be built on common sense and tolerance. Unfortunately, this period did not last long. The French Revolution and a period of Romanticism came shortly after and since then, many groups, from religious thinkers to historians, have viewed the Enlightenment negatively.

Yet in many ways, the principles of the Enlightenment are still alive. The concept of basic human rights still inspires oppressed people throughout the world. Wherever religious conflicts erupt, mutual religious tolerance is brought up as a solution. Rousseau's idea of self-rule has influenced many models of government. Even though these concepts started out as European, they have also become global. They have also formed the standards used in international law and governance today.

Still, the Enlightenment was never as simple as it has often been portrayed. Voltaire was not a simplistic optimist and he did not believe that it was possible to create an ideal society. Rather he tried to persuade Europeans from using stupidity and ignorance when dealing with governmental matters. All in all, whether we acknowledge it or not, we still think today more like him than like his enemies.

Of the views expressed by Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, whose views of government do you find most appealing? Explain why in two sentences.

Finish the following silly poem helping Rousseau, Voltaire, or Montesquieu to get his point across: Roses are Red Violets are blue

...

1. What was the Enlightenment and what were its philosophers trying to achieve?
2. What ideas of individual freedom and forms of government emerged from the Enlightenment thinkers Rousseau and Montesquieu?
3. How did they differ from the current forms of government at the time and what was the reaction of rulers in Europe to their concepts?

BRIA 20:2 Home | How Women Won the Right to Vote | Have Women Achieved Equality? | Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau on Government

Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau on Government

Starting in the 1600s, European philosophers began debating the question of who should govern a nation. As the absolute rule of kings weakened, Enlightenment philosophers argued for different forms of democracy.

In 1649, a civil war broke out over who would rule England—Parliament or King Charles I. The war ended with the beheading of the king. Shortly after Charles was executed, an English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), wrote Leviathan, a defense of the absolute power of kings. The title of the book referred to a leviathan, a mythological, whale-like sea monster that devoured whole ships. Hobbes likened the leviathan to government, a powerful state created to impose order.

Hobbes began Leviathan by describing the “state of nature” where all individuals were naturally equal. Every person was free to do what he or she needed to do to survive. As a result, everyone suffered from “continued fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man [was] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

In the state of nature, there were no laws or anyone to enforce them. The only way out of this situation, Hobbes said, was for individuals to create some supreme power to impose peace on everyone.

Hobbes borrowed a concept from English contract law: an implied agreement. Hobbes asserted that the people agreed among themselves to “lay down” their natural rights of equality and freedom and give absolute power to a sovereign. The sovereign, created by the people, might be a person or a group. The sovereign would make and enforce the laws to secure a peaceful society, making life, liberty, and property possible. Hobbes called this agreement the “social contract.”

Hobbes believed that a government headed by a king was the best form that the sovereign could take. Placing all power in the hands of a king would mean more resolute and consistent exercise of political authority, Hobbes argued. Hobbes also maintained that the social contract was an agreement only among the people and not between them and their king. Once the people had given absolute power to the king, they had no right to revolt against him.

Hobbes warned against the church meddling with the king’s government. He feared religion could become a source of civil war. Thus, he advised that the church become a department of the king’s government, which would closely control all religious affairs. In any conflict between divine and royal law, Hobbes wrote, the individual should obey the king or choose death.

But the days of absolute kings were numbered. A new age with fresh ideas was emerging—the European Enlightenment.

Enlightenment thinkers wanted to improve human conditions on earth rather than concern themselves with religion and the afterlife. These thinkers valued reason, science, religious tolerance, and what they called “natural rights”—life, liberty, and property.

Enlightenment philosophers John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all developed theories of government in which some or even all the people would govern. These thinkers had a profound effect on the American and French revolutions and the democratic governments that they produced.

Locke: The Reluctant Democrat

John Locke (1632–1704) was born shortly before the English Civil War. Locke studied science and medicine at Oxford University and became a professor there. He sided with the Protestant Parliament against the Roman Catholic King James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1685. This event reduced the power of the king and made Parliament the major authority in English government.

In 1690, Locke published his Two Treatises of Government. He generally agreed with Hobbes about the brutality of the state of nature, which required a social contract to assure peace. But he disagreed with Hobbes on two major points.

First, Locke argued that natural rights such as life, liberty, and property existed in the state of nature and could never be taken away or even voluntarily given up by individuals. These rights were “inalienable” (impossible to surrender). Locke also disagreed with Hobbes about the social contract. For him, it was not just an agreement among the people, but between them and the sovereign (preferably a king).

According to Locke, the natural rights of individuals limited the power of the king. The king did not hold absolute power, as Hobbes had said, but acted only to enforce and protect the natural rights of the people. If a sovereign violated these rights, the social contract was broken, and the people had the right to revolt and establish a new government. Less than 100 years after Locke wrote his Two Treatises of Government, Thomas Jefferson used his theory in writing the Declaration of Independence.

Although Locke spoke out for freedom of thought, speech, and religion, he believed property to be the most important natural right. He declared that owners may do whatever they want with their property as long as they do not invade the rights of others. Government, he said, was mainly necessary to promote the “public good,” that is to protect property and encourage commerce and little else. “Govern lightly,” Locke said.

Locke favored a representative government such as the English Parliament, which had a hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons. But he wanted representatives to be only men of property and business. Consequently, only adult male property owners should have the right to vote. Locke was reluctant to allow the propertyless masses of people to participate in government because he believed that they were unfit.

The supreme authority of government, Locke said, should reside in the law-making legislature, like England’s Parliament. The executive (prime minister) and courts would be creations of the legislature and under its authority.

Montesquieu: The Balanced Democrat

When Charles Montesquieu (1689–1755) was born, France was ruled by an absolute king, Louis XIV. Montesquieu was born into a noble family and educated in the law. He traveled extensively throughout Europe, including England, where he studied the Parliament. In 1722, he wrote a book, ridiculing the reign of Louis XIV and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.

Montesquieu published his greatest work, The Spirit of the Laws, in 1748. Unlike Hobbes and Locke, Montesquieu believed that in the state of nature individuals were so fearful that they avoided violence and war. The need for food, Montesquieu said, caused the timid humans to associate with others and seek to live in a society. “As soon as man enters into a state of society,” Montesquieu wrote, “he loses the sense of his weakness, equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.”

Montesquieu did not describe a social contract as such. But he said that the state of war among individuals and nations led to human laws and government.

Montesquieu wrote that the main purpose of government is to maintain law and order, political liberty, and the property of the individual. Montesquieu opposed the absolute monarchy of his home country and favored the English system as the best model of government.

Montesquieu somewhat misinterpreted how political power was actually exercised in England. When he wrote The Spirit of the Laws, power was concentrated pretty much in Parliament, the national legislature. Montesquieu thought he saw a separation and balancing of the powers of government in England.

Montesquieu viewed the English king as exercising executive power balanced by the law-making Parliament, which was itself divided into the House of Lords and the House of Commons, each checking the other. Then, the executive and legislative branches were still further balanced by an independent court system.

Montesquieu concluded that the best form of government was one in which the legislative, executive, and judicial powers were separate and kept each other in check to prevent any branch from becoming too powerful. He believed that uniting these powers, as in the monarchy of Louis XIV, would lead to despotism. While Montesquieu’s separation of powers theory did not accurately describe the government of England, Americans later adopted it as the foundation of the U.S. Constitution.

Rousseau: The Extreme Democrat

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where all adult male citizens could vote for a representative government. Rousseau traveled in France and Italy, educating himself.

In 1751, he won an essay contest. His fresh view that man was naturally good and was corrupted by society made him a celebrity in the French salons where artists, scientists, and writers gathered to discuss the latest ideas.

A few years later he published another essay in which he described savages in a state of nature as free, equal, peaceful, and happy. When people began to claim ownership of property, Rousseau argued, inequality, murder, and war resulted.

According to Rousseau, the powerful rich stole the land belonging to everyone and fooled the common people into accepting them as rulers. Rousseau concluded that the social contract was not a willing agreement, as Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu had believed, but a fraud against the people committed by the rich.

In 1762, Rousseau published his most important work on political theory, The Social Contract. His opening line is still striking today: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau agreed with Locke that the individual should never be forced to give up his or her natural rights to a king.

The problem in the state of nature, Rousseau said, was to find a way to protect everyone’s life, liberty, and property while each person remained free. Rousseau’s solution was for people to enter into a social contract. They would give up all their rights, not to a king, but to “the whole community,” all the people. He called all the people the “sovereign,” a term used by Hobbes to mainly refer to a king. The people then exercised their “general will” to make laws for the “public good.”

Rousseau argued that the general will of the people could not be decided by elected representatives. He believed in a direct democracy in which everyone voted to express the general will and to make the laws of the land. Rousseau had in mind a democracy on a small scale, a city-state like his native Geneva.

In Rousseau’s democracy, anyone who disobeyed the general will of the people “will be forced to be free.” He believed that citizens must obey the laws or be forced to do so as long as they remained a resident of the state. This is a “civil state,” Rousseau says, where security, justice, liberty, and property are protected and enjoyed by all.

All political power, according to Rousseau, must reside with the people, exercising their general will. There can be no separation of powers, as Montesquieu proposed. The people, meeting together, will deliberate individually on laws and then by majority vote find the general will. Rousseau’s general will was later embodied in the words “We the people . . .” at the beginning of the U.S. Constitution.

Rousseau was rather vague on the mechanics of how his democracy would work. There would be a government of sorts, entrusted with administering the general will. But it would be composed of “mere officials” who got their orders from the people.

Rousseau believed that religion divided and weakened the state. “It is impossible to live in peace with people you think are damned,” he said. He favored a “civil religion” that accepted God, but concentrated on the sacredness of the social contract.

Rousseau realized that democracy as he envisioned it would be hard to maintain. He warned, “As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State, ‘What does it matter to me?’ the State may be given up for lost.”

For Discussion and Writing

1.         Of the four philosophers discussed in this article, which two do you think differed the most? Why?

2.         Which of the democratic forms government proposed by Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau do you think is the best? Why?

3.         Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract, “As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State ‘What does it matter to me?’ the State may be given up for lost.” What do you think he meant? How do you think his words relate to American democracy today?

A C T I V I T Y

The Philosophers Take a Stand

1.         Divide the class into four groups, each taking on the role of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, or Rousseau.

2.         The members of each of the role group will need to research why their philosopher would agree or disagree with the debate topics listed below. The article contains some clues, but students should find out more about their philosophers’ views by using the school library and Internet.

3.         After research has been completed, each role group will state its philosopher’s position on topic A. The groups should then debate the topic from the point of view of the philosopher they are role playing. Follow the same procedure for the rest of the topics.

4.         After all the debates are finished, class members should discuss which one of the four philosophers they agree with the most and why.

Debate Topics

A.        The best form of government is a representative democracy.

B.        Only the president should have the power to declare war.

C.        A good way to make laws is for all the people to directly vote on them.

D.        Religion should be a part of the government.

E.        The government should have the authority to confiscate a person’s property for the public good.

For Further Information

Hobbes

Encyclopedia articles:

Wikipedia: Thomas Hobbes

Wikipedia: Leviathan

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Thomas Hobbes

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hobbes’ Moral and Political Philosophy

Malaspina Great Books: Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan Text of the book.

SparkNotes: Leviathan A study guide to the book.

Links:

Yahoo Directory: Thomas Hobbes

Google Directory: Thomas Hobbes

Open Directory Project: Thomas Hobbes

Locke

Encyclopedia articles:

Wikipedia: John Locke

Bluplete Biography: John Locke

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: John Locke

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: John Locke

Wikipedia: Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Civil Government Text of the book.

SparkNotes: Locke’s Second Treatise of Government Two Treatises of Government A study guide.

Malaspina Great Books: John Locke

Links:

Yahoo Directory: John Locke

Google Directory: John Locke

Open Directory Project: John Locke

Rousseau

Encyclopedia articles:

Wikipedia: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Social Contract The text of the book.

SparkNotes: Rousseau’s Social Contract A study guide to the book.

Malaspina Great Books: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Links:

Yahoo Directory: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Google Directory: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Open Directory Project: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Montesquieu

Encyclopedia articles:

Wikipedia: Montesquieu

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Montesquieu

Catholic Encyclopedia: Montesquieu

The Spirit of the Laws The text of the book.

Malaspina Great Books: Montesquieu

Links:

Yahoo Directory: Baron de Montesquieu

Google Directory: Montesquieu

Open Directory Project: Montesquieu