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| Charles de Secondat, Baron de la
Brède et de Montesquieu(1689-1755)
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Theories on human nature provided the basis for
theories on government. Most of the philosophes believed in
monarchy as the ideal structure, however there were new and elaborate
ideas formed at this time that would drastically change the great
nations of the world. It was because of these new ideas that revolutions
were staged and freedom still reigns today.
Thomas Hobbes revised the old English political
philosophy that relied on religion, ethics, and interpretation,
replacing it with the new ideas being applied to the physical sciences.
He concluded that people are selfish, and therefore need to be governed
by a strong sovereign. His commonwealth was described in his influential
work, Leviathan.
According to Hobbes, subjects of the Commonwealth
should surrender their natural rights and submit to the absolute rule of
their leader. Hobbes established that a social contract should exist in
which the doctrine of the divine right of monarchs is not open to review
by the subjects or by the Church. In return for their submission to the
sovereign, the people would be granted safety through the establishment
of a peaceful state.
In the eyes of John Locke, the government should be
run by the people for the people. Democracies were not
widely instituted at this time, so Locke's ideas were revolutionary. He
also adopted the idea of a social contract in which the government
protects the citizens' rights to life, freedom, and property. He
believed that people were born equal and should remain that way.
Locke's plan was to divide the government equally
into three branches so that politicians would not face the
"temptation...to grasp at power." If any branch abused its
rights or failed to protect the rights of the people, the contract would
be considered broken, and the people had the right to rebel. His ideas
laid the groundwork for the American Revolution and are displayed in the
documents that established democracy in the United States thereafter.
Jean Jacques Rousseau's most famous work, The
Social Contract, opens with the sentence, "Man is born free;
and everywhere he is in chains." To Rousseau, human beings are
naturally good. The social contract he suggests is one in which the
citizen surrenders his rights and possessions to the "general
will" that must be aimed at the good of the people. These are the
"chains" that Rousseau describes. His slogan in the treatise
is "Life, Liberty and Fraternity," that became the creed of
the French Revolutionaries.
The Baron de Montesquieu published On the Spirit
of Laws in 1748, which outlined his ideas on freedom and how
government should work. He concluded that a government elected by the
people was the best form, "In republican governments, men are all
equal; equal they are also in despotic government; in the former,
because they are everything; in the latter, because they are
nothing." The success of such a system however, was dependent upon
maintaining the right balance of power.
A balance among three groups of officials, or a
"separation of powers" was his plan. The three groups would
have equal but different powers to ensure that no one group would have
too much. Each group could then "check" and
"balance" the powers of the other. No branch of the government
would be able to threaten the freedom of the people. His ideas became
the basis for the United States Constitution.
These theories on government were the ideas that
revolutions were built upon. The natural rights that these political
philosophers wrote about became the rights that people soon demanded. By
the end of the 18th century many of the long-existing examples of
despotic rule were purged, and new republics were formed. This was an
essential step in human progress, which was the main goal of the
Enlightenment.
