came time to write a Constitution, the problems either created by or unsolvable by the Articles of Confederation were apparent and led to battles in Philadelphia over how to write the new document so as to address these concerns. The two major clusters in American political thought from the founding of the Republic had been centered on popular sovereignty and natural rights. The Republic was founded by men seeking to find a way to accommodate and include both clusters, and the Constitution was developed with concessions to both.
John Locke saw human nature as essentially good, and therefore he saw the social contract as a matter of choice based on a rational perception of self-interest and of the advantages that accrue from such an association. Locke refers to the state of nature, the prepolitical condition of humankind that existed prior to the social contract and the development of government, and Locke finds that even in the state of nature there were certain rights held by every person simply because they existed, those rights being life, l
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