John Locke
The period of the eighteenth century, at least t
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The period of the eighteenth century, at least the years that preceded the French Revolution of 1789, is known in historical and philosophical terms as the Age of Enlightenment. While it is certainly true that no one definition embodies the spirit of the time, the name "Enlightenment" clearly conveys the way the age was conceived by those living in it, and later historical evaluations of the era similarly convey this term as being accurate.In a sense, then, Europeans were sensing that they were living in a new age an age in which the past was termed a time of barbarism and intellectual and philosophical darkness. There was a new sense of progress, and an idea that all things were discoverable through the intellect using the tools of science and philosophy. Similarly, the Enlightenment changed the ideas about natural law and natural rights. With this came a greater spirit of individualism, and the idea that all things were possible.1 This paper will concentrate on the period of the Enlightenment through three of its foremost writers and philosophers: John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the Baron de Montesquieu. The paper will concentrate on Locke's 1 See the discussion on the "Age of Enlightenment" in R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 302 49. ideas on natural rights, Rousseau's social contract, and Montesquieu's idea of the separation of powers as a case study positing the not
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iled careers before he moved to France and began to write on political theory. Like Locke, Rousseau believed that all political theory begins with the notion that man is born into a state of nature or perfect freedom. It is, however, that state that propels men into the mutual agreement of society, and must therefore allow the establishment of laws that comprise a way to organize and develop that society.4
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3 Ibid., Chapter VII.
4 Allan Bloom, "Rousseau," in Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 532 36.
More importantly, though, Rousseau's 1762 publication of the Social Contract established a basis by which the state of nature could be expanded and turned into civil and political government. Beginning with the phrase, "Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains," Rousseau establishes his work as the search for legitimacy of government. He further notes that there are three basic areas of government: sovereignty, law, and the legislator. Thus, power resides with the people rather than from divine monarchy, and it is in the people that legitimacy is found. Government is,
[the] supreme administration, the legitimat
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