SEARCHING FOR TRUTHSEARCHING FOR TRUTH Read the

SEARCHING FOR TRUTHSEARCHING FOR TRUTH Read the following quotation: “Men . . . join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another in a secure enjoyment of their properties and a greater security against any that are not of it.” —John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke wrote this statement in 1762. Locke’s writings were important in a movement called the Enlightenment, which changed the way people thought about governments and society. Enlightenment thinkers started to challenge the power of kings and believed that people could find truth on their own through the use of reason. The Enlightenment would influence governments to the present day. Over 200 years later, President George W. Bush reminded Americans: “We’re sometimes faulted for a naive faith that liberty can change the world, [but i]f that’s an error, it began with reading too much John Locke.” LOCKE AND HOBBES Who were John Locke and Thomas Hobbes? Some of the early political philosophers of the Enlightenment came from Great Britain. Civil wars tore the country apart in the mid-1600s. One king was executed and the country went through several governments. This turmoil led English philosophers to write about the relationship between people and their governments. One of the earliest thinkers who tried to look at politics in a rational way was Thomas Hobbes. He believed that people were naturally aggressive and that conflict was a normal part of human nature. In his most famous book, Leviathan, Hobbes wrote that people could only escape war and violence by giving up their natural rights and submitting to the rule of a strong ruler. Hobbes called this agreement in which people gave up rights in exchange for law and order a social contract. Because of this negative view of human nature, Hobbes supported powerful rulers more than the rights of individuals. John Locke, another important English philosopher at this time, had a very different view of human nature. He believed that people were not born good or evil, but that their characters were determined by their life experiences. In his most well-known political work, Two Treatises on Government, Locke wrote that people were born free and that they naturally had certain rights. The most important of these rights were life, liberty, and property. Locke agreed with Hobbes that governments were formed through a social contract, but he saw the purpose of government very differently. Locke wrote that the purpose of government was to protect natural rights. The only reason people should give up any of these rights was in exchange for a just, or fair, government. According to Locke’s idea of a social contract, if a government did not rule justly, or did not protect people’s rights, the people had a right to overthrow their leaders. THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN FRANCE AND GERMANY Who were some of the other important thinkers of the Enlightenment? In the mid-1700s, the most important Enlightenment thinkers lived in Paris, France. This group of thinkers is known as the philosophes, which is the French word for philosophers. Voltaire One of the most influential philosophes was Francois Marie Arouet, who wrote using the name Voltaire. Voltaire’s written works included plays, poems, and historical and philosophical essays. He was well known for using humor to make his political points. Voltaire wrote in favor of religious tolerance and free speech, and he often criticized important people in society. As a young man, Voltaire was arrested and put in jail for writing verses that made fun of government leaders. He also criticized church leaders and supported the separation of church and state. Voltaire’s most famous work is a humorous novel called Candide, in which he made fun of the attitudes of other philosophers of his day. Montesquieu Like John Locke, Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu, wrote extensively about politics. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu wrote about factors that would create a fair, uncorrupt government that protected people’s rights. He believed that the way to achieve this goal was to separate power so that no one person had too much influence. Montesquieu wanted governments divided into three different branches: a legislative branch, an executive branch, and a judicial branch. Each branch should have different responsibilities. The authors of the U.S. Constitution used this model for the U.S. government. ROUSSEAU AND DIDEROT What were the contributions of Rousseau and Diderot? Another French philosophe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote about politics in a work called The Social Contract. In Rousseau’s ideal society, people would be able to vote on the laws they must follow rather than merely obeying laws imposed on them by a ruler or rulers. While Rousseau supported democracy, he also wrote about other topics. These included how children should be educated and the benefits of spending time in nature. The philosophes in Paris shared many of their ideas with one another. One of them, Denis Diderot, spent much of his career spreading their ideas even further. Diderot was the editor of the Encyclopédie, a collection of articles on many different topics in art and science. Diderot worked on the Encyclopédie for nearly 20 years and published 28 different volumes of it, which contained articles by writers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu. Both the government and the church criticized the Encyclopédie, however, and attempted to ban it. They said it was too radical and could lead to revolution. A German Thinker Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, was the source of influential ideas about politics, language, history, mathematics, psychology, morals, religion, and other subjects. Kant wrote about how it is possible for people to understand the world around us. At the time, some philosophers believed that human knowledge and understanding could only come from experience. Others stressed rationalism, the idea that people were endowed by God or nature with the capacity for reason and logical thought. Kant tried to bring these ideas together. He said that people’s understanding had to come partly from their experience but also from their reason. Kant also wrote that people’s moral decisions also needed to be based on rational thought Image transcription text A 08.07 Enlightenment (Discover x Copy of Enlightenment – Googl x *Homework Help – Q&A from Or x + + C A docs.google.com/document/d/19s_de6hsAqDRg_Wr-jc-0-070-H5opnsq4RCrMZaixs/edit Copy of Enlightenment * @ @ a Share G File Edit View Insert Format Tools Extensions Help Last edit was seconds ago n a $ A … Show more SCIENCE HEALTH SCIENCE NURSING WHISTORY 5775-8

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