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John Locke:
John Locke held a positive view of human nature. His book Two
Treatises on Government was published in 1960, the year after the
Glorious Revolution. Locke argued that the English people had been
justified in overthrowing James II. The government had failed under
James to perform its most fundamental duty protecting the rights of
the people. In order to protect these natural rights, they formed
governments. The people had an absolute right, he said, to rebel
against a government that violated or failed to protect these rights.
John Locke believed all humans are free and equal at birth. People in
positions of power are given the right to govern by the people, and
unfair rulers can be forced from power. He believed that humans are
not born good or evil, but become one or the other according to his life
experiences and the social and geographical environment in which he
lives.
Jean Jaques-Rousseau:
Perhaps the most free-thinking of all Enlightenment thinkers admired
the democratic nature of English institutions. His most famous work
was The Social Contract. In it, Rousseau advocated democracy. Unlike
Hobbes, he called the social contract an agreement among free
individuals to create a government that would respond to the peoples
will:
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend
and protect with the whole common force the person (individual)
and goods of each associate (individual), and in which each,
while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and
remain as free as before.
- Jean-Jaques Rousseau, The Social
Contract
Here, Rousseau states that our goal should be to form a government
by which people unite to defend the rights and property of each
person, while still remaining free to follow ones own beliefs and will a
government that is powerful enough to protect people, while letting
people be genuinely free.
judgment was frail and likely to err (make mistakes). It is only the
knowledge of consequences that offers reliable knowledge of the
future and overcomes the frailties of human judgment. In short, what
humans fear most is a violent death; the only way to protect ourselves
from a violent death (also known as the State of Nature) is to give
absolute power to a ruler who will protect them and exists above the
law.