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Enlightenment. The Intellectual Revolution of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Thomas Hobbes. Works: Leviathon Ideas: People are naturally cruel, greedy and selfish. Without strict control people would fight, oppress, and rob one another. Best government is an absolute monarchy. John Locke.
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Enlightenment The Intellectual Revolution of the 17th and 18th Centuries
Thomas Hobbes • Works: Leviathon • Ideas: • People are naturally cruel, greedy and selfish. • Without strict control people would fight, oppress, and rob one another. • Best government is an absolute monarchy.
John Locke • Works: Two Treatises of Government. • Ideas: • People are reasonable and moral. • Have certain rights to life, liberty and property. • Best government has limited power and is accepted by all citizens. • Government has an obligation to the people…people have the right to revolution.
Baron de Montesquieu • Works: The Spirit of the Laws • Ideas: • Liked limited monarchy-separate branches of government-executive, legislative, judicial. • System of Checks and Balances. • Ideas made way into US Constitution. • "In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing."
Voltaire • Work: Candide • Ideas: • Attacked corrupt officials and idle aristocrats. • Attacked inequality, injustice, superstition, the slave trade, and deplored religious prejudice. • Defended freedom of speech. • “I do not agree with a word that you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it” • “Those who can make you believe absurditiescan make you commit atrocities”
Denis Diderot • Works: The Encyclopedia • Ideas: • Wanted to change the general way of thinking. Used encyclopedia to explain the new ways of thinking on government, philosophy and religion. • Work did much to shape ideas in Europe and the Americas.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Works: The Social Contract • Ideas: • People are basically good, but are corrupted by the evils of society. • Government is good, give up self interests for the common good. • Helped to fan the flames of revolution.
Adam Smith • Works: The Wealth of Nations • Ideas: • Argued that the free market should be allowed to operate and regulate business. • Everything was linked to supply and demand. • Economy was better off without governmental control. • “Virtue is more to be feared than vice,because its excesses are not subject tothe regulation of conscience.”