Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Philosopher

1712 - 1778

Never exceed your rights, and
they will soon become unlimited.
—Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland. His mother died shortly after his birth. When Rousseau was 10 his father fled from Geneva to avoid imprisonment for a minor offense, leaving young Jean-Jacques to be raised by an aunt and uncle. Rousseau left Geneva at 16, wandering from place to place, finally moving to Paris in 1742. He earned his living during this period, working as everything from footman to assistant to an ambassador.

Perhaps Rousseau's most important work is "The Social Contract" that describes the relationship of man with society. Contrary to his earlier work, Rousseau claimed that the state of nature is brutish condition without law or morality, and that there are good men only a result of society's presence. In the state of nature, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men. Because he can be more successful facing threats by joining with other men, he has the impetus to do so. He joins together with his fellow men to form the collective human presence known as "society." "The Social Contract" is the "compact" agreed to among men that sets the conditions for membership in society.

Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution of private property, and therefore is considered a forebear of modern socialism and Communism. Rousseau also questioned the assumption that the will of the majority is always correct. He argued that the goal of government should be to secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of the will of the majority.

One of the primary principles of Rousseau's political philosophy is that politics and morality should not be separated. When a state fails to act in a moral fashion, it ceases to function in the proper manner and ceases to exert genuine authority over the individual. The second important principle is freedom, which the state is created to preserve.

THOMAS HOBBES

Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679), English philosopher and political theorist one of the first modern Western thinkers to provide a worldlyexplanation for the government. The philosophy of Hobbes marked a departure in English philosophy from the religious emphasis of Scholasticism. His ideas represented a reaction against the decentralizing ideas of the Reformation (1517-1648), which, Hobbes contended, brought anarchy (see Anarchism). Regarded as an important early influence on the philosophical doctrine of utilitarianism, Hobbes also contributed to modern psychology and laid the foundations of modern sociology.

In 1642 Hobbes finished De Cive, (On Citizenship; translated in 1651), a statement of his theory of government. From 1646 to 1648 he was mathematics tutor to the Prince of Wales, later King Charles II, who was living in exile in Paris. Hobbes's best-known work, Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651), is a forceful exposition of his doctrine of sovereignty. The work was interpreted by the followers of the exiled prince as a justification of the Commonwealth and aroused the suspicions of the French authorities by its attack on the papacy. Again fearful of arrest, Hobbes returned to England. In 1660, when the Commonwealth ended and his former pupil acceded to the throne, Hobbes again came into favor.

Developing his politics and ethics from a naturalistic basis of self-interest, Hobbes held that since people are fearful and predatory they must submit to the state, in both secular and religious matters, in order to live by reason and gain lasting preservation. Within psychology, he proposed that all human actions are caused by material phenomena, with people motivated by what he termed appetite (movement toward an object; similar to pleasure) or aversion (movement away from an object; similar to pain).

Hobbes thought that a monarchy was the best form of government and that violence and disorder came naturally to human beings. He thought that people should obediently agree to give up our freedom and follow a ruler. A monarch would protect the people and maintain peace and order. People do not have the right to rebel no matter how unjust the government might be.

JOHN LOCKE

Locke was born in the village of Wrington, Somerset, on August 29, 1632. He was educated at the University of Oxford and lectured on Greek, rhetoric, and moral philosophy at Oxford from 1661 to 1664.

Locke's emphasized the importance of the experience of the senses in pursuit of knowledge. He regarded the mind of a person at birth as a blank slate upon which experience imprinted knowledge. Locke also held that all persons are born good, independent, and equal.

Locke's views, in his Two Treatises of Government (1690), attacked the theory of divine right of kings and the nature of the state as conceived by the English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes. In brief, Locke argued that sovereignty did not reside in the state but with the people, and that the state is supreme, but only if it is bound by civil and what he called “natural” law. Many of Locke's political ideas, such as those relating to natural rights, property rights, the duty of the government to protect these rights, and the rule of the majority, were later embodied in the U.S. Constitution.

Locke further held that revolution was not only a right but often an obligation, if the government did not protect the rights of the people. He advocated a system of checks and balances in government. He also believed in religious freedom and in the separation of church and state.

Locke's influence in modern philosophy has been profound and, with his application of empirical analysis to ethics, politics, and religion, he remains one of the most important and controversial philosophers of all time. Among his other works are Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695).

MAGNA CARTA

Magna Carta (Latin, “Great Charter”), document sealed by King John of England on June 15, 1215, in which he made a series of promises to his subjects that he would govern England and deal with his subjects according to law. Over the course of centuries, these promises have required governments in England to follow the law in dealing with their citizens. The document limited the power of the English monarchy and granted rights to John’s subjects. Many English legal traditions, including the right to trial by jury and equal access to courts for all citizens, had their origins in the Magna Carta. It guaranteed that life, liberty, and property were not to be taken from members of the nobility without judgment of the person’s peers and only by process of the law of the land. In theory the king was supposed to consult his barons before raising taxes or demanding large amounts of military service. For many years, the kings of England had used English men and money to defend English territory within France.

The Magna Carta of 1215 contains 63 clauses. Many clauses concern the legal system; in these John promises to provide good and fair justice in various ways. The last few clauses concern enforcement of the document. The two most important clauses of Magna Carta are among the legal clauses. Clause 40 promises, “To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.” This clause establishes the principle of equal access to the courts for all citizens without exorbitant fees. In clause 39, the king promises, “No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or diseased or outlawed or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” This clause establishes that the king would follow legal procedure before he punished someone. By the later 14th century statutes interpreting the Magna Carta equated “judgment of peers” with trial by jury. These protections were cited in many founding documents of the American colonies and were incorporated into the Constitution of the United States.

The Magna Carta remains a major document in the history of individual liberty. The document establishes the principle that no person, not even the king, is above the law. More specifically, this means that the government must follow its own laws in its dealings with its citizens, just as citizens must obey the law in their dealings with other citizens.

Montesquieu

Montesquieu was one of the great political philosophers of the Enlightenment. Curious and funny, he constructed a naturalistic account of the various forms of government. He explained how governments might be preserved from corruption. He saw corruption as a standing danger for any government and argued that it could best be prevented by a system in which different bodies exercised legislative, executive, and judicial power, and in which all those bodies were bound by the rule of law. This theory of the separation of powers had an enormous impact on liberal political theory, and on the framers of the constitution of the United States of America.

In a democracy, the people are free. They may govern through representatives, or be advised by a senate, but they must have the power of choosing their senators for themselves. The principle of democracy is political virtue, by which Montesquieu means "the love of the laws and of our country" (SL 4.5), including its democratic constitution. The form of a democratic government makes the laws governing suffrage and voting fundamental. The need to protect its principle, however, imposes far more extensive requirements. On Montesquieu's view, the virtue required by a functioning democracy is not natural. A democracy must educate its citizens to identify their interests with the interests of their country, and should have censors to preserve its laws. It should seek to establish thriftiness by law, so as to prevent its citizens from being tempted to advance their own private interests at the expense of the public good; for the same reason, the laws by which property is transferred should aim to preserve an equal distribution of property among citizens. Its territory should be small, so that it is easy for citizens to identify with it, and more difficult for extensive private interests to emerge.


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English Bill of Rights

Signed by William of orange (1689)

In 1689, Parliament passed the English Bill of Rights, which further limited the power of the English monarch. For example, the king or queen would no longer be able to limit free speech in Parliament or collect taxes without the government’s approval. The English Bill of Rights listed the rights of all English citizens’ not just nobles. It included ideas that would later find a place in our government. One is that everyone, even government leaders, must obey the law. Another is that all people have the right to a trial by jury and the right to petition, or request, to the government. By stating the rights of English citizens, the English Bill of Rights provided protections against tyranny. The colonists in America treasured these protections of their rights.

Englishmen possessed certain civil and political rights that could not be taken away. These included:

  • Freedom from royal interference with the law
  • Freedom from taxation without agreement by Parliament
  • Freedom to petition the king
  • Freedom from a peace-time standing army
  • Freedom to bear arms for self-defense
  • Freedom to elect members of Parliament
  • The freedom of speech in Parliament
  • Freedom from cruel and unusual punishments
  • Freedom from fines and forfeitures without trial

Parliament is equal to our Congress or Legislative Brach that makes our laws.

RomeAthens

“Let us study the law of nature; search into the spirit of the British constitution; read the histories of the ancient ages; the great examples of Greece and Rome; set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors.”

For hundreds of years Athens and other Greek cities had bee ruled by all powerful kings. In time the Athenians came to believe that wisdom of all the citizens was superior to the wisdom of one ruler. The Athenians created the world’s first direct democracy, a form of government in which laws are made directly by the citizens. The citizens of Athens met regularly to discuss ways to make life better for their community. Centuries later some colonists practiced direct democracy by holding town meetings to vote on local issues.

While town meetings mirrored Athenian direct democracy, the colonial legislatures resembled a representative form of government established in ancient Rome. In 509 BC, the Romans founded a republic, a government in which representatives are elected to make laws. Instead of being ruled by one monarch, citizens of the Roman republic elected representatives called senators, who conducted the business of government. As in Athens, citizenship in Rome was limited.