Enlightenment Thinkers

John Locke3 concepts of gov’t:

• Consent of the goverened

• a social contract between a fair gov’t & responsible citizens

• right to revolution

• Locke believed Property was the most impt. of his natural rights!

Friedrich Melchior

• Key figure in spread of enlightenment ideas - French

• Wrote a cultural newsletter, edited for the benefit of foreign sovereigns and nobility

Montesquieu• French• College educated -

lawyer• Political

Philosopher• Explained how

government can be preserved from corruption

Jean Jacques Rousseau

• one of the most influential books of republican thought

• proposed a form of contract that should grant people liberty

Mary Astell

• Not born into wealth/nobility

• Considered the first feminist philosopher

• Supported education of women

Mary Wollstonecraft

• British• Feminist writer• Established a girls school in Newington

Green• Contributed to the publication

Analytical Review• “society breeds ‘gentle domestic

brutes’, a confined existence makes women frustrated and transforms them into tyrants over their children and servants”

Voltaire

• French Philosopher• Exiled three times• He argued in favor of

"deism”

Thomas Hobbes• English Political Philosopher• main concern is the problem of

social and political order: how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict

• “state of nature” that closely resembles civil war – a situation of universal insecurity, where all have reason to fear violent death and where rewarding human cooperation is all but impossible.